SPAIN - La Tomatina Festival....or Disaster?!

The main objective of this Spain trip, other than to see the coast of Spain, was to go to La Tomatina Festival in Bunyol. This is a famous festival that is known world wide consisting of approximately 30,000 people cramming into this tiny town to throw tomatoes at each other for about an hour. Unfortunately we personally were not able to take any pictures of it because there was no way we even considered bringing our cameras to this complete gongshow but we were able to snag other people's; it was quite the adventure. All we remember about the whole experience was how weird and disgusting it was, especially after the fact. We had to ride the train home covered in tomato paste all over our clothes; the stench was unbearable. Needless to say we bought clothes for this specific event and then threw them away afterwards. We didn't get into the thick of things in the fight because it was absolutely crazy.































Not only was it just a tomato disaster, people were throwing sandles and wet shirts and ripping people's shirts off; it was insane and basically...unnecessary. At the beginning of the fight there was a ham placed at the top of a greased pole where people have to try to get it down. So... if anyone went near the pole they would get attacked by other people that were getting the ham; it was pretty lame but hilarious to see people go so crazy over something so stupid!































Another group of practikants went on a similar Spain trip who also went to Tomatina and we actually were able to run into them there after the fight. Luckily they brought their camera and ended up getting some ok pictures. Here is one with all of us that were there for Tomatina and of a couple of our friend during the festival:
















After the tomato fight was over everyone was all literally hosed down to get most of the tomatoes off before leaving the town. It helped people for the most part anyways! After this interesting experience I am having a hard time even smelling tomatoes right now...I can just smell the horrid stench that I did during and after La Tomatina. Hopefully that changes sometime soon so I can have tomatoes in my food once again!

















Meredith's comments and thoughts about La Tomatina:

La Tomatina... Human Sun Dried Tomatoes! This festival was probably the most crazy thing I have done or ever will do in my life! I have been in my share of food fights in my life, but none of them even touch this one! Who seriously thinks of having a massive tomato fight in the street of a town! That person is so wicked! It is so intense that the locals who live on that street have their entire house covered with plastic so it doesn't get destroyed! It's crazy! At first we were a little hesitant to get into all the crazyness but once we did, there was no going back! Haha It was so fun to throw tomato and then watch the person's reaction that you hit! My favorite part was when the big trucks came through and just dumped out loads and loads of crushed tomatoes!! Everyone was just covered! It was actually one of the worst smells that has ever entered my body and at some points I felt like I was going to get sick from the smell. mmm...rotten tomatoes! Looking back at the experience, I think that I would do it over again... as long as we didn't have to take a half hour train ride back to Valencia with dried tomatoes on us! Stinking soo bad! But...the entire trip was a blast! I had such a wicked time with Louise and Brian, going to all those places!! I was starting to miss them, and now that I am home I miss them even more!


The following blog post will be about our last trip with Meredith: Prague, Czech Republic.

SPAIN Aug 25 - Sept 4

For our 2nd trip with Meredith we went to Spain with Pat and Andy. This was our first road trip of the year; we drove almost the whole coast. It was pretty exciting and very interesting to say the least. To make a long story short...Pat is the only person in our group that has driven a standard car more than 3 times in his life (Brian has a few times a long time ago) so he was the only driver. But he was still 20 at that time and you have to be 21 to rent/be a driver of a rental in Spain. So...Brian signed for it and drove it out of the parking lot to our first site (doing quite well may I add) and then Pat drove it the rest of the trip! What can you do hey?!

Anyways...Below is a map of the route that we took for this whole adventure:

1 - Flew to Madrid from Basel, CH
2 - Trained from Madrid to Bobadilla
3 - Trained from Bobadilla to Granada
4 - Rented a car and started driving up the coast!

In total we were also able to check out Santa Pola, Valencia, Bunyol, Vinaros, Terrademberra, and then Barcelona. We just flew out from Barcelona because we want to go back to Spain sometime and just do Barcelona all on it's own since there is so much to see there as it is.

We also went to a couple different castles along the way. One that was a castle/palace/gardens that was gorgeous (probably our favorite in Europe so far) and the other was just what was left of the castle after so many years.

Castle #1

Castle #2

This trip, other than the driving for Pat and the navigating for Brian, was very relaxing and just a "chill" trip. A lot of the time we just found a beach, got a campsite near it and hung out there all day. That was our favorite part about it, we got so suntanned and weren't running around everywhere sightseeing.

In Valencia we saw some of the craziest architechtual buildings on the way to the beach that were very impressive.

During the whole trip we camped out at campsites all over along the way; except the night before and after Tomatina we booked rooms in a hostel. That was really nice to actually sleep in beds but the camp spots we found were almost always really nice. They had nice washrooms and showers and most of them had a public pool area. This is one of the pictures of the pool at a campground:

In Spain there were a lot of really cool but different plants, flowers, fruit and other vegetation that we saw. Here are a few of the things we saw over the trip:

As some of you may know by now there was another main objective of this trip other than just laying on the beach all day. We wanted to be a part of the famous Tomatina festival in Bunyol. The next post to come is designated for this part of the Spain trip alone - because it was that intense!

Under the Influence

There are some people who read this blog that know Meredith well so this won't come to you as a shock, it will be a normal occurance. For those of you who don't know Mere at all or think that she is a calm, reserved girl.......boy do I have some news for you!

This is the real Meredith DeCock:

And this is how we act under the influence of

Meredithfor such a long period of time:

Meredith is really funny, we had a wonderful time with her while she was here. It was great to have a visitor for sure and we will definitely miss her now!

Next to come is our Spain trip and then Prague, Czech Republic.

When In Rome....(August 18-21)

As most people know, my sister Meredith came to visit us for a month between the middle of August to the middle of September. While she was here we went on three different trips with her and toured around Switzerland a lot. We were super busy during that time and always doing something so didn't have a chance to blog while she was here so we are trying to catch up now.

Trip #1: Rome

On the first day we saw these sights:

1. Santa Maria Maggiore (Monument Building)

2. Arco di Tito/Palatino/Arco di Costantino (Ancient Ruins of Rome)











































3. Colosseo (Colosseum)



















4. Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain)


5. Repubblica - Piazza della Repubblica (Monument Building)

The Ancient Ruins were super cool to see, possibly all of our favorite part of the whole trip. The pictures don't do it justice; it was amazing to see. We also really enjoyed the Colloseum. On this day we didn't go inside it we just observed it from the outside cuz we got there later. The Trevi fountain was pretty sweet, really big and so much going on to look at. The main problem with the fountain was that it was always climbing with people all around so we couldn't get a good picture but oh well.

On the second day we visited:

1. Giardini del Vaticano (The Vatican City/Country)
We went into the Basillica S. Pietro and the Musei Vaticani
































2. Castel Sant' Angelo (Castle)












3. Piazza del Popolo (Open Square)

4. Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Spanish Steps)


5. Colosseo



We loved the Vatican City; it was so weird to be in a country (Vatican) within a country (Rome). While we were there we all mailed postcards to our families and Mere sent one to her friend. That was so much fun. The castle was great, one of the coolest castles we've seen so far. It was quite big with many levels to check out and we were actually able to walk around almost everywhere in it. The Spanish Steps were a little disappointing; we were expecting more from them, but Mere and I did walk up and down all 135 its steps twice! Then we just got some night photos of the Colosseo because it was so neat.

On the third day we checked out:

1. Terme di Caracalla (Baths of Caracalla)





2. Colosseo





















3. Ostia Antica (more Ancient Ruins)




The Baths were not too interesting to see unfortunately but were okay. Not much to see anymore (some of the cooler objects still intact are now in a museum in Naples, France). This time we went into the Colosseum and it was worth the expensive price. We stayed there for a while, taking photos and enjoying it all. We went a little out of the city into a place called Ostia Antica where there were more Ancient Ruins. This was fun, the ruins weren't as good at all as the ones in Rome but were neat cuz we were able to walk all over the grounds, touching anything we wanted. We sure had a good time with that since Mere was there!


Next post will be on Spain and then following will be Prague. Stay tuned!