Last weekend I went with 7 amigos to Valencia, a city three hours south of Barcelona by train. It was the weekend before Las Fallas, a major festival in which giant combustible structures are built and then set on fire later in the week. We saw the fallas all over the city throughout the weekend. A lot had animal themes, many were sexual (i.e. naked women), and a lot of them looked kind of sinister or weird.
We had to get up very early Friday morning to catch the 7:00 a.m. train. I slept almost the whole way but did manage to see some of the beautiful Costa del Sol views out the window. After arriving we headed straight to our hostel, the Purple Nest. The hostel was really awesome. We all got to stay in the same room together (like in Dublin). After dropping our stuff off, we went exploring. There was a rough goal of getting to a vegetarian restaurant recommended by Caryn's guidebook, but we basically were just wandering. We made it to the Mercat Central, apparently the largest food market in Europe. After many hours of wandering through confusing, winding roads, we found the vegetarian restaurant. I thought the food was just ok. It was really full of vegetables...obvi.
After that we decided to venture to the Botanical Gardens. Strangely, these gardens are like a cat refuge, and the place was FULL of cats. We saw many black cats (even one with only a single eye) on Friday the 13th. The place was really serene and the weather was beautiful. Lots of people had easels set up and were painting.
We headed back to the hostel to figure out a plan for the rest of the day and decided to cook a Mexican food feast. I miss Mexican food so much! I guess you don't know what you've got till it's gone. Four of us went to the grocery store and by hook or by crook scrambled up the necessary ingredients. Patty was the head chef and the rest of us her sous chefs. We ended up with guacamole, ground beef cooked with onions and cilantro, chips and salsa, tortillas, rice, beans, and cheese. And wine. Wine in Spain is literally cheaper than water at less than 1 euro a bottle. It was a fun group project and the best part was of course enjoying the fruits of our labor. We cooked everything in the large and well-equipped hostel kitchen--another reason the hostel was awesome.
After all that we headed to our room to hang out and ended up going to a bar, where we sampled the local cocktail of choice, Agua de Valencia. This is a potent (think jungle juice) mix of cava, fresh orange juice, and vodka, rum or other liquor. We turned in shortly thereafter because Joe was falling asleep at the table.
Saturday morning we awoke and went to a place we had spotted the day before called Spanish Bagels. Bagels are another American food sorely missed, and while Spanish Bagels would not have made the cut, it was pretty good for the bagel-starved. I had a bagel with yummy pesto, mozzarella and tomato. We went straight to the beach from there and had a nice long time soaking up the sun. Only Austin and I were brave enough to go swimming in the ocean, and afterwards we were indeed very cold. (Although while in the water it didn't seem too bad. All the summers swimming in the Atlantic have made me tough.)
We headed back to the hostel after the beach and ate Patty's fried rice, made with the leftovers from the night before. Delicious. We just goofed around for a good long while, getting progressively more borrachos. At the suggestion of Caryn's infallible guidebook we went to a GREAT smoothie place that mixed alcohol into the smoothies. The smoothies were really fresh and fruit-tasting. We went from the smoothie place to a tapas restaurant pretty far away and had patatas bravas (the standby, but good buy (haha)), fried camembert, awful "samosas," and cocktails. From there we went in search of a reggae concert but were unsuccessful. Instead we ended up at a giant techno concert near the hostel. It was absolutely massive and filled with high school aged kids. We managed to sneak in through a break in the security fence toward the back.
The entire weekend was characterized by sudden loud cracks, shooting sparks and cries of "¡Cuidado!" as children of about 8-13 years old threw firecrackers all day and all night. This included at the densely packed concert, where people would throw them into the crowd. Obnoxious! We ended up buying two fireworks of our own, but as is so often the case with fireworks, they were over so quickly that I hardly remember enjoying them. But they were cool while they lasted.
On Sunday we went to a futuristic museum complex (the largest in Spain) called la Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias. We went to the science museum part and saw some cool exhibits, but not nearly up to HMNS level. It took a while to get here and back because we had to figure out the buses, which were not on the normal schedule because of the festival. We collected our things from the hostel, headed to the train station, had a quick bite to eat and said our adios to Valencia. Friends, sunshine, beach...the life.
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