Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

The first night in Spain, to celebrate March 5th (which doesn't actually fall on that date apparently) and a famous battle against Napoleon's army that took place on that date, the locals hold a re-enactment. One person told the story of what happened. He was a really good orator and and spoke extraordinarily clear and slowly, using tone as well as gestures to help tell the story and I actually kind of got the general gist of it, even though my Spanish knowledge is minimal.

There was a parade of people in period dress, on horseback, walking, dressed as Napoleon's army, peasants, the Spanish army, marching, pulling canons, and more. It was quite cool.

Until they started firing their rifles, which were loud.

The canons were loud. Unpleasantly so.

The streets were packed with people. Fortunately or unfortunately, this was centered right in front of my hotel. I was only 20 feet from the entrance, so when I decided to leave it only took me about a minute to get through the crowd and escape to my room.

The battle reenactment raged on for like 30-45 minutes! And while I didn't actually hide under the bed like a dog on the 4th of July, I did consider that to be an option that was available.

After the battle ended, I had dinner in the hotel restaurant, since it was so crowded, I didn't want to go outside nor did I want to consider the re-enacted bodies. The restaurant was booked but there was space at the bar. So while I waited for dinner, I drew this picture on a paper napkin and then took a picture of it with my Nikon camera. And then added the sound effects and speech balloons. Pretty quick and good enough to get a quick point across.

The full size image is here.

KABOOM!!!!