WE'RE SURROUNDED

On the day of the Merce, I did not want to miss anything so I woke up at 8:30. Keep in mind I went to bed around 4. I headed over to Jaume I because at 11 o clock, the giants parade was going to happen and then at 12:30, the famous Castillos of people were going to happen. I met up with the gentle strawberry Mr. Costa and we headed over to the square. It was not that packed yet and when we got there we heard fireworks from around the corner. We decided to go check it out. As we got closer and closer, it was getting louder and louder. That was when we realized that we were walking towards a troop of locals that were shooting gunpowder rifles into the air and marching towards us. We had to turn around to walk away because it was getting so loud. They then proceededd to move into the center of the square that we were in and start shooting off the guns in the air and at everyone. Brent and I thought it would be a good idea to go to the edges of the square but then we found ourselves standing right next to the soldiers while everyone else was surrounded in the middle. They put on a really good show and were doing massive simultaneous firing as well as circle shots which I got a video of. Our ears were ringing for sure by the end of it and we realized that all the soldiers had earplugs...except for one who we decided must already be deaf.

After we finished watching the firing squad, which we had not planned on, we watched the giants parade...which turned out to really be a dance competition in these giant outfits...sounds cool and it was for the first performance, but we ended up watching about 14 performances which lasted for over 2 hours...why did we do this you might ask? We were saving our spots for the Castillos that were coming up next!