Las Fallas, part 3

I've covered a basic introduction to Valencia and the festival, the events, the fires, the fireworks, etc..now on to the food, typical fallero/a outfits, the lights, and the City of Arts and Sciences.



Paella from "Baldo" restaurant in the city center.  Made with chicken and rabbit

Paella (pa ay yah) is a very famous dish in the country of Spain and was created in a village outside of Valencia.  They argue that you haven't had real paella until you've eaten it in Valencia, the home to this yummy dish.  The original paella is cooked with veggies, rice, chicken, and rabbit.  There are many variations of it; seafood, veggie, black paella (made with squid ink), and fideau (made with noodles instead of rice).  We knew we had to taste this dish since we were only visiting for a few days.  I think we ended up eating it three or four times.  Once in a restaurant and the rest on the streets.  Since Las Fallas is a community event, what better than to cook huge pots of paella to bring everyone together?



Different types of paella served to go in the streets

The waiter bringing out Fideau (with noodles) which is the type we ate

Black paella.  Tinted from squid ink

yum

Next to paella, there was a frenzy of fried goodies stands EVERYWHERE! Churros for days, fried pumpkin pastries, and many more.  This part of the festival reminded me of the 4th of July.  I tried the pumpkin pastries because I love things all pumpkin but either mine were bad or they aren't really pumpkin because I didn't taste it :(


pumpkin buñuelos

The drink of choice for Valencianos is horchata, so of course I tried that too.  I loved horchata when I lived in Costa Rica.  It was amazing.  Turns out that in the Latin American countries, they make it out of rice milk and cinnamon.  In Valencia, it's made out of "chufas" which are tigernuts.  The taste was different, I wasn't too fond of it.  I'll stick with the Latin American version :)


A famous Horchata shop

Fartons are the pastries on the right.  It's typical to dip them into your horchata, just like they dip their churros in thick melted chocolate.

There were also hundreds of markets set up all around the city too.  Selling rings, bandanas, junk, candy, toys, firecrackers, you name it.  I'm guessing these stands were set up for the tourists because the locals were all busy doing their Falla duties and marching around in their princess outfits :)



The first Falla girl I saw

These outfits cost a lot of money according to the locals.  They are made of silk and gold.  They were very nice and I'm sure every Valencian girl wants to be a Fallera to wear these dresses and feel like a princess

The hair do...

 


Men dress up too

The babies on their way to offer the flowers

 


Adorable

If you are still following this super long post about Valencia then cool..because this is my favorite part :) the lights!  These lights were in an international neighborhood called Ruzafa.  They were amazing and played music while giving off a light show every thirty minutes or so.  They were playing some Black Eyed Peas from what I heard.

 


This year they honored the London Tower

 


These are the past light displays

 


I loved walking through the street.  It felt as if I was in Disneyworld or something special.

This weekend was non-stop touring...Tara and I took some time to escape the Falla festival to visit the famous City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.  It was well worth the 20 minute walk alongside a pretty park to reach the super modern architecture.  The "City" consists of museums and an oceanographic park.  We didn't pay to enter to anything because we didn't have much time and the views from the outside were cool enough.

 


A park in the shape of a man laying down..with slides and places to climb all over..looks fun!

 

 


Simple and to the point...

The view from the bridge

What an eventful and amazing weekend in Valencia. Maybe I will be returning one day when it's a little warmer so I can enjoy the beach (the city sits on the Mediterranean). Until then, I think I have enough memories to last :)