Feria

One of the first big things we went to in Spain was the Rota Feria! Each town in this area hosts a Feria, which is pretty much a festival/fair....there's areas of Casetas, which are tents or buildings with tables, a bar, food, and usually a dance floor. Some are open to the public and some are "private" and invitation only. then there is a second area with fair rides, fair games, food vendors and LOUD music everywhere...so loud. They have traditional dances, the Sevillanas and flamenco are the more well known, they were pretty cool to watch. The base has classes to learn the Sevillanas but we got here a little late to jump on that so maybe next year.

Anyway- so Mark's work rents out a huge table at one of the Casetas every year- they serve tapas (which is a big thing here at a lot of the Spanish restaurants...tapas are basically small appetizer type dishes so you just order a bunch and try a little of everything or have a small tapa for dinner with a drink. Since lunch is the biggest meal of their day, they usually have smaller tapas for dinner) and there was a flamenco show which was pretty cool! Evelyn LOVED it. After the show and food they had music playing and people would get up and dance the Sevillana. Evelyn even went out there and Mark's boss showed her a couple basic moves for it (they dance is fairly simple). It was so cute to see her out there.

One of the biggest things about Feria though is the dresses! There are traditional dresses and outfits for the guys to wear, although not many guys wear the traditional outfit anymore. But Feria dresses are huge and lots of people buy a new one every year! Which is crazy, they can get pretty expensive! But they are gorgeous and so much fun! And heavy and tight! wooeey! Trying to find a dress was crazy...for me anyway...Evelyn was much easier to find for :) She was SO cute and loooves her dress. I got one for the baby too, who was adorable in it :)

After we were done at the Caseta we went to the fair part and walked around, let the kids go on a couple of rides, and got a snack. We didn't stay too long because the music was SO LOUD. Each ride had something blaring and every ride had something different playing and it was just crazy! If they had a uniform playlist going for the whole area that might have been better but 20 different loud, crazy upbeat songs playing at once was a little too much.

A couple weeks later Mark and I went on a date and had dinner and then stopped by the Feria in Puerto...it was a bigger Feria than Rota's and since we went at night all the lights were lit up and it was pretty cool! They really go all out on the decorations and it's kind of a big deal. We walked around, had a snack and rode the Ferris Wheel which was pretty cool :) Luckily this Feria was more manageable on the music volume though :)

It was all pretty fun though and I look forward to going again next year!