During the month of September cities all across Europe set aside a night to celebrate art and music. In Spain it's called La Noche en Blanco or "White Night". This year the celebration fell on September 13th and it basically consists of various art installations, concerts, outdoor movies and other events that start at around 11 pm and continue until 5 or so in the morning. The museums stay open all night and admission is free (but the lines are CRAZY) and various government buildings are lit up for the evening. Hubby and I hit the event with some friends. We wandered around a bit on Paseo de Recoletos and the Plaza de Cibeles - just to get an idea of what was going on. The fountains had been jazzed up for the night with some giant rubber duckies:
Here are some of the government buildings lit up for the evening: The communications building had big lipstick prints projected onto it along with a recorded sound effect of a woman giving a big smooch to someone - mmmwwwahhhh!
The Congreso building was lit up pretty as well and we hung out for a jazz concert that was scheduled to start at midnight in front of the building:
Unfortunately, when the concert finally started they had some problems with the sound, so we fought this sea of humanity to do some more wandering around:
There are tons of concerts and other acts (including a guy walking the high wire!) to see during Noche Blanco, but we figured out pretty quick that you have to be o.k. with HUGE crowds of people if you want to see any of the more popular events. Noche Blanco is a really fun night - there is a ton of energy and it feels a little crazy to be out at a museum at 3 in the morning. But I'd recommend to anyone interested in going to get a list of events, pick the ones you really want to see and get settled in early as all the events fill up with people pretty quick!
Here are a couple of other shots of buildings lit up for the evening:
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