La Tomatina!

Every year in a little town an hour outside of Valencia there is a food fight--actually, a tomato fight. We went to the tomato fight an it was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life! There were so many sweaty bodies and it was sick. After much walking and pushing by everyone we got to the streets where the fight was going to be. When it started, dump trucks would drive through the cities of the streets filled with tomatoes. There was like 10 people in the trucks who would throw tomatoes at everyone and the trucks would dump some in different spots. Four or five trucks came through in the hour that the fight lasted. I think I threw like five tomatoes the whole time. It was more like getting tomatoes chucked at you instead of a food fight! I even got a vine with tomatoes stuck to it thrown at me. There were so many sweaty bodies right next to each other and it was smelly and yucky. I don't know why people would ever want to do that more than once! After the fight we found a local woman who was around 60 years old hosing people down in front of her house. That didn't really help me get all the tomatoes off of me or out of my hair so we went to the river. The river was more of a stream/flat waterfall thing with about 4 inches of water. Sara didn't want to sit in it, but I felt so gross I just laid right down in it. It felt so good to be clean(er)!!! We waited about an hour for our ride then headed back to Valencia with just enough time to shower and finish packing before we headed for Paris. All said and done, La Tomatina was quite an experience. I'm glad I can say I did it, and I assure you, I will never participate again. :) (I don't have pictures because I didn't want to take my camera along, but I will add some when I become facebook friends with Sara's coworker Derek if he added them to facebook.)