La Mercé

I'm a little over halfway through my glorious five day weekend now so I thought I'd tell you all a little about it. As I mentioned before there is a festival going on called La Mercé to honor the patron saint of Barcelona. Each of the neighborhoods have stuff going on, but the major events take place in the city's main squares. Since I live near La Sagrada Familia, there were some events going on nearby my apartment, but nothing huge. There was a stage setup in the street where live music was played a block over from my house last night.
Friday night was when the opening ceremonies took place. I went with a couple friends to the top of the old bull fighting arena turned shopping mall in the main city square for dinner where we could hear live music from a nearby stage. Then we walked down into the festivities that were still just starting. After we figured out that we just missed the live music we left the stage area and ventured up to the magic fountain to take some pictures and get a scenic view. The fountain is at the base of the Museu Nacional d'art de Catalunya (MNAC) which was beautifully lit up as well. We had been pretty busy all day so we decided to return home before the next band started playing. Saturday we spent most of the day resting, so we were better prepared for the late night activities. One of the main attractions last night was a parade of fire-breathing dragons. Not prepared for the crowd that would be present, we planned on meeting in the plaza where it was taking place. When I arrived, it became evident that there would be no meeting up until afterwards so I waded into the crowd. I miraculously ended up towards the front of the crowd and I could see pretty well. For about 30-45 minutes I watched as various dragons emerged from the city's municipal building. There was even some sort of faun and a devil pig. In between monsters, percussion bands formed part of the procession. The parade ended and as the crowd cleared I was able to find my friends. Then we made our way to the beach to watch a pretty amazing fireworks display. When the fireworks came to a close, we waited for the crowd to calm down and then met up with more friends and proceeded to the carnival for churros. Finally, we returned to the beach where we relaxed and finished our beers. Oh... and a couple of the girls might have taken some of their clothes off and partially skinny dipped in the Mediterranean Sea.