Lara's Blog

Monday 25 September 2006

sunshine!

it was sunny today! yay! so we saw a few more sights: the castell de montjuic on top of the hill (great view of barcelona, wow its a massive city); parc de la ciutedella (ok i can´t remember how to spell it); the gothic quarter; paella (ok not so much a sight... yum though!); parade of giants

but last night... wow....

so we were thiiinking of going on a pub crawl, undecided though. but first we thought we´d see the fire run. this is a parade that takes place every year at this time in order to ward off the plague. the little brochure we had had a warning for the parade, saying if you want to dance with the devils then you need to wear protective clothing, including masks and ski goggles... with this in mind we went in singlet tops with our long hair out.... it was raining, so we stood in a shop alcove for protection. as the parade was approaching by about 930pm we could hear loud BANGS and rumbling. they appeared in teh distance as sparks flying amongst the crowd. then they were upon us! huge groups of people, many dressed as devils with pitch forks BANG loudly and that spray fireworks into the crowd dancing around, followed by bands of drummers playing intensely. we were in our little alcove... which meant there was no where to run and hide!!!!! we were so scared!!!!! we put our umbrella up to help shield our arms. the sparks were flying right at us! then there were the demons, big dinosaurs, pigs, dragons, (and a donkey, random), bulls that would spray a huge amount of fireworks out of them and would careen around into the crowds. There was lots of smoke, very loud noise, and eery drumming. and we were trapped! really got the adrenalin going! after a while the parade thinned out a bit, so we took the chance to run across it to get into a side street so we could make a getaway if we wanted. lucky we did because one of the animals got waaaaay too close for comfort to our alcove! we ended up staying at the parade for over an hour and a half, and it was still going! and pouring with rain by this stage.
i´m not very eloquent with my writing so not sure if i can express it properly, but it was the craziest and most exciting thing! many of the locals, including kids, dressed in long sleeves, hoods, masks, hats and would run through the flames with the devils. couldn´t believe the bravery/stupidity!

oh yeah and we never made it to the pubcrawl. definitelyno regrets about that one!
stiff drink after the fire run!

i highly recommend barcelona to anyone thinking of coming here soon, there are sights, great shopping, and an incredible night life. and if you can come during this festival next year, which started on friday and finishes today, you wont regret it! i think its called festival merce or somethign like that...

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