After our diplomatic visit with the international ambassador of paella, Cas and I took a nap. The big festivities were due to start pretty late in the evening, so there was no point in wandering the streets before then. When we did get up, we went to the park that used to be a river. The city of Valencia used to have a river running through it, but they had frequent and severe flooding, so much that they diverted the river and turned the old riverbed into a park. To celebrate summer, a temporary amusement park was placed in a portion of the former riverbed, and the Ferris wheel was visible from pretty far away. Being so easy to spot, Cas and I decided to walk to it and get on.
It was a fun ride, and we looped around more times than I am accustomed to at speeds not matched in my experience. To be sure, it wasn’t fast; it just wasn’t as slow as many others. We were placed on a carriage with a Spanish family of four. The two kids and the dad kept standing up and moving around, causing the carriage to swing. That made the ride seem a little perilous... Still, we went on a Ferris wheel in Valencia, and it was pretty cool. Check that off the list.
From there, we stopped for wine and tapas. I will miss that when we get home. You can just walk down a sidewalk until you see an empty table, have a seat and enjoy a quick light meal any time you want. So cool. While we were there, a woman who had a small dog attached that dog’s leash to an empty chair. She went in a shop, and while she was inside, the dog decided to chase after something or someone, and the chair followed the dog for a while. Cue an entire group of complete strangers laughing together. I really wish Cas and I were filming something else at that exact moment so we could have just turned our cameras on the spectacle- the dog should have been captured digitally as well as physically. It turns out they caught the dog and restored the chair. After the dog was contained and we were finished, we got on the city bus and headed to the beach.
When we got there, plenty of bonfires were already blazing. We were about to wander off and find another beverage when we saw a procession of people all dressed in white, walking toward the beach. Cas suggested we turn around and head to wherever they were going. The people in white proceeded to set down the things they were carrying, including many grocery bags and plenty of bonfire building supplies. Some of the men in the group got to work stacking up the wood and small kindling to make the fire while the rest of the group organized the things they had brought with. One member went to work with a white powder- like talcum or something- drawing out a large circle in the sand. The intent was clear; they stayed inside and we stayed outside of the circle. After that, the fire was lit and the people in white went around the circle handing things out in some kind of order. They first handed out little sachet bags that looked like you could steep tea in them. After that, the contents of the bag came one at a time. There were coffee beans, grains of rice, sunflower seeds, some kind of grain and a series of spices. A final round included a woman adding droplets of oil and a few folks tearing flowers and leaves from branches. It was all very confusing, but one of the few words I heard from a person in white sounded like it would translate to prosperous. Maybe that was it.
There was a woman beating a drum that was shaped like an oversized tambourine without the rattling parts, and at some point, members of the group shook small, wet branches at each other, then they went to work shaking them at the assembled crowd. I have since asked our tour director, and she hadn’t see that particular ceremony before, but she did verify that the water was some kind of blessing.
After the branch-shaking, the process seemed to kind of fizzle out. People took their strange, little bags of food and spices away and wandered from the circle. It was about one in the morning at that point, so we decided to call it quits and head back to the bus stop.
I have only been that crowded in any means of public transportation a few times in my life, most notably, my younger brother and I were on the Metro in Washington DC at the exact moment when the people headed to a baseball game were sharing space with the people headed home from work. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was definitely time to go to sleep. My hair smelled like a bonfire, though earlier in the day, it smelled like paella. We’re on a bus ride, now, and thankfully, my hair smells like shampoo.
We’ve packed up and are headed to our last locale of the journey, Barcelona. See you there!
No comments:
Post a Comment