Las Fallas in Valencia

I signed up last week (and payed 28 euros) to ride the bus with my residence hall to Valencia and back last Saturday.  We left at about 1:15 in the afternoon and rode for about 2 1/2 hours until we ate lunch at a truck stop on the side of the highway.  They provided us with some yummy food-- apple and orange juice, a water bottle, cold pasta with pesto, and focaccia with brie and leeks.  We sat in the grass and I took a couple pictures of some funny-looking bugs.

Next, we rode another hour and a half to Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences.  It's a futuristic/modern museum campus with architecturally innovative buildings by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela.  We had about an hour and a half to wander around-- so I took a bunch of pictures, drank an horchata, watched the sunset, and looked at an outdoor photography exhibit.

At the photography exhibit, there was a picture of people dressed up as Star Wars storm troopers!  "May 2005.  Unconditional Star Wars fans meet at the City of Arts and Sciences as an ideal backdrop to let their galactic imaginations run wild."  Here's me and a friend in front of it.

And the sign for the horchata stand.

We got back on the bus for a 10 minute ride through tons of traffic and got off the bus more or less in the center of the city.  Craziness ensued!  The whole experience felt like the 4th of July, but without USA spirit.  The streets were totally trashed and people were lighting firecrackers and noisemakers everywhere.  At this point, it was about 9pm.

Las Fallas is a cultural tradition of Valencia, even though it has turned into a massive tourist attraction (you will see pictures of hoards of people below).  It's a celebration of Saint Joseph (patron saint of carpenters), but was thought to have originated with carpenters who accumulated their garbage on the street and burned it to celebrate the coming of spring.  Then the tradition changed-- the pile of garbage was given clothing to look like an identifiable person.  And of course this evolved to well-known figures and parodies.  The celebrations start a couple weeks leading to the night of the burning of Las Fallas.  There are parades, contests, and lots of food.  On the burning night, there's a big parade (which we missed) and each falla is lit on fire to burn around midnight.  According to wikipedia, the fallas are made of polystyrene (a type of plastic) and cork.

Quick video of people setting off noisemakers.

There was a lot of food.  I was particularly attracted to the churros stands.

And some more photos of the Fallas and general ambiance

This is the Falla that we watched burn at 12:30am.  So pay close attention to what it looks like before!

And the burning begins!

And of course I have the video to go with all these burning pictures just in case the photos didn't give you the right idea.  (Be sure to watch it in HD!)

What one of the Fallas looked like after burning:

We met at the bus at 1:30 in the morning, didn't leave until 2, and got back to Barcelona around 6:30am.  What a night!