Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Spanish holidays...

The Spanish love them some vacations! Seriously, these people find just about any reason to celebrate life and being Spanish. I personally have no problem with that because that means more days off for me!! Last week was an extremely short week. Starts off with Monday being Día de Cervantes (because it was his birthday) so Alcalá was all about getting their party on! They dedicated 2 weeks specifically to these festivities but Monday was the day to be in Alcalá. The medieval fair was kicking and bringing TONS of people out into the streets to enjoy a bit of Middle Age fun. This is what it looked like:



Crazy huh? That’s not even the craziest thing though! They had some intense food for sale at different sidewalk shops. For example, they had my host mom’s favorite:


DEEELICIOUS! Yeah right!! That picture was as close as I got to that pulpo. Grossness if you ask me. I know being abroad is all about expanding my horizons but nothing could bring me to eat this after looking at it. And, of course, Día de Cervantes would be incomplete without an appearance of the man that made him famous, Don Quixote, with his trusty sidekick, Sancho Panza!



Alrighty now fast forward to Thursday, Día de la Hispanidad or Dia de Pilar, the patron saint of Spain. Everyone in Spain was out and about for this day. Similar to Independence Day in the States, minus the whole independence thing. Let’s just say it’s a party celebrating being Spaniards. So, the government also chooses this day to celebrate the armed forces and have a HUGE parade of all the armed forces. Take a look:









Yup that is a whole lot of military people! They got a little bit of everything. My favorites were the ski patrol and the legionnaires. Seriously, what other country can say they have special skiing troops and African desert troops! The parade is such a big deal that even the Royal Family came out to celebrate. I was able to get pictures of some of them waving at me as they drove away…I guess they heard of my reputation of falling when I get close to world leaders. Hehe



After this parade, I gotta say that I felt a bit more patriotic towards Spain, and I’m not even a bit Spanish! Well, since they gave me a free flag, I can’t help but like them more.



Come back soon for some London pictures/stories!! 3 days alone in a big city produce a whole lot of adventures!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Technically we might be a teensy weensy bit Spanish because if I remember correctly our last name MATA is Spanish...so there you go.

Too bad you couldn't get a closer photo of the queen, but then again you probably would have fallen on her....hee, hee.

Keep having fun and sending those pictures, I can't wait to see and read about your adventure in London, ALONE!!!!

Love ya!
Cindy & Coco :)

Anonymous said...

o boy mira quien lo iba a decir te estas involucrando con la realeza, mira que eso me agrada, y si es mas que seguro que si tus ansestros son de por alla pues acuerdate que tambien eres GIL/MATA
pero en fin eso sale sobrando sigue divirtiendote pues solo se vive una vez........ love U "mijito"