Tomatocation: The Hottest Vacation Trend This Side of Valencia

Sure you’ve heard of a vacation: it’s the measly two week period you end up using up for doctor’s appointments and your cousin’s wedding. And the “staycation”? Well don’t get me started– you might as well call suicide watch on anyone that tries to convince you that sitting in the house for a week watching Oprah re-runs and getting sloppy drunk is a sign of a healthy work-life balance.

No here in Spain, they’ve got their priorities straight. If you’re going to travel half way around the world to see this fine country, you might as well throw tomatoes at people and call it a day. Tomatocation, err, I mean La Tomatina, is just that– a one day event in a week long festival, with 40,000 of your best friends, drinking before 8 AM and then taking truckloads of overripe tomatoes and chucking them. But someone must first climb the greased poll and reach the ham– which I’ve decided to work into my own life. “Hello, thank you for coming, please go climb that greased poll over there and pull down the ham or this party will never start. A bottle of wine? You shouldn’t have. Now get climbing.”

I’d like to tell you that there is more to the famous La Tomatina, but simplicity is the key. There are little rules other than “be nice” and with a crowd of this size, it was an amazingly feel-good atmosphere, which makes for less of a Tomato Fight than a Tomato Toss.

I even got the husband (Drew) out of the apartment– specifically for yesterday’s event and later he waxed philosophically about “next year”. (Um, sweetie, does that mean we will still be traveling in a year? Success!)

(The husband pretending to lick the front of the tomato truck.  Boys are gross.)