The Best Parade in the Whole World…3 Kings

I have been to many Mummers parades, great all day parades in South America and seen videos of carnival in New Orleans, but in my humble opinion, nothing beat 3 Kings in Barcelona.  David, I and 800,000 (that's the right number of 0's) saw this on the night of January 5, the night that children ask Santa for gifts which they receive on Jan. 6.

First the Kings arrive by boat into Barcelona harbor.  Then they ride with great ceremony, in antique cars, to the start of the parade.  The parade begins at dark with each group providing their own light sources and music and culminates with truck mounted air cannons shooting 7 TONS of candy into the crowd.  During the parade costumed characters on stilts march along with giant nets into which the children deposit their gift wishes.  MAGICAL!!!!!!!!!!  ENJOY THE PHOTOS!!!!!                            

 

 CANDY!!!!!

12/22/2013 to 1/8/2014 Barcelona and the Batejans

Disaster strikes!!!! Driving along on the way to Barcelona we heard a strange noise coming from outside the car.  However, when we got out to look, being the great auto mechanics that we are, we found nothing.  So, continuing on, until…thunk!!!  and the car leaned to the right with a tremendous whap, whap whap!  Well, it seemed that one of Yertle's tires de-laminated!  driving a big hunk of tire right through the bottom of the poor caravan.  And, to make matters worse, we had no spare (because we were stupid and did not check before we bought Yertle).  Of course, it was Sunday so all we could do was to get a tow to an auto shop, sleep in the parking lot and wait for Monday before, quite a lot of money later, we were on our way, with Yertle quite worse for the wear!

Once we got to Vilanova campgrounds, outside of Barcelona, which was more like a resort than a campgrounds with pools indoors and out, (too cold to swim), golf, restaurants, many types of cabins and places for campers, we made arrangements to have poor Yertle fixed!  What a mess!

The Batejans joined us on Christmas day for a week of touring.  We rented another car since using public transportation would be a problem and we could not all fit into one car.  That was bad since it meant that I had to drive.  Since I hadn't driven in over a year, it was all a bit traumatic, coupled with the fact that the GPS could not navigate in Barcelona's cavernous street and kept making me drive in circles.  The whole driving thing was awful!

The first place we visited was the Sagrada Familia, always an amazingly impressive site, made more so since we visited in the afternoon with spectacular sunlight!
  

   Then we went to Parc Guell, which Meadow had wanted to see since she was little.   

  

  

  

  

 

Walking the streets of Barcelona during Christmas at night was spectacular!

And the market was so busy that we could not at all stay together!!     Hmm.  Do people really eat those????       

Our trip to Mont Serrat was great, despite the scary cable car!    

  

 Our trip to Gerona was topped of by kissing the tush of the town symbol for good luck!          

And once more…the family