A good portion of my Saturday morning was spent sleeping. After waking up, I went for a nice long run. When I got back, lunch was practically on the table. I quickly showered and enjoyed some shrimp that were cooked in a pan. They were hard to peel open, but were pretty delicious. After lunch, I napped a little more. I had tortilla de patata for dinner! Delicious as always, but I felt like it probably contained a whole cup of olive oil. I just asked Pepita how much olive oil she uses every week and the answer is 2 liters… demasiado aceite. I took the metro to Las Ramblas after dinner to meet Emily for the fire parade.
When I got off the metro, there were tons of people in the plaza. Emily and I ended up following some sort of procession to the intersection of two large roads. All the roads were blocked off and their were people every where and a huge archway with a dragon in the middle. Emily was told that you are supposed to cover all your body parts for this event. She brought me my scarf that she used the day before, so that I could cover my head. A majority of the people in the crowd had hats, bandanas or scarves covering their heads. Some people even had goggles. I had no idea what to expect. As it started to get dark, a band started to play. When they were finished, the street lights went out and everyone started to cheer, then came the chaos of the devils. People dressed as devils and large devil floats came through the giant archway, carrying pitchforks type things. On the ends of the pitchforks, there were giant sparkler/ roman candle type things. The devils would run out through the center of the crowds with these and people’s immediate reaction was to back up. People were moving in every direction to get away from the fire evoking a sense of fear and excitement within the crowd. Some people who were in the center of the crowd would get burned. A few of the people I met up with later in the night had holes in their shirts from the sparks. I wish I had pictures or videos to show, but it would have been impossible to take pictures of. Here is a pretty accurate video from youtube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq-5D3EZ_WE
After about an hour of the parade of devils, we left to go to a concert.
Lorenzo texted me to let me know everyone else was going to the concert, since we didn’t even try to find each other in the crowds of people. Emily and I found the concert and it turns out that it was a Belle and Sebastian concert! The opening act was OK Go, but we missed them unfortunately. In front of the stage was so crowded, that we didn’t even try to watch from there. Instead there was a giant TV set up on the street next to the stage, where there was a “less crowded” bunch of people. We watched the concert comfortabley from there and then called it a night afterwards.
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