Saturday, December 22, 2007

Festival de Vic - December 07





We had an extra long weekend here. Thursday was a holiday and so was saturday. So most people have a ´puente´a bridge and take the friday off work and get out of Barcelona. Toni had to work, and i had wanted to get out of BArcelona so on the friday, two girls from work and I caught the train to a village in the mountains called Vic. Its a tiny medievil town and the first weekend of December is always their Medievil festival. It took about 1/1/2 hours on the train and we arrived at 10.30am. It was 5 degrees and cloudy but as we walked through the little cobblestone streets we forgot how cold it was. The tiny streets were lined with market stalls and tents selling everthing from cheese and ´fuet´sausage typical of that area, to jewellry bags, clothes, christmas things etc. We picked up a little map and followed the winding streets to the cathedral. There were bands playing and people juggling and waving those huge flags to music. All the people working in the stalls were dressed in medievil robes with robe tied around the waist. After pushing through the crowds for an hour or so, we almost fell out of the óld town´into the river. We decided we would follow the river along, where there were less people. The river didnt have much water, but was still beautiful with a stone wall and bridge along the side. The trees were orange and all the leaves were decorating the ground. We got to the bridge and realised there were more markets on the other side. So as we walked over, we saw a stand that had two men and an array of wild very large birds. One man was holding a very big African Owl. He had deep orange eyes and beautiful liight brown feathers with black flecks. As we got closer we saw more owls, a snow owl, and little one, and a huge vulture! They were all standing on their own little stands and were tied by the feet, with little chains. We walked around and took some photos of them, and then we saw that if we wanted to hold the big african owl, we could. For 5euros, you can hold it and get a photo taken, so we thought ´when else would you ever get the chance to hold an owl?´So we did!

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