¡la feria de la tapa y fuegos artificiales!

After being in Valencia for over five weeks now, I've learned to be adventurous and open-minded when it comes to trying new food.  La Feria de la Tapa was the perfect place to work on being more adventurous and I was definitely rewarded for this.  The festival was basically 20 different booths all with 3 different varieties of tapas (basically one-serving appetizers that are very popular in Spain).  I definitely have a sub-par knowledge of food vocabulary, which I am reminded of whenever I pick up a menu.  It might as well not even be in Spanish, but a completely different language altogether.  They didn't really teach us how to talk about "fancy" food in school; we stuck to the basics- eggs, cheese, chicken, fish, bread, fruit, milk, etc.  I now know that langostino means lobster, berenjena is eggplant, and bechamel is some kind of delicious cream sauce that my host mom puts on top of pasta sometimes.  

Langostino tapa

The first tapa I tried was called (get ready for this) piruli crujiente de langostino en crema tibia de queso y champiñones.  Translated, roughly that means some type of encrusted lobster in a cheese and mushroom sauce.  It was probably one of the most delicious things I have tried while here, there were just so many flavors packed into one tiny portion of food. I can't remember what tapa #2 was called, but it was bread with a slice of some type of really creamy cheese, topped with raspberry jam. It was really different from anything I had ever eaten before, but the cheese and raspberry was a good combination.  The tapas were only 1.20€ each, and some of them were almost meal-sized, such as the hamburguesa (not really a surprise). 

Right after the tapa fair, as my friend an I were making our way home, the fireworks scheduled for that night began.  We thought they were supposed to start at 1 a.m, but it ended up being midnight.  I think I'm going to struggle to explain how epic these fireworks were.  Basically, they took fireworks to a whole new level that I have never seen on any 4th of July celebration.  It was like an hour-long grand finale.  I've never had to plug my ears during fireworks in the U.S. before, but it was completely necessary to do so here during the GRAND grand finale.  The noise ricocheted off all the buildings, making it seem even louder.  Valencians love their huge displays of loud noises; I can't think of any time where there would be fireworks that START at midnight in the U.S. and continue until 1 a.m.  I am truly living in the city that never sleeps.  

The fireworks were choreographed so well, and there was such a variety of fireworks that I had never seen before.  Every color you can imagine, ones that hung in the sky like ropes after they had gone off, ones that literally looked like jellyfish bobbing in the ocean, stars, hearts, ones that looked like meteors flying everywhere, and not slowing down for almost an hour.  It was ridiculous and even worth the fact that I may now lose my hearing one year earlier.