we didn't start the fire

This weekend was spent enjoying Spain's biggest pyro-holiday: Las Fallas in Valencia. It is a chance for every fire-loving fellow to meddle with anything and everything fire related until their hearts are content and every desire satisfied. The entire city was rigged with lines and lines of explosives and the constantly exploding fire crackers kept us on our toes. The huge fallas (wood framing covered with paper mache and then painted to resemble Disney's Toony Town architecture) were set up on every corner.

This holiday includes parades of traditional Valencian music and dress, bull fights, delicious sweets sold from booths, millions of people crowding the streets, fire crackers, and more. However, the concluding event trumps them all: the torching of all of"las fallas" at midnight.

Naturally, with this kind of environment we couldn't help but envision ourselves as part of a massive social revolution, and act accordingly all day with the sweet tunes of Billy Joel to accompany us.

The streets literally full of fire crackers.

Delicous bonuelos

traditional dress and dance of Valencia.

the burning of our falla

our "revolution faces"

what a day.

do it for aslan!

This past weekend we went on a whirlwind tour of the North and got to sample a little of what the northern cities of Spain have to offer. They have to offer a lot indeed, and the following pictures are just a sampling of a longer, more detailed post to come...everybody's favorite lion (Aslan) was up in Leon for the weekend and we got to meet him.

verde que te quiero verde!! we were so so happy to see some greenery.

we followed the famous "camino de santiago" the entire way. it is a 400+ mile trail starting from France and ending at the church in Santiago. apparently after you complete it you get 1/3 of your sins absolved. i'm all over that!

bullfighter

I have officially danced with a bull-fighter.
I have officially refused a kiss from a bull-fighter.
I have officially been accused of "liking girls" by a bull-fighter.

holla!
here is a photo the paparazzi snagged

some of the girls in the program and i went to a Madrileno discoteca hot-spot this past weekend, not knowing what we would get our selves into. Turns out, Spanish hombres love American gals, and we were fighting them off at every turn. We were lucky to get out alive. A compilation of the night's best quotes:

"you are the most beautiful girl of the night, and i am not ugly"
"I heard them saying...and they not good. I think they do bad."
"My friend he is going to find the ugliest man in here and bring him here...what do you think of my monster?"
"are you an angel?"

all in all, it was quite a night for the books.

downpour & the security woman

today as we were walking to the museo de casa de lope de vega there was a torrential downpour as i've never quite experienced before. there was also a security woman who took her job more seriously than any other i've ever encountered.

my cousins and i have always been more than a little obsessed with rain. perhaps it is due to the fact that it rain is a scarce and rare commodity in the utah desert, or because the smell of wet pavement is a cure for the nearly any aliment; whatever the reason, rain just gives a feeling of majesty and potency to everything.

today was no exception. walking through the streets of Madrid with the palacio de comunicacion on my left and parque de retiro to my right, and the rain falling in sheets, I couldn't have been happier. my four-dollar umbrella from Target decided to go on the fritz with the wires bending to the will of the wind, so i finally decided to put it away, using my scarf as the only protection against the elements. by the time we arrived at the museum, i was soaked through. the security woman was quite intense, acting as if we were entering a high-security area rather being the only visitors to a free to the public museum. She told us all multiple times that we were to put our "paraguas" in THAT corner, no we could not take pictures, no there was no place to put our coats, yes all our backpacks were to be taken off.

the museum was a replication of the house of the famous Spanish playwright, Lope de Vega, as it was in the middle of Spain's Golden Age. it was everything you would imagine it to be; dark wood, canopy beds, tapestries etc... My favorite room was the study, where the old man himself would sit and write his masterpieces. The walls were lined with ancient books and maps.

after our tour we were walking down the stairs and the security woman ran up the stairs to follow us back down. once we reached the bottom, she told me "no entendeis espanol muy bien, porque os dije a esperar..." what? rude. we left the museum in a hurry with her angry glare boring holes in our backs as we disappeared through the door.