redemption [valencia, spain]

After spending much of the morning in a painful state of recovery from the night before, I managed to drag myself out of the hotel room and down to the beach. It was about 76 degrees out, bright sun, breeze... you really can't argue about the weather there.

Valencia was in the midst of their Las Fallas celebrations that are centered around their intentionally noisy mascletas, or fireworks, which sound more like a WWII airstrike than a family-fun festival for the kids. What makes it worse is that they're set off randomly throughout the streets in such a way that you instinctively feel the urge to huddle under the nearest solid object in the fetal position.

At the beach I met up with friends and after a couple hours of wholesome beach fun - sunbathing, volleyball, soccer, a quick dip in the Mediterranean - we noticed hundreds of people surrounding a roped-off section of the beach and figured out that we had front row seats to the biggest mascleta show of all. We were wondering why everyone had gathered so early as it was only a little after 5pm and in the U.S. we tend to have fireworks after dark, but the show started at 6 in full daylight and was surprisingly wonderful.

It was extremely loud, but not like the single bursts of our fireworks shows - it was continuously loud... like a rapid-fire machine gun of sorts. The fireworks were less about the color of the flames, but the smoke they left behind, which resembled little white, yellow, and brown popcorn kernels floating against the bright blue sky. Then there were some that sparkled and some that just made the loudest possible bang; there were others that sent out bursts of confetti into the air, and one that exploded and left two flags, one of Valencia and one of Spain, attached to little parachutes to float slowly down into the ocean. It was so different and exciting it was like seeing fireworks for the first time again, and we all felt like little kids smiling and laughing to ourselves at each explosion. Between the sun, the sand, and the show, Valencia had redeemed itself.