as Fallas de San José, Valencia, 19th – 20th March
These Fallas were incredible!! It’s quite a long journey, about 4 and a half hours on the train but if you get the chance to go to Las Fallas, go! We took a night train and slept on the way which was good as it saved us time. Once there we had a wonder round the city, finding Fallas (models and puppets made by artists out of wood and Styrofoam) in every corner of the city. All day the kids were letting of “petardos” which are small fire crackers which are lit and thrown on the ground to make a large banging sound. After checking in at the hostel we heading to the Plaza del ayuntamiento to see the Mascleta fireworks at 2pm. The Mascleta fireworks are sound fireworks. They were very loud and impressive but the amount of people there was not fun! Everyone was pushing and shoving and we got stuck in the crowd and couldn’t move! After this we went to try and find somewhere to eat which was also a nightmare as everywhere was busy. We ended up eating at 4.30pm, very late to say the least. After that we headed back to the gorgeous hostel and relaxed for a few hours. At about 9.30pm we went out to see the burning of the Fallas. We saw a kid’s one burnt and then went to find one of the big ones to watch. It was just our luck that we chose the one that didn’t burn on time! We had to wait an hour and a half for the firemen to turn up but it was well worth the wait once it burnt. The heat that came from the burning Falla was immense! After it burnt, at about half 2 in the morning, we headed back to the hostel to sleep. Needless to say, we were shattered. After a nice long lie in the next day, we left the hostel and headed out to see the city. It’s a beautiful city, a little small and there’s not a great deal to see but on the whole it was a very nice city. After seeing the Museo Fallero (the Fallas Museum), which was very interesting as we could see lots of the Fallas that were saved from as early as the 1930s, we went to eat and then to the station to wait for our train. We arrived back in Linares at around 6am on Sunday.