Vacaciones: Valencia y Valle de los Caidos

So I’ve been keeping myself busy. As have been my friends. It’s a wonder I’m still alive after the weekend I had.

Every year Valencia has a huge festival called Las Fallas. Each neighborhood in Valencia makes a huge float out of foam, wood, and paper maché. After a week of partying and displaying the floats, they burn them all. Kids run through the streets with firecrackers scaring the shit out of every sane individual. For some reason, my friends and I decided that it would be fun to go to this festival with the Erasmus group. We left at 8:30 Saturday morning for a 4.5-hour bus ride to Valencia and returned to Madrid on the same bus the following morning at 9:30. So basically I pulled an allnighter louder and more potent than any I’ve ever pulled in Wurster with millions of really dunk and rude people (we overhead a group of older Spanish women talking smack about us because we were American but were too tired to respond). Its no wonder I woke up Monday morning sick as a dog.

That being said, I’m glad I went to Valencia. The floats were absolutely stunning and the city itself was beautiful. It was so surreal to see fireworks hovering precariously close to buildings and to hear them echo through the streets.





My favorite part of the trip- hands down- was going to the beach. Or should I say the sea, the Mediterranean Sea.

After 2 hours of wandering around Valencia we finally made it to the water. And although it was cold and gray, I still ran to the water and waded in up to my knees. I swear I was drying out. It had been over a month since I had seen a proper salty body of water. I’ve lived all my life within a mile of the ocean. Even though I don’t go to the beach all the time, just having the ocean nearby is enough. Its presence calms me. The sand. The salt. The waves.

Being so close to the Mediterranean Sea meant good seafood. At one of the many overcrowded cafes with rude waiters I mead Emi, Adriana, and Matt eat black rice with me. Black rice is a specialty of the area. Its rice, squid, a white sauce, and squid ink. It looks absolutely disgusting, but it was one of the best meals I’ve had in Spain. I highly recommend it.


The day before the Valencia trip Adriana, Emi, and I visited another city near Madrid. El Escorial. Its home to a huge royal monastery and the tombs of all the former kings/queens of Spain. Doesn’t sound too interesting, but it was. After a few hours of gawking at the Romanesque monastery and cathedral, we took a short bus trip over to Valle de los Caidos. Its basiclly a huge monument to Franco. He had it built by the Spanish civil war prisoners and is buried inside. Technically, it’s a monument for all those who died in the civil war. But really it’s a huge We Love Franco! cross and cathedral built into the hillside. And as we noted, its rather fitting that Franco’s monument to himself is falling apart. There were leaks and cracks everywhere.

We got soaked in the rain but I don’t think I’d want to see el Valle de los Caidos any other way.

Anything else exciting? I made cookies the other night for a dinner party. It was rather hard to do with the conversions and different ingredients and lack of chocolate chips. They tasted a bit odd, but were a hit regardless. I went to Kapital (7 story discoteca) again, still not my scene but I had more fun than last time. I continue to go out/do something every night. Last night it was gelato and an irish pub with a Brit, 2 Swiss girls, a guy from Holland, another from France, a French Canadian and 2 Americans. The conversations going around the table were rather interesting. My favorite was the discussion of milk- should it be served cold/room-temp/warm. All the people form North American agreed that cold was the correct answer.

This weekend Adriana and I are headed to Sevilla. I’m almost as excited to go back there as I am to go to Greece. Semana Santa is coming up so soon!