Alright so in the last edition of The Heff Takes on Europe, we discovered that La Tomatina was a success - a painful and at times claustrophobic one, but a success none-the-less. A great time was had by all. Before leaving Valencia though, the three of us decided that it we hadn't given Valencia a chance to blow us away, so for the next three nights, we decided that we would smash up the beach-side city. First of all though, we had to get the hell away from this campsite and these Australians. As a follow up party to La Tomatina, the same company, Fanatics, puts a massive party on at the small Spanish Island of Ibiza. We were pretty much the only people out of the entire tour who decided to not go, but I wasn't at all concerned or upset about this.
We found our hostel smack bang in the middle of the city in a prime location to see everything...So for the entire first day, we slept. At sunset, it was time to hit up the city's night life. That’s how things roll in Spain. It was agreed that a feed was in order and so the three of us marched into the bar and restaurant district of Valencia. Our choice of restaurant offered a three course meal with a beverage for about 17 Aussie $’s. I thought it sounded pretty good.On my last visit to Spain, to Barcelona, I explained the popular Spanish meal among tourists and locals alike, Paella. In case you forgot, or simply didn’t read that blog, paella is a dish made with a base of rice, usually with a huge amount of seafood and a couple vegies thrown in. Sounds pretty plain I guess, but the way they make it, ughhh!! It’s bloody gorgeous. Valencia has their own special kind of paella, originally named Valencian paella. This is almost the same thing except the seafood is replaced with chicken and rabbit and there are a heap of different kinds of beans. Out of the three of us, I was only one who ordered the Valencian paella, since I’m not that big on seafood anyway, and I LOVE beans. It was sen-bloody-sational and I wish I was eating it right now. As a main course I ordered some kind of fish, I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t have my camera on me, but it didn’t look that appealing. Lucy was almost turned off her food by the look of it. It was a whole fish (Eyes, tail, skin, fins, teeth) served on a plate with salad. They had prepared the fish so that it was biting it’s own tail. It was terrifying, but it tasted beautiful. For desert I just ordered ice cream, and it was just a drum stick that came out upside down on a plate, but on the way, the waiter lost balance and the ice cream flung across the room and hit me on the shoulder and fell on the ground. He brushed it off, whacked it on the table and said “enjoy”. All in all, it was a pretty good dinner I thought.
Throughout the next couple days, we went and done all the usual touristy things like climbing up churches, eating more Spanish food and drinking more Sangria.
Lucy was shopping one day and bought Callum a present. Since arriving in Spain, we’d been searching for some awesome pants, and Lucy found what we were looking for. Although they were no-where near as tight as we hoped they would have been, the little yellow flowery shorts you see in the pictures done their job.
Although I couldn’t find them, I found this little number and was pretty proud of myself.
To celebrate our purchases, we all went to the most popular beach in Valencia. There were no jellyfish, no nudists, no Australians, but at the same time, there seemed to be no character to it. They’d built really rich hotels right next to it and the sand was completely flat and “perfect”. It was still good to swim in the water. I would hope they won’t make that artificial any time soon.
After checking out the crappy markets near by, and buying some awesome BBQ’d corn, we went back to the hostel and crashed for the night again.
Waking up bright and early the next day, we made our way to the bus station once again to travel to our last destination for our Spanish journey, Barcelona. Although I’d already been there, it was only for a day, so I was more than keen to see it again, properly.
For the last stop in Spain, stay tuned for the next blog.
Much love from Geoff.
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