Mas Espana

Our last few days in Madrid...

Going to the third big art museum in Madrid, the Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Retiro Park

Frisbee on rollerblades

Couldn't get enough churros

Riding the Teleferico

Loved this.

Madrid has the largest open air market in Europe.

 We had the best burger ever!

Fiesta on Fire

We took a trip down to the east coast of Spain, to Valencia, for the Las Fallas festival. Las Fallas is an annual fiesta that lasts 20 days and over 3 million people attend. Every neighborhood and some businesses each build their own Falla, there were hundreds of them. They are on display with lots of celebrations for 20 days and on the last night they are all burned down.

A falla. They were so detailed, there was something to see on every side of them.

Waiting for the firework show.

I did not take this picture, but here is the town square we were standing in.

After the big city's firework show, each of the neighborhoods and businesses had a firework show at their falla. Then there were more firework shows when the burning started. And people everywhere were constantly lighting their own fireworks. It really sounded like you were in a war zone. 

These weren't like any fireworks I have seen before, they were more like bombs. You could feel the force of them and they were sooo loud! Every time we plugged our ears, a Spainard would come yell at us to open our mouths wide. The sound was loud enough to blow out your ear drums.

 There were tons of parades going on.

We watched a parade of fire, "cabalgata del fuego".

Some of these larger fallas cost 300,000 euros. It was hard for me to believe they were going to burn them all down at midnight.

And if there wasn't enough to burn, each falla had an associated smaller falla next to it, for the kids. 

Most of the fallas were comical. The lady in the bottom left sitting on a couch is getting punched by a glove labeled "Menopausia"

Waiting for the burning to start.

And of course, there is another firework show when the burning starts.

There were firemen at every burning. You can see them trying to control the fire with hoses.

Firemen spraying the buildings.

Video of a falla burning.

It was an incredible day that I will never forget. We didn't get home until 7 am but it was so worth it. Taylor and I are definitely going to go back again one year.