It seems every time we go to a city where we struggle with the language, that city turns on some spectacular festival, carnival or street parade to commemorate something that we're completely unable to decipher. It happened in Barcelona, it happened in Athens, and on our recent visit to orange-capital Valencia, halfway down the East coast of Spain, it happened again!
After jetting in bargain-style (1p per person each way!*) from London, we landed late on Friday night at Valencia's shiny new airport. This town has its public transport sorted too, with a metro train waiting for us down a set of escalators just beyond Customs. Are you paying attention, Melbourne? Weirdly, the town seemed pretty dead - we thought that at 10pm-ish, the streets would be full of Spaniards getting out for some pre-dinner drinks, before sitting down for dinner at about half-midnight. You know, those crazy Spanish and their late evening meals! It seemed Valencia, despite being Spain's third-largest city, is actually quite provincial. In fact, we struggled to even find a restaurant that was open at all - and when we did, it seemed to be full of fellow tourists. Weirder still, due to a major language barrier with our waitress, we ended up communicating in French! A very strange introduction to a Spanish town!
The next day we wandered in standard semi-aimless tourist fashion, quickly coming across the Plaza de la Virgen, overlooked by the handily-named Basilica de la Virgen de los Desamparados (Basilica of Our lady of the Defenceless/Homeless/Abandoned Ones).
Then, all of a sudden, while we were stopped for a coffee, all hell broke loose. The bells of the Basilica began ringing out and quickly all the other churches in town joined in, occasionally punctuated with what sounded like cannon fire. Then, from every corner of the town, marching bands started converging on our location!
The festivities continued all day, including late-night parades featuring pretty horsies.
On the Sunday we returned to the Plaza de la Virgen for a quieter coffee, only to find troupes of flamenco dancers arriving to dance on a big stage. We did not (and still don't!) have any idea what it was all in aid of, but we were very pleased to be spectators!
By now, we realised that the quiet Friday night was just the locals' way of charging up their energy for a massive weekend!
(* plus booking fees, fuel surcharges and taxes bringing it up to 12.49 per person each way...)
1 comment:
Sounds like great fun! But we still don't seem to have email contact, Johnny. Your email has not arrived.
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