VALENCIA

Valencia is so so much fun! It´s the most ´Spanish´ place we´ve visited definatley, as in all of the people speak their language and not much English etc. We arrived on a National Holiday, so it was like a complete ghost town, especially during Siesta time! We are however getting used to this chill-out-in-the-day laziness though and enjoyed people watching and chatting under some shade with a token Coca Cola Light.

We walked around to get our barings (it´s much bigger than I had expected) and it´s just so so nice. Lovely buildings and little shops and cafes and so chilled out everywhere. Quite a bit different from bustling Barcellona. That completely changed when night fell though! We got changed and poppped to the off licence to get some red wine and Fanta lemon (mixed as they do in Madrid) and sat and drank and chatted in a massive group with all of other Busabout people and some others that were staying in the hostel. By 12ish we left to find our first bar (we decided we´d do our own, save the pennies! We found some really cool places and drank Água de Valencia´(Valencian orange juice with Cava), after dancing across the town with the locals, 5 of us jumped on the bus and headed down to the beach where we paddled and played on the sand. All along the promenade were so so many locals all sitting there drinking. We had a littel walk to see what the clubs were like and found a couple of nice ones, both however that were charging 13 euro entry (and it was already gone 3am) so we decided to be cheap and just head back to the beach, which was when we beacame lucky and manage to get FREE passes to one the clubs! absolute result! We popped into a REALLY smoky Spainsh place first where everyone was slasa dancing which was amazing.

After clubbing (and enhaling about 3 packets of cigarettes, arggghh) we sat on the roof terrace which was so nice (the place was very Opium-esk, with all the Bhuddas and insence etc). We then layed at the beach till sunrise (waring it gets COLD) and we made it!! By 7am we decided to call it a night (baring in mind we´d been up since 5am travelling from Barcalona too) BUT the bus wasn´t due to arrive till 8am! so Scarlett and I decided we´d walk it. It took an hour and a half. oh god. By about 9.15am we reached a little place and had breakfast and then headed back to the hostel (to see people waking up) and we had a little nap (IMPOSSIBLE in the heat)

I had to get back up, so went to the IVAM Gallery of Modern art down the road which was incredible, really really good! and it made a nice change to all of the old historic stuff weve been seeing for so much of the trip. Scarlett then joined me and we walked around town and had some lunch (and a McFlurry, WHICH is much more expenive than in England, so count yoursleves lucky) and walked up to the Gardens and watched all of the local football temas playing their Sunday Leagues.

We met our Aussie girl friends back at the Hosted an all went on the Walking Tour where we learnt all about Valencia and its history etc for a couple of hours. Tapas followed which was goooood. We got back, got changed and found a little place that supposidly had Flemenco dancing (but we were way too late and it had finished which was a shame) but had some sangria and moved on to another really Spanishy place with great music. After a while the smoke and loudness coupled with 43 hours of being awake hit us a bit and we decided to call it a night.

Im now downstairs all packed and ready for our LAST bus to Madrid. Luckily this one doesnt leave till 1ish, so we´re all going to the ´Central Mercat´in a minute which sounds great, with 980 stalls of all sorts of stuff. Ive really enjoyed Valencia and would (as always) recommend it, as you get much more of a traditional Spanishy experience without as many tourists or touristy places. We´ve had such a nice time with the Aussie girls too, it´s a shame we only had one more day with them ;(