In this small town of Cheste, it's a fiesta weekend, so much going on, loads we don't understand, these ladies have all recently turned 18, this parade happens every year. They help celebratethe finish of the grape harvest, in one parade they carry small baskets of grapes to barrel for 2 young men to tread in the old-fashioned way.
The costumes are very heavyweight and have many layers, the embroidery on the skirts beautiful, some items pass along the generations, here is our friend's daughter when she participated. Her hair, jewellery are styled the same as all the others.
The next morning the tractors came, some of the prade pass our flat, all the trailer are full of young people having fun, load music. Everyone stops to watch and chat, very relaxed atmosphere.
The bulls here are walked through parts of the town, it's all very controlled, at the end of the rides was a vet, who always attends the parade. It went by at walking pace, not at all what we expected, a modern way for their traditions.
The bulls do have one run through the town, but again it's very modern, safety is always thought through. I did not think it would ever want to watch the bulls, I have always avoided the bullfighting, I've never visited the bullring in Valencia. I'm in Spain and therefore I honour their traditions, our friends are modern and also see these things as heritage.
It's very warm here in low 20's so T shirt and sandals, it feels good to know we can wake up to blue skies. Our friend's are taking us to wonderful restaurants in Valencia, we are seeing many new places. Yesterday we did a walking tour of the historic city centre, very informative as the guide spoke English, the whole Spanish family are fluent, mum teaches English at local academy.
Today we are staying local in Cheste, we have walked alot in the past three days, so today is just relax. I will have more photos in my next post. I'm using my tablet and not able to make comments, it ask me to sign into Google, when I get to the directed page, it says I am signed in 🤷🤷
That is a lovely coming of age tradition. It is so nice to see old traditions upheld.
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