Full day

Some weekends time just melts away, but yesterday was a full day.

A.'s school has its Festa Major/Major Festival. We had no idea what that meant, but 

we figured out that A. had to go to a couple events and the awards ceremony,

where he received a medal for fair play. Afterward he tried some free samples from the sponsors. That was it for him. Parents were allowed to attend, but mostly the primary kids had parents there.

In the morning, when the older kids were doing their activities, there was a fund raising bike ride.

The people in yellow helped clear the route, which was definitely necessary given the route and the cycling ability of the participants. Here you can check out a video of a small bit of the event. The road they are on is several blocks long and usually has traffic in both directions. Good thing the city was a co-sponsor of the event!

A. and a friend traipsed around Barcelona for several hours. At a bee festival
near the Arc de Triomf they watched while the artist created this with spray paint!

We met up in the evening and were amazed by the variety of
fidget spinners that are already in the tourist stores. 

Night of the Museums had more participants than we could ever take
advantage of, but we picked a few out to try since the price was right.

It was amazing to see giants that have been in continuous use for over 100 years!

Many of these giants had stories about being hidden
away only to be discovered many decades later.

From the sign, "In bygone times, carasses were heads of Arabian donning long beards, which were installed under the organs of some churches. Around Christmas, they threw sweets out to the children in the crowd. The city has recovered this tradition by way of the Carassa de Barcelona, or Carassa de Nadal, an entertaining and parading figure that throws out candy during the Santa Llúcia Fair."

The sign for this one described the turtle body, humanized cat head,
and split personality, sometimes spitting fire and sometimes giving out sweets. 

A picture of a picture of it in action.

A picture of a picture of the hobby horses in action. 

We were very happy with our choice of museums and I encourage you check out historic pictures and more current ones. After leaving we headed off to the chocolate museum, but sometimes free means paying with time and we were not willing to wait in a line that we could not even see the front of!

We caught a bus and headed to a one-hallway museum.

The entire museum was in Catalan, but we enjoyed looking at the pictures.

Sant Cugat had a few activities, too, including a lot of concerts in surprising places (e.g., a cappella across from the bakery). A. snapped this picture, which I thought might have been part of the adult percussion event (adult as in grown ups, not adult as in X-rated), but I am not sure.

Just trying to squeeze it all in before we leave!