Ayr/Glasgow, Scotland - Day 1

On Friday we caught one of the last British Airways flights before the weekend strike direct from Madrid to London. For the most part, it was a smooth flight save for the tons of English teenagers running everywhere on the plane and snapping photos at every chance. Landing over London as it was lit up at night was a really cool experience not ruined by the typical British rainy weather. From Heathrow, we caught a bus to the bus station where we picked up an overnight bus from London to Glasgow. The bus experience in total can be summed up with thank god we're young because I would never have tolerated that otherwise. In the seat in front of us was a baby that cried strong until 3 am. Needless to say, we didn't get too much sleep that night but pressed on as Scotland awaited. We caught another bus to a town outside of Glasgow called Ayr in the county/province/region of Ayrshire, famous for the its Scottish poet Robert Burns, "Scotland's favorite son". He wrote a poem called "Scots Wae Hae" that served as an unofficial national anthem for many years. We met up with a friend of ours there and headed back to Glasgow after settling into a nice and cozy little hotel in Ayr. The trip back to Glasgow was better because we were finally in a car with legroom and the sun was shining so we could actually take in the wonderful scenery of the Scottish countryside. Glasgow was cold and windy but surprisingly clean. The architecture is also very static as compared to other cities we've visited in Europe. There aren't a lot of curvy buildings except for the occasional dome on top of a building and the town center seems to be laid on straight lines instead of the typical winding curvy roads of mainland Europe. We walked around the center for a few hours, visited a free art museum, and headed back to Ayr. Glasgow will be returned to on Thursday at the conclusion of our drive through the highlands. In Ayr, we visited the famous bridge of Robert Burns' poem "Tam o' Shanter" where a man escapes the clutches of a witch by crossing a bridge over running water but not before the witch manages to rip the tail off of his horse. We visited a graveyard that had a tomb bolted to the ground because underneath was a witch and by bolting her in, they were hoping she wouldn't come out and get anyone. As I noticed the houses directly next to the cemetery, I wondered how many parents brought misbehaving children into the graveyard and threatened to set the witch lose if the children didn't stop misbehaving. If none, then some should try it because it would work like a charm. We spent the evening meeting some more local folks that are friends of our friend and called it an evening as our lack of sleep on the bus trip finally caught up with us. Hopefully today will be a day in which we can understand Scottish English easier than Spanish.

 

    

     

    

     

The bridge of Tam o' Shanter just after sunset, spooky! 

Share

Las Fallas - Valencia, Spain

            A long weekend in Valencia was just in order after having a few weeks of working with those demon children at school so we picked up the newly arrived Audrey and headed on down to Valencia for a festival known as Las Fallas. The history of the Fallas festival is linked by some to the catholic Saint Joseph, the same saint who is declared to be the saint of all fathers so March 19 is Father’s Day in Spain. On this day in Valencia, they burn all of the Fallas(statues) that they have built during the previous year. Some people think the tradition started when the artisans of the Middle Ages cleaned out their “trash” so to speak and burned it to celebrate the arrival of the Spring Equinox, which is only two days later. Some of the carpenters of the day used planks of wood called parots to hold their candles, and since they were no longer necessary, a mass burning ceremony celebrated the arrival of Spring. The theme this year was love and some of the fallas are interesting depictions of this theme. There is usually an attempt by many to create artwork that is quite satirical of the theme and people who put themselves in a position to be satirized. 

     The pictures are only of a few of our favorite fallas but there can over hundreds of fallas built for the festival. A lot of the people will bild baby fallas for the kids to have something to enjoy. Two things are necessary for visiting Valencia during the fallas celebration, patience and earplugs. Part of the festival is an event called “La despertá”, which is the wake up call. This wake up call includes a marching band winding through the streets at 8 a.m. playing loud music. Later in the day at 2 p.m. is “La mascletá”, a ceremonial firework show in the Plaça de l’Ajuntament. These fireworks go on for about ten minutes and we’ve been told that day after day, they try to break the previous day’s decibel count of loudness. We spent the rest of the time just wandering through the streets of Valencia finding the various fallas and taking man pictures. At the beach, we managed to find a wonderful paella restaurant that served us some of the best paella we’ve had so far in Valencia. But to be fair, some of the best paella was probably being cooked in the streets.

     As we were walking through the different neighborhoods, we found many streets that were cut off and in the middle of the street was a large white tent, usually near the falla. Basically, the tent was put up by the falleros, the people who build the fallas, and used for late night music, dancing, and partying. Outside of the tent were tons of people building fires and cooking fresh paella in the special pans right in the middle of the street. It is a tad unusual to see at first but when you realize that they don’t have what we are accustomed to in the sense of houses and lots of the space, the street really is the only place they can do this. Our friends there were lucky enough to get us all invited to a fallero party near the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias. There is a picture of us before going in and watching Tom, a friend from Madrid, have too many red bulls and crash from lack of sleep. It was fun and we’ve been told that being invited is sort of a privilege because the fallero societies are some what hard to get into and enjoy their close comradeship. 

     On the 19^th of March, the fallas are all burned and all of the neighborhoods who participate in the competition take flowers to the Square of the Virgin in order to complete the fallas there. This would explain the head on the wooden planks picture. The burning is called “La crema”, the cream, and it involves a ton of firefighters from all over southern Spain dousing buildings with water so they don’t melt or catch fire as the fallas burn. The large falla constructed by the local gov’t is burned last in the Plaza where the daily fireworks are held. Maybe we will go back next year to see that part of the celebration. Enjoy the pictures!

Share