Las Fallas!

Brace yourself for Spanish Culture. Ready Lift Off! Yesterday (Monday) I went to Las Fallas in Valencia. It was the craziest thing I have seen in Spain yet. Let's just get right into with a brief explanation of it. So basically Valencia is on the coast of Spain. I took about a 5 hour bus ride to get there. Check it out on the map.
Las Fallas means "Burning." So the festival is focused on fire. So throughout the year the locals construct Fallas. They are massive structures celebrating or mocking various aspects of culture. Here is a Falla of a pirate.

So the festival goes for three days. There are lots of fireworks and on the last night, everything except the first place Fallas gets burned. This is the night I was there.If you want to know more about the event check this out: LEARN MORE. But lets move onto the goods.
So we got there and checked out the Fallas. We then ate some paella and walked the streets. These were not ordinary streets, these were streets full of kids to grandparents. And everyone was setting off fireworks. Big fireworks. As Ruby described it "it was like a war-zone." The first one we saw burn was at 10PM. They don't burn the big ones till later, but here is the first firework shot up to start the burning of the little Falla.
Then the Falla begins to burn. Here it goes

It's small so the fire is not that big. After the little Falla burned we chilled out and then moved to a square to watch a big one burn. Before we got there we all bought bandannas to wear over our faces so we didn't breathe the smoke. Here is the Falla.


And this is it burning behind us. Yes, that fire is what once was that amazing structure. Those bandannas were so clutch. The smoke is incredibly dense, I probably still have ash in my air. They also begin to put it out right after it goes up, so we were getting indirect water blasts from the firemen as well. After that we booked it to the super crowded town square to see the second place Falla burn. Here it is in it's pre flame glory. It was about 100 feet tall.
Before it burned, all the lights in the plaza went out and there was this huge fireworks display. It was so loud yet so exciting, and completely dwarfed every fireworks display I have seen before it. Sorry July 4th. Check out these fireworks.
Oh man after the fireworks, including a insanse Gran Finale, good old Neptune head just blew up and the whole thing went up in flames. Everyone was going nuts screaming and throwing firecrackers everywhere. It was a "blast!" I was really fire away but here is a picture of the Greek God meeting a very un-wet demise.
Stay tuned, I will try to post tomorrow aboutthe super exciting bullfight I went to on Sunday. Lots of posts coming. Stay tuned. Hasta Luego