The big bang has nothing to do with the universe
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2006
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12
58
Trip End
Dec 01, 2006
Valencia, Spain
Friday, March 10, 2006
Oh by the way...did I mention that Valencia is WARM!??! It is only 30°C, but compared to the rest of Europe, this feels like a 45°C day at home. I am walking around in thongs and t-shirt livin' da vida loca ha ha ha. (whatever that even means...)
We were in Valencia for the beginning of a crazy festival called Las Fias (not sure of the spelling). I think that means 'the fire'. They have lots of fire crackers and the town pays for these huge papier mache objects to be made, which they burn at the peak of the festival. Although it was just winding up, one could see that this was a major occurrence in the life of a Valencian. Every day at 2pm sharp, a massive ten-minute firecracker display is put on in one of the town squares. There is a multitude of banging sounds and before it started, I was warned that it would be extremely loud and I thought 'yeah couldn't be that bad'. When it started, I thought people were blowing up bombs. It was so loud that people one hundred metres away were covering their ears and the feeling of every blast was felt in the chest. The big finale is almost unbearable; even with your ears blocked, but once it is all over, the people, who have flocked from miles around, all cheer and a band starts to play. The only bad thing about this carnival was that kids could buy the crackers and they would set them off wherever they liked without warning and it would scare the living daylights out of you if you were close.
Apart from the crazy festival celebrations, Valencia is one of the most relaxing places I have ever been. People walk slow because they know there is no hurry, there is no public transport in the centre of the city, so it seems nice and slow and the weather is warm enough for people to be relaxed. I would say that it has the same feel as Margaret River, for people who have been there. For those who have not, that is your next holiday destination.
We spent most of our time walking around, lost, in the backstreets of the Valencian city-centre. We were always looking for Sonya's friend, Helen, who is studying one semester in Spain. She is an awesome young lady who showed us around the traps and took us to some awesome restaurants. They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach and therefore I think I'm in love with Helen! She took us to this fantastic Tapas restaurant where they had this one piece that was a sausage, but instead of meat, it had fruit and roasted almond inside. This was fried in honey and then wrapped in some bacon and pinned to a piece of bread: heaven on Earth. I went back there the next day because I just couldn't get the taste out of my head. Tapas, if you've never been lucky enough to have, is a little bit like a buffet where there is a selection of bread and food snacks that you choose. When you have finished, you ask for the bill and they count the number of toothpicks on your plate and charge you accordingly. I will search for this when I get home and if it doesn't exist, import a Spanish chef and start my own restaurant!
Something cool about Valencia is that it isn't really as tourist city and so you don't get too many touristy things going on around you. Everything is in Spanish, which made me feel like I was in some exotic land, and the people speak little English in most cases. So I feel like I got a pretty authentic feel for what Spanish city life is like. The best way to do this would be to go out into a tiny town and live for a month or so, but I can't afford to do such things. Something authentic and slightly different to home is that the restaurants open at 8:30 or 9:00 for dinner. For us who are used to eating at 7:00pm, the wait can be undesirable, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do. The food was worth waiting for anyway.
It is really interesting the way that the different regions don't like each other. For instance, they all have different languages and often choose not to speak the common language as to ignore people from other regions. I also saw some stickers that said to boycott Catalan products. Catalonia is where Barcelona is. I have included a picture of this.
Pubs in Valencia were really cool and on the last night there, we went to a bar and we had some traditional Spanish music played to us by a busker on a guitar. It was a fiery style of music that you could expect to hear at a bullfight or something; stereotypically that is.
I think I have got everything in about this awesome city. I would definitely return again and just lay about forever if I could. If anyone who reads this goes to Europe, go to Valencia!
