Festival! Día de Valencia!

9 Oct 2011

Unbeknownst to me, today was an important holiday here in Alicante. It's Día de Valencia or Valencia Day. The holiday celebrates the autonomous community of Valencia--which comprises Valencia, Alicante, and Castellón. This meant that there were a lot of things going on that were out of the ordinary.

Before we found out that today was Valencia Day, we decided to head out in search of churros con chocolate. I'm not going to lie. I'm pretty sure that churros con chocolate are probably one of my most favorite things about Spain. However, churros here in Spain aren't like those that you might find in the States. They don't have sugar on them--unless you add it--which frankly-speaking is actually too much sweetness. The chocolate is much thicker than the hot chocolate you get in the States--more like the consistency of hot pudding. In short, churros con chocolate is basically Heaven on Earth. However, here in Alicante, most places don't serve them except for on the weekends or just for breakfast. I personally think they're good anytime.

Chocolate, yum!

After finishing our churros con chocolate, we decided to continue on to Lucentum--the Roman ruins located outside of the city. However, as we were walking up the Rambla, we passed the Fogueres Museum and there were all sorts of fogueres (paper-mache figures) outside of the museum. Fogueres is a special holiday in Alicante. It takes place in June, and people from all over the city make fogueres. Sometimes these paper-mache figures make fun of public figures and sometimes they commemorate something special in the city. However, every year, people vote on two of them to save. The rest are burned as part of the festival. I haven't seen this museum open often, but it holds the two fogueres that are saved each year, and we were invited to come in.

These fogueres were outside of the museum

I think that we should find costumes to wear for the festival!

The museum was really neat! There were some really weird fogueres and some really beautiful ones! One of my favorites had a copy of the statue of Gabriel Miró that is in my favorites. The one to the left was also really neat. If you look at the bottom by her fin you can see that it has the design of the explanada on it!

After visiting the museum, we journeyed to La Albufereta. I've been hearing for weeks about the fact that there are Roman ruins near the school. I thought maybe my teachers were exaggerating a little bit and that they were somewhere in the suburb. But when they said near the school, they meant it! The ruins are basically behind them!

Since today was a holiday, we got free entry into the ruins of Lucentum. The ruins were pretty neat! We could see where the gate to the city once was as well as where the governmental buildings were. One of the most interesting parts were the graves taht were found in the city. Apparently, the city was largely abandoned by the Romans. In later periods, Muslims (and one Christian) were given burial rights over the ruins of the city. Of course, my favorite part of the ruins was the mosaics. There were only two, but they were still beautiful in their simplicity.

 <--This was a tower that had a bull engraved into one of the stones.

 This was one of the mosaics! SQUEE! -->