Bucket List

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Well! Since we arrived in Spain over 6 weeks ago, this is the first afternoon of solid cloud we have seen, and very windy with it. So instead of being lazy and concentrating on doing nothing in the sun, an opportunity to start a blog post.

I loved the film “The Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, 

and fully get the idea of listing things and challenges to do, or to see or to experience, and then ticking them off the list, bluntly before you “Kick the Bucket”! 

Don’t worry – I will be around for a while yet! 

Personally, and in my opinion, setting goals in life and career can only bring frustration and disappointment when not achieved or only partly achieved. And unfortunately with the good things come the bad things – some unexpected, but many inevitable in the course of life.

But at the same time I am very lucky that life has resulted in me being able to say that! 

If I now write a retrospective list of things that I have done, or seen or experienced, since just the start of the 21^st Century, in my personal world and sometimes as a result of my job, often shared with Gail, Kate and Paul, and family and friends, my so-called “Bucket List” is actually quite long, and having ticked them off very satisfying. Things that money can’t buy such as seeing our daughter, Kate, graduating from University and then successfully developing a successful career; meeting and then marrying a good man in Paul, and together making a happy home together into which our granddaughter Amelia arrived in 2012, is a series of "items" which would have to be at the top of the list. 

I would also have to follow with a list of people who I met through work, many of whom became good friends, and provided a long string of happy and memorable events, including weddings, births, christenings etc.

Then we have had great holidays - in USA (including Hawaii), Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ireland, Barbados, France, Italy, Spain, not forgetting many good breaks in the UK; work trips - many more than once, to South Korea, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Sweden, Slovenia, Finland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria. From such holidays and visits, highlights of these could be additions to the Bucket List – seeing the Barrier Reef, flying over a volcano in Hawaii, looking towards North Korea over the border, visiting the Grand Canyon, seeing the Northern Lights . . .

And what about. . .? That’s the point of this post. I think if I had written a Bucket List, many of the above and many other things would not have been there. And then just last week we experienced another unexpected event here in Spain, to add to the retrospective Bucket List. 

But that’s another blog post to come – “Fallas 2014”.

Falles – March 18, 2014, Valencia

If I had a Bucket List, the Valencia Falles (Fallas in Spanish) would not have been on it! But only because before we actually arrived in Spain we had never heard of it! Having experienced it, the Falles are definitely on my retrospective Bucket List. We knew that as with other countries, in the spring, Spain have festivals and carnivals, and we took a look on the internet to see if anything was going on locally. We found out that Oliva which is a town in the Valencia region a few kilometres from where we were staying in March 2014, celebrate Falles. During a visit to Denia, another nearby town, we came across a huge sculpture in a side street which was clearly going to be the centre piece of an important local event.

Early the next day, I was telling some Dutch neighbours about this, and they told me that a crowd of Dutch and Germans had recently been to Valencia on a coach trip, and if we wanted to experience the Falles we really should go to Valencia. The book they loaned us confirmed that this was clearly a big event. Falles refers to both the celebration and the monuments created during the traditional celebration commemoration of Saint Joseph.

As we had already thought about an overnight stay in a Valencian hotel to see the sights, we booked a hotel for the following Monday and Tuesday nights which were the last nights of Falles 2014 in Valencia. The Sat Nav took us as far as the barricades blocking off the city centre where our hotel was! We tried navigating another route, but after 30 minutes and a lot of stress in heavy Spanish city traffic, as we only appeared to be 1 kilometre from the hotel by car, and even less if we were to walk, we drove into the nearest multi-storey underground parking, and squeezed into one of the last remaining, and the narrowest space. It must have been narrow because someone managed to put a nice scrape on the wheel arch while we were there! Anyway, we decided to leave the case in the car and get our bearings on the surface so to speak. Google Maps gave us a route which looked reasonably direct, and only 10 minutes' walk, so after a coffee we picked up the overnight case from the car and set off.

Following the direct route, we were just a few hundred metres from our hotel when our route was completely blocked approaching a large square by thousands of people, all close together, clearly waiting for something to happen. We decided to walk back 50 metres then run parallel to the recommended route, and finally got to our hotel. The welcome was good, and the room very good. The receptionist had given us a timetable of events, and it was clear from this, that all the people who had "blocked" our route were waiting for the Mascletà, whatever that might be. At 2 pm, while still getting ready to leave the room, we heard the Mascletà with some very loud firework explosions. On entering the street the air was filled with smoke, and people leaving the area after the Mascletà. We were in the street the following day to witness this daily event, so more on this later. . .

We started to wander, and found a bar in a side street to enjoy the sun and atmosphere from one of the outside tables. What we did not know until after we had been was that the two days we had picked were the only days when the festivity includes a flower offering to Our Lady of the Forsaken, which has taken place since 1945. Two full afternoons are dedicated to the parades composed of all the Fallas Commissions, headed by the Fallas Queens and their Courts of Honour followed by standard bearers and marching bands in a ceremony in which traditional costumes and flower bouquets are the major attractions.
We gradually realised from the barriers on the main street, the build-up of people, and from the Fallas schedule that the daily procession would pass in the main road near our bar. So we crossed the road to a vantage point, and waited for the start of the procession at 4. 




Of course we had no idea that the start of the procession was some 30 minutes away – but never mind, when it arrived it was worth waiting for & we watched the Falleras, 














Falleros and quite often their babies and children pass in their elaborate traditional colourful costumes.
       

The ladies (Falleras) each carried a posy of white or red flowers, the purpose of which we only found out later.

There were even groups of falleras pushing buggies as if they might belong to a mum's group – we will never know! 









Probably the most interesting realisation was that each section of the procession was from a different district (or barrio as we later discovered) and people watching recognised and clapped people they knew.

Each "Barrio" had its own band playing traditional music. It was quite something.

After a couple of hours of this, as fascinating as it was, like a lot of things, interest was waning. . . Gail was keen to see the end of the procession, but with hindsight persuading her to leave was a good idea – it went on until midnight – another 6 hours! So we returned to the hotel to tidy up for dinner, and a wander of the area around the Ayuntamiento (the main square). The area was lively, with the usual street sellers selling balloons and the latest plastic light up stuff from China.

I had left the schedule in the hotel but had the street map, so headed towards the area where the night's fireworks would take place. We knew we were in the right area by the crowds of people, and confirmed when the local police moved everyone from a seating area to the road, but we were still in a good position. Just as an aside isn't it curious how you hear people – everywhere - complaining they have people in front of them, when the fireworks are in the sky?. . . It was way past our bed-time at 1 in the morning, and on our feet for many hours, when the fireworks finally started – and they were worth waiting for. The Spanish economy may be in the shit, but that's not going to stop them throwing a great party! At the same time, there are clearly a lot of Spanish and foreign tourists brought to Valencia by the organisation and spectacular events.

The following morning, we took an early lunch at a bar next to the hotel,

and then headed to where the previous day's procession had ended up, and the procession due later that day would also head for – Valencia Cathedral. In the square beside this cathedral was a massive figure of the Virgen de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Forsaken), with the flowers that had been brought to the square decorating the figure. 

It was not complete, and we assumed the final day of processions would make this complete.

We did not even attempt to see this happening, as it was clear this would be a busy area, but we saw on the local TV channel later in the week that this was the case, and the falleras were very emotional as they delivered their flowers.

It was getting near the time for the daily Mascletà at the Ayuntamiento (the main city square). 

As we got closer it was clear we could get nowhere near as all the side streets leading to the area were jammed packed with people, as they had been the previous day approaching our hotel. So we waited patiently and at 2 it started. I can only describe it as a firecracker display in broad daylight! Incredibly noisy bangs and explosions, and lots of smoke even though we could not see the square. It went on for 10 minutes, and at the end there was massive clapping and cheering at street level and from all of the office and building windows around us. Our ears were ringing with the effect of the bangs.
There are much better videos than mine on YouTube but here it is anyway:

Clip edited to 30 Seconds

Full 100 second clip

Later in the day we found our way to the square and could see that the firecrackers had been set off in a massive cage in the centre of the square.
(Click here to see cage but this is not my photo!)

The rest of the second day we just spent wandering, and enjoying the atmosphere.

As we walked we had glimpses of the huge figurines made of papier-mâché similar to those we had first seen in Denia the previous week.

With a city the size of Valencia it seemed that every corner you turned you saw such a figurine or group of figurines. 

These were often comic in style and often portray caricatures of local politicians, and celebrities like footballers and TV personalities. There are different categories in this with a competition going on, the winners being spared from being burnt on the night of 19 March, St Joseph's Day. 

 


 


There was a massive statue in the Ayuntamento which was difficult to imagine was papier-mâché.This was one of the statues that ended up being burnt. 

We didn't stay to see this part of the celebrations, but we saw it on local TV the following day. Flames were higher than the buildings around the square, and people were crying with emotion. Apparently the whole night sky lights up with flame as all the months of hard work goes up in flames. . .
Statues on Fire - Original available at: http://www.travelsages.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/DSC_3051.jpg

In conclusion, and looking back some months now, it was a really good few days. 

Although this is a celebration that has been going on for many years, it is something we had never heard of before. We are already wondering how we can plan to be there again in 2015.