Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Easter Weekend 2016

I know I am a little late to the Easter Weekend re-cap but in my defense it is very hard to blog in a hotel room when once the baby goes to bed you have to be absolutely silent and well, we currently only have one computer....  So better late than never, right?

[I should also note that I am blogging while eating my new favorite Spanish snack -- bread with tomato paste (more like a plain tomato salsa rather than the paste you're thinking of), olive oil and salt -- sooooo good!]

So -- Easter Weekend.  It was a very fun weekend spent in Rota with family and friends.  The Spanish take Holy Thursday and Good Friday as national holidays so everything was closed (literally everything except restaurants) which made for a lot of beach walks and playing in the hotel room.

Trevor had Friday off (his new work schedule allows for every other Friday off which is great) so we were able to spend the day going to more Semana Santa processions.  On Good Friday, there are three processions signifying the importance of the day in the Catholic religion.  The first procession we saw started at 2am and finished at the waterfront at noon (yes, that is many hours of walking through the city).  This procession is still joyous (compared to the other processions later in the day) with three floats (Jesus and then two following).  I won't go into the history/biblical lesson but is very interesting and cool and weird and amazing and.... to watch these stories come to life on the streets.

The interesting part about the the float with Jesus was that the men were carrying it on the outside which was the first time we had seen this (all the other floats are carried by men underneath).  It was amazing to see how tired, yet so stoic these men were (and sweaty) -- it was very obvious that the float was heavy.

We then went home and took a nap in order to rest up for tapas and more processions that evening.  We went to a bar right on the beach for drinks and tapas with friends.  Now, these are not bars like we have in the United States, it is much more like a restaurant, so kids are always allowed.  The bar has a really awesome (and poorly translated) name -- Chill Out April -- but the weather was gorgeous and Serafina had a blast just running around hanging out with all the Spanish people.

We then went to two more processions Friday evening.  These processions were very somber and the whole crowd was very quiet (silent for Spain).  These two were by far my favorite because of the meaning, the mood and the intricate floats.  We found the perfect spot to stand -- we've learned corners are a great place to be because you often get a front row view and it is very cool to watch the floats turn.  This particular corner had a wire that the floats had to maneuver underneath.  The float with Jesus, had to lower the statue of Him prior to going under the wire -- it was pretty awesome to watch.  The crowd was so quiet while it was all going on.   


this was my favorite float
We made our way to the third procession which started just an hour after the second one.  This was another very somber and quiet procession.  We were all pretty tired at this point, so we watched the first float and then headed back home to sleep!

The rest of our weekend was pretty low-key.  We had every intention of getting to the base Easter Egg Hunt but with signing our house lease that morning and being out late the night before, Serafina fell asleep on the way to the hunt!  So we changed plans and went to IKEA instead -- we needed a few things for the house so it worked out well.  Except our little one got her first IKEA battle wound (some girl pushed her down in the play house at the eating area and she got a huge bruise and cut on her head) -- poor thing cried and cried but we snuggled her and gave her lots of kisses (and maybe bought her a stuffed animal).  

Daylight Savings Time hit the night before Easter (yes, this was two weeks behind the states) so we ended up sleeping in quite late on Easter and just had an easy family day.  It had been such a busy weekend thus far that it was nice to relax around the hotel and head to the beach for the afternoon.  Serafina loved the beach -- she wanted to pick up all the rocks and eat all the sand!


Plus, I had a total #momfail -- Serafina's super cute monogrammed Easter basket (that I had planned on getting a wonderful yearly picture with) is in our shipment of household goods which obviously is not anywhere near Spain at the moment... So we will dress her in a cute outfit and postpone our Easter basket pictures and celebrations! 

It was a great weekend -- this weekend we get to move into our house!  Nope, our stuff hasn't arrived yet; we will be using loaner furniture and such until our own items arrive....  Wish us luck!!

No comments :

Post a Comment

Blog Design by Get Polished