Midnight on Saturday and BOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM…!!! Leandra got up to see what was going on and is surprised by a large fireworks display taking place a mile away in the Turia Park, but visible from our balcony. For the next 15 minutes we were treated to a nice display.
Sunday morning started with what seemed like all the church bells in the city going off at once.
We eventually figured out all this was for the Our Lady Of The Forsaken Festival (more info). And later in the day we noticed people setting up plastic chairs along one of the main roads in the old town, which lead us to find out what time the parade started. So a little after 6:30pm we went down the market and watched for about 15 minutes.
At this early stage it was mostly a procession of women dressed in ornate dresses and we didn’t know that the parade would take more than 2+ hours! But a couple hours later we found ourselves trying to get to a bar before dinner, and by dumb luck our route let us experience the main processional just as it was passing by.
The smell of the incense was intense, as was the chanting, as the procession wound its way around the corner. Afterwards, lots of people were scooping up rose petals off the street.
We didn’t get to the bar, but honestly, experiencing this was better.