Festa Major

When planning our trip back to the US I saw that 29 June was the major festival for the town. It seemed like a good idea to make sure we stuck around for that. I didn't know much about it, but assumed it was something like Village Venture, which has organizational booths, food, artists' booths, and a parade. I was completely wrong!!

The festival is more than four days long! Streets are closed a week ahead of time in
order to build a temporary restaurant (shown here just before the festival started).

One night (about 11:30pm) traditional Spanish was being played.

Another night there were flamenco dancers performing.

Thursday's activities, organized by different organizations, included a Settlers of Catan (board game) tournament, rhythmic gymnastics demonstration, and a graffiti art project. There is also a Frank Sinatra tribute band performing at 11:15 p.m.

Does 11:15 p.m. sound late for a concert? Hah! Check out these events
that start at 3 a.m.! Glad I don't live near these venues! 

A park near us is the sport zone and activities include

table tennis, chess, flag tag, climbing, KanJam (made in the USA, it says, but it was new to me), bicycle course (bicycles, helmets, and lice protectors provided), gymnastic demonstrations, basketballs to borrow, tandems to borrow, and more. This was just one park, one tiny section of the festival.

We made our way over to the monastery for the traditional celebration.  My favorite part was 

after the people (including a monk?) gave the warning shots

there were simultaneous devil fire people, 

human towers, and giants dancing amid the confetti.

In this video you can see the giants dancing and the woman is holding a fan. Each year the fan has a different design, which is revealed just before the dance. Afterward pairs of children have their turn dancing, including their own fan and bouquet. Because it was so crowded we did not stick around to see the adults dancing. 

If only we were here one more year I would know where to stand ahead of time to get a good view. The truth is there is so much going on that it is not possible to see everything!

A Few More Vacation Pictures

At 9:45pm it was a comfortable temperature to walk along the
beach toward the church (Iglesia de Sant Bartomeu i Santa Tecla). 

It was also a comfortable temperature in the morning.

Are these volcanic rocks? How about the one with the trail of
small holes? Maybe pholad boring? Learn something new everyday!

So many shell shards!

It must have been a great job to make the 50+ benches that line the beach path.

We did a bit of window shopping. I did not buy these shoes
with Dali on the toes and Einstein on the side.

"Country Home"
I took so many pictures of tiled house names.
We are still thinking about a name for our California house.

I like this house with the matching name tiles.

But now we are back in Sant Cugat. It is time to pack and find a good home for all the things we need to leave behind.

Night of Fire

Or Nit de Foc or Nit de Sant Joan. Yes, another holiday! It is a solstice celebration and a floating holiday. There are so many holidays that municipalities decide which ones to observe (meaning you have to check each year to find out which city has which days off).

One tradition is to eat Coca de Sant Joan, which was served at a party we went to.
A. didn't care for it so we skipped the cava and coca part of this holiday.

On the evening of 23 June we saw a lot of families with boxes
like these, a sampler of several types of firecrackers and fireworks.

We were told that it is mostly for kids, but with parents helping.

Lots of excited kids.

We also saw older kids with bigger fireworks, but these
are more expensive. I wonder if the ones we saw were set
off by individuals or maybe some hotel or organization paid for them.

What we didn't see were bonfires, which is a usual part of the tradition and are
along the beaches of Barcelona. We'll have to come back next year and try again.

The celebrations went late into the night, but somehow we were able to finally fall asleep.

Sitges

City symbols show up in so many places. 

Atop the sign at the train station.

On the maintenance cover

On the bus stop

Temporary metal barriers

Flag in the shopping area

City permit at construction site

Trash can

Sidewalk

Local police car (also a patch on the local police
uniform, but I didn't take a picture of that).

So many streets have tile street signs with the symbol, which are nice to see, but hard to use.
I especially like the signs with the old Spanish and the newer Catalan names.

This town also has many metal signs,
which are also nice and also not terribly functional.

Bread

My pictures cannot capture the amount of bread I have seen this year. 

Here is the bakery within the grocery store in the afternoon, 

and in the evening. There is also a bulk section for rolls and around the corner
there are bags of bread, including crustless bread and other sandwich-style bread.

It seems everywhere we go there are bakeries.
I have no idea how people choose which one to patronize.

If it were not awkward I would have taken so many pictures of people walking and carrying bread. All ages and everywhere we go people are carrying bread. One person told me that some people eat bread with everything. Having coffee? Have it with bread. Having an orange? Have it with bread.

A. quickly learned that everyone takes a bread sandwich for the 10:30 break, desayuno, or eating breakfast. I see it not just with kids at school but all over. I rarely see people eating or drinking while they are walking (they are smoking instead), but if they are eating it is a sandwich.

I wonder if people from here blog about and take pictures of people in the US walking down the street drinking coffee?!

Travel with Karma

We had seen the campaign run by the metro and bus system.

One aim is to reduce fraud.
This picture is above the place where people validate their tickets themselves.

Another goal was to improve courtesy.

The videos warning the consequences of not paying the fare were shown on the metro.

I see you.

"I know what you do."
This was on the wall in a dark part of the subway.

Some of the messages were on the creepy side.

But not to worry, we definitely travel with Karma.