Valencia

We ended our fantastic vacation with 5 days in Valencia. The first day Jarom arrived in Spain on his mission he was in Valencia and it just so happened to be during Las Fallas. This is a festival that occurs just once a year. It is quite unique. During the many months before the festival, paper/cardboard sculptures ("fallas") are made. We saw some that were as large as 6 stories high! They are usually satirical and some of them are a little risque.

The fallas above won first prize. It was neat but I liked a few others better than this one. The crowd surrounding this one was huge! You had to pay 5 euros to get closer. We took pictures from here and used our 5 euros to buy candy instead!

The close up of the lady in this fallas made me laugh. I feel like she looks FAR too often! It made me think of my upcoming flight from Holland to the US...alone with 2 boys...I'm sure I'll more resemble the baby in this fallas after that flight. Pray for me please.

Many people wear the bandanas that you can see us wearing in some pictures. They have parades and everyone from the little babies to the elderly get all decked out in their Spanish clothes and walk the streets.

The fallas are set up all throughout the city of Valencia and the roads surrounding the fallas are closed off to automobiles. We did quite a bit of walking trying to see as many fallas as we could. It got quite tiring but was pretty exciting each time we found one. The fallas above is the Phantom of the Opera...very cool.

On this trip Glade discovered pigeons. He figured out that if he threw his food on the ground they would come very close and eat it. He found this hilarious! In fact his whole Happy Meal ended up on the ground and the pigeons were practically choking on the whole chicken nuggets!

On the last day of the festival there are parades and incredible fireworks...so much that your ears ring afterwards. Around 10 pm they burn the small fallas and then starting at midnight they start to burn the larger ones. Just imagine a fire five stories high. Started on purpose! During the burnings there are even more fireworks going off. I thought it was interesting that they give their small children fireworks to set off. I've always been kind of a baby when it comes to lighting fireworks myself....it scares me and I don't like to get too close. These little 3 year olds (no joke...3 years old) were letting off fireworks. Their parents give them a rope that is lit on one end and the kids just pass the burning rope around to light their fireworks. We saw kids blowing up coke cans and whatever else they could find in the street. It was pretty amusing. One brave (yet sort of unintelligent) boy was lighting fireworks and then putting his foot on top of them until they went off. Luckily he only complained that it hurt once. :)

Poor Bush!

We also enjoyed seeing a few old cathedrals and really neat buildings. One of them is in the background of the picture above. Within three minutes of entering this quiet sacred cathedral, Glade started screaming hysterically. As soon as he was outside on the grass chasing pigeons, he was just fine. He obviously found the bugs on the ground more interesting than the cathedrals.

I really enjoyed our days in Valencia but boy was I tired when we were done. We were SO ready to come home and in fact sort of wished we had booked a flight a day or so earlier. 10 days was a long vacation away from Jimmy. We missed that little guy so much! And of course a vacation isn't complete without a little M.I.C.K.E.Y...M.O.U.S.E. And a post isn't complete without a cute video.