Spain and Beyond

Daily Drena: War Zone

Yesterday and today are gorgeous days outside. We extended our beach vacation by a day, but now have packed up and are heading up the coast. We drove about 6 hours to land in Benicarló, for no reason other than it was a good distance divider before tomorrow’s landing place. As soon as we get here and check in our hotel, we hear that…guess what…it’s another festival! We are starting to feel like festival roadies, just driving from town to town seeking out each festival, although this is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do. We purposely avoided Valencia because this week is their huge Las Fallas Festival with hundreds of thousands of extra people in town partying it up.

Tonight in Benicarló, their Las Fallas events consist of a band with a parade of couples dressed to the nines (no floats this time), and kids on every street have fun with an “awakening of the town” with firecrackers. Each kid has a little wooden box of firecrackers they are carrying around and we wonder how they don’t blow their feet off. These are not the rinky-dink snappers that the U.S. allows. These could really do some damage. We kind of feel like we are in a war zone, it is so loud everywhere.

As we walk around the entire town looking for a place to eat, we keep finding the huge sculptures on display for the festival. They are pretty impressive, made of paper-mache and wood, and on the last night of the festival they apparently set them on fire.

Dinner is hard to find – nothing is open. The one nice hotel restaurant that gives us hope doesn’t open until 8:30 for dinner. It’s only a bit after 6 and we are starved. Just before we head back to the hotel to scrounge PB&J rations, we finally land in a little restaurant/bar with some so-so food.