Liestal Fire Festival

We got home late Saturday night from Barcelona.  On Friday we went to the aquarium which is said to be the best in Europe.  It was pretty spectacular.  We walked around some more, found the Gaudi Palace (not much of a palace), had some more Dunkin Donuts, went to the markets, and then went back to our room early so we could rest before going to the Magic Fountain show that we heard was really cool and is only on weekend nights.  Thanks to me and still feeling effects of the flu. we never made it back out.  We watched the  show on Youtube and pretended we weren't so lazy.

The next seven days are days I would like to soon forget.  From Monday to Sunday I fought a cold and horrible cough.

This weekend was Fasnacht.  It's another crazy festival where the Swiss dress up, throw confetti, eat, drink, and have a parade.  Josh and Keith went to the parade, Kelly went sledding with her friend Lara, and I stayed home and coughed.

Nathan and Josh

Sunday was the craziest festival to date.  The Hale's picked us up and we met Monique and Hans for dinner.  After dinner we drove to Liestal for the annual fire festival.  It started as a mild parade with bands and people pushing floats.  Then we saw coming around the corner, people with huge torches and small wagons on fire.  The wagons and the fires kept getting bigger and bigger.  It was so crazy.  We had shoved our way to the front of the parade route so the kids could see and the lady behind us said in German,  You are going to burn. (She was right.)  As the fires progressively got bigger we had to hide our faces and were all brushing off glowing embers as they landed on us.  By the end the kids and I ran for cover and got off the front row.

Kelly's hat on fire.

Taylor Hale and Josh