Zaragoza

At 10pm the night before, we spontaneously booked a 20 euro trip to Zaragoza with Be Madrid. It left at 10am the next morning and arrived back in Madrid at 8am the next day. The pickup point was at the bull fighting coliseum – which is huge! I’m glad I got to see the coliseum because it is really magnificent from the outside. Although I don’t agree with the treatment of the toros in bull fighting, I would be open to seeing a bull fight for the cultural experience.

Once boarding the bus, the ride took us 4 hours and I slept for most of it on the way there, although I did enjoy some GI Joe for a little. We decided to go to Zaragoza so spontaneously because we found out that weekend was the Festival de Pilar.

^tired, but thrilled to be in Zaragoza

The Festival de Pilar (or Fiesta de Pilar) is held every year on the 12th of October. The festival starts days before the 12th, with music, parades and flowers running throughout the day and into the night. The festival is to celebrate the Virgin of Pilar. People from all over Spain come to participate in the never-ending parades and festivities. At the Plaza de Pilar, a mountain of flowers are gathered over the celebration days as an offering to the Virgin of Pilar. This festival is celebrated because according to the stories, someone saw the Virgin at sunrise.

While at the festival, we saw hundreds of people dressed in vintage costumes. The parade literally never stopped. We saw people giving flowers to the officials at the flower mountain. The workers would then take the flowers and add them to the ever-growing mass of colors. The parade consisted of people of all ages, with a variety of performances.

During the day, the streets were filled with people trying to witness the main parade, the flower mountain, and eat so they can keep up their energy into the night. We decided to explore away from the festival some more after eating (Erin had probably the best cooked chicken of her life when we stopped). We visited the castle and the church. Although we did not go in either. On our way back to meet up with the Be Madrid group, we found a food truck festival! I loved it. The food trucks looked really cute and not as uniform as the food trucks back in LA do I believe. We ended up going there later for dinner.

Once we met up with the Be Madrid group, we were lead to some different bars where we ate croquets and drank sangria. We eventually broke off from the group, and with some new friends, we decided to do our own thing. That is when we headed back to the food trucks and I had a delicious veggie burger. We listened to some music at the venue that was set up at the food truck area, and then headed back into historical center. We stopped along the way at a carousal for Erin and our new friend Erin to ride on. We also paused at a small outdoor concert that we found while wondering the streets. We heard a man playing marimbas, which obviously caught the attention of Willa and I since it was a throw back to our Blender days. While listening and taking a rest, New Erin made friends with a local Zaragoza boy who showed us to this really fun discotecha where we danced to a mix of oldies (YMCA was a crowd pleaser) and Spanish pop songs.

We were very tired by 2:00. Willa and Erin picked up some snacks from a late night waffle and fry place on the way back to the bus. We got on the bus and promptly fell asleep. When we arrived back in Madrid, we sleepily took the metro back to our apartment, where we quickly fell asleep again. We may be turning into grandmas, but we did make it to 3:00am.