Las Fallas

Intro: Las Fallas is this absolutely insane tradition in Valencia where the people spend all year creating these elaborate, gigantic floats depicting the foibles, faults. or just whatever from the year, then periodically starting late in the afternoon until 1am they light them all on fire and have a firework show before each burning. Remember, these are crowded and narrow European streets with a ba-gillion people crowded everywhere, then they make pillars of fire way above 100 feet with fireworks. Oh yeah, there is also a Parade of fire where little kids where dragon suits and run around shooting sparks. It was CRAZY and one of the most insane days of my life.

Here we are blithely eating luch pre-burning. We have no idea what is in store for us...

I love how Katy looks like she is going to take a huge chomp out of this delicious sandwhich, but then takes the bittyest bite ever :)

Michelle just eats like a supermodel. We don't even try to compete.

These are some of the smallest floats for the children's burning. There are a bunch of these throughout the city and at 11pm the children royalty from the parade get to light them.

Parade Time!

Can't help but love these girls, the were my lifeline.

They had lots of people in traditional costume and here is the original marching band! Medieval instruments and all! ..... or something

There was a lot more where this came from, but I got scared for my camera and my life so I didn't take more pictures. We were sitting on the vary front edge and Chelsey's sleeve actually caught fire at one point.

At this point we decided we had to get some delicious Paella as Valencia is the birthplace of the signature Spanish dish. All day as we walked around we saw huge pans simmering in the streets outside the restaurants making the savory small fill the air. It was fantastic and the perfect segwey into the rest of our evening.

This is the float we chose for the child's burning so we could see the big one behind it burn right after. Look how close it is to the buildings! We decided to take goofy pics while waiting :)

I would like to take this opportunity to point out my awesome planning skills. I wore bright yellow on purpose so that my gals would always find me. In the mob of the crowds it came in handy and I became like a mother duck getting us from place to place with us all linked together by hooking a finger onto each others camera straps.

She knows what's comin'...

You can kind of tell here, but they douse it with oil first and have a fire line of some sort to light it from a distance.

Well, lots more crazy happened this night including me angrily telling off some guys who were acting inappropriately, more freaking huge fire, and Katy and I getting locked out at approximately 5am when we arrived home so we had to wake Paco up to let us in. Whew! What a night to remember!