sant joan

last night was "La Nit de Sant Joan," or, the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer. so what else could that mean but party in the streets!

any excuse for a fiesta, right? the party starts at sunset and ends at sunrise. everyone is in the streets burning things and setting off fireworks. i mean, even if you want to sleep, there is no way you would be able to.

another part of the celebration is to burn furniture in the streets with HUGE bonfires. and it's on every main street in the city. i mean, who really has all this old furniture waiting around to be burned?

in the underground!

and then of course, la playa, the beach! thousands and thousands, i'm not kidding, of people running around the beach and everyone has bottles and firecrackers and smoke and music and it's just a crazy party on the beach. you couldn't even move! it was kind of scary because the metros were sooo crowded they had to rope it off to make the traffic move easily and they had to block people from crowding in where the train came and only let so many go at a time. and the buses were so full they would just drive past the stops with the word "complet" on the front because they were so full they couldn't handle any more people! the taxis were charging 5 euro just to step in the car. i thought for sure one of us would get robbed. luckily i had nothing on me! and i actually saved someone else from getting pickpocketed. five guys were getting on after this one guy who had a backpack.  right before the doors closed they all left and i was like, that's weird. and then it hit me, so i told the guy and he ran out the doors before they closed. i guess each of the robbers had opened one zipper because all of the pockets were open in his backpack! there was a lot of security tho so i'm sure they took care of them !

i met a lot of new people yesterday, as usual. and it was my friend david's last day. he goes back to london today. i'm sure it was a good night to go out on though! yesterday was also good because we went to watch the england game and the US game for the world cup and they both one! so everyone was happy. i love the chaos in the bars after the games ;)

so of course since it was an all night party, today is a "holiday" and everything is closed. everyone needs to catch up on their sleep!