Do you wish you were a monkey?

I don't think I have ever had quite so much to fit in to one of my blogs. The past few weeks have been manic but so much fun. Since my last post about Cádiz, I have four main topics I'll be telling you all about.

• A visit from my parents and grandparents
• A trip to Valencia to see Las Fallas
• La Fiesta de la Primavera
• A trip to Gibraltar

So my family came to visit last weekend and it was lovely. My parents came out in October with my Nan and this time they came out with my other grandparents. We had a really nice time and ate some amazing food, I hope it lived up to my grandad's expectations! Our days were mainly spent having a delicious dinner and a walk around the city and some tapas in the evenings. I also took them to a flamenco show, for 8 euros each you really can't go wrong and it was just as amazing as the last time I went. On Sunday we took a little trip up to the Sierra Nevada for the day, we just pottered around and took in the amazing surroundings. All in all it was a lovely weekend but it went very fast as it always seems to. My summer wardrobe is now topped up (thanks mum) and I've got enough Nature Valley and Frusli bars to last me a while. Although the Easter egg was demolished in no time at all..

Here are the snaps from their visit:

Me and mama up in the mountains

Trineo Ruso ride with Dad. He needs to work on his breaking skills, he heard some terrible words come out of my mouth!

                                             

                            

                                       

Flamenco

Flamenco

                            

After waving goodbye to my parents I only had 2 days to prepare for our trip to Valencia. On Wednesday we left Granada at 6AM and didn't arrive to Valencia til 1:30PM missing the first part of the day. We soon left the group and went off by ourselves exploring. We found lots of fallas and falleras. Fallas are floats which are designed by Valencian artists often taking the piss out of the government/politicians (surprise surprise). Some are huge and some smaller, all very impressive though. The Falleras are women/girls dressed in the traditional fallas dress. They looked absolutely beautiful and we couldn't stop ourselves staring everytime one walked past. We treated ourself to Agua Valenciana which is a mixture of lots of spirits, champagne and valencian orange juice. Delicious but lethal! Churros con chocolate inhaled we went and waited for the procession to start which was amazing, there were dancers, falleras, bands and even dragons. It was mesmerising and the atmosphere was great. After dinner we watched the next big thing, La Crema. La Crema means the burning, it seems a shame these amazing works of art are burnt but it is tradition. It all happened a lot more dramatically than I had anticipated. 4 or 5 seconds after lighting it, sparks and explosions were all over the place and the falla suddenly bursts into  a huge ball of flames. It was pretty incredible, and hot too...being in Spain, health and safety only required us to be about 5 metres back from the fire! Stuff was flying everywhere I'm surprised none of us were set alight. The first one we saw was quite small so we moved on to see a bigger one and finally headed to the main plaza around 1 in the morning to see the winning falla be burnt. There were thousands of people there it was impossible to move so we didn't really get to see much of the burning apart from the flames. There was an amazing firework display though. 

It was such an amazing day and I'd love to go back to Valencia and visit it properly. The only downside was the travelling. Over 6 hours each way was really tiring but I went armed with a pillow and blanket which I thanked myself for on the way back. We arrived back about 10 on Thursday and I slept all day.

The winning Falla, Neptuno

the women in dresses are the falleras mayores

all we got to see of the huge burning of the winning falla

So on Friday, Granada officially welcomed the beginning of spring by hosting a massive botellón. A botellón doesn't translate to anything in English, it's a very unique word but basically refers to getting pissed in the streets/public places. La Fiesta de la Primavera is one of Granada's most famous fiestas amongst young people and attracts people from all over the region. I'd heard mixed things as it has a lot of bad press but it'd be silly not to check it out. We didn't arrive til around half 6-7 in the evening but people had been there drinking from around midday. There were thousands of people it was exactly what I expected in that sense. We managed to find Maddy and her flatmates relatively easily and stayed there for a few hours. We arrived with our beer only to be told it was too guiri for this fiesta and were soon topped up with a glass of vodka accompanied with a splash of Fanta. Oh Spain. I had a great time and got speaking to random people, the atmosphere was generally really good whilst we were there. We did see a few people being dragged to the first aid tent basically unconscious but that's not surprising considering some people started drinking so early. The newspapers have said that around 21,000 people attended. We saw the rubbish the next day on the bus to Gibraltar and it was horrendous. I feel sorry for the cleaners. 

A few hours kip and we were back on the road again but this time to British Territory! I wasn't really sure what to expect from this trip to Gibraltar but for 19 euros it was a bargain to check out England in Spain. I took advantage of being 'home' and had a pint of cider and steak pie for lunch. It did not disappoint at all. Apart from that it was a very surreal feeling because the town of Gibraltar is so English, it doesn't fit in because it's in Spain. The traffic lights, bins and pavements are all the same I felt like I was back in Sleaford! It was funny but it just didn't feel right. We went up to the rock and found some monkeys. They all did seem pretty harmless but we were a little bit frightened of them jumping on us. The funniest moment had to be when Lizzie left her bag on the floor to take a photo, a monkey came up out of no where and literally had her purse in it's hands. It was a close call but we managed to scare it away and get her purse back. It was hilarious we were laughing so much. We were a lot more wary after that incident! Imagine if it had actually taken her purse and ran away...We didn't really have that much time so we headed back down into the town to go to M&S (priorities) and stock up on cookies and nice food. Tragic, I know. We had just enough time for a cream tea which I was so excited for. That was until she brought out our scones accompanied with jam, butter and cream. What kind of cream, you ask? WHIPPED CREAM. I'm sorry but in what English territory is whipped cream an OK substitution for clotted cream? None. I'd rather have it dry than have any of that, thanks. I was offended and I'm sure my Devonshire family will understand how serious this is.  Apart from that, Gibraltar was alright. It's not amazing and without the monkeys it'd be pretty pants but it's 'England' so it was nice to see some familiarity, can't say I'd want to live there myself though as it feels very isolated.

pint of Magners please

I even ate my peas for the first time in my life...

just insulting...

it was cold and windy...just like real England

monkeying around

That's all for now. I currently have no trips planned until May when we go to Barcelona to do the Colour Run. Before that Amy is coming out to visit me in Semana Santa which I can't wait for. I'm sure I'll manage to fit some more travelling in before then though.

Besos

Ellie

P.S. the title of this blog is one of Hannah's absolute crackers from the trip to Gibraltar. She came out with some funny stuff