Oh! Valencia

Currently in Valencia: city of paella, a ridiculous hostal, and the most amazing aquarium that I´ve ever visited. Sari and I met up with Jenny on Thursday night, after we took a very meager bus ride from Alicante, only 2 hours compared to the hellish bus ride of 8 hours that we´d had from Malaga to Alicante. Score!

Upon first glance, Valencia is gorgeous. Light coloured buildings, and its the 3rd biggest city in Spain but feels completely accessible by walking everywhere.Thursday found us mostly roaming around the area of our hostal and checking out the numerous plazas with fountains, and ducking into a cathedral or two which are always breathtaking. Jenny arrived a bit later than us on Thursday and we celebrated being back together with a wonderful meal of nachos and a brownie sundae that made me want to cry, at this tacky American style restaurant. A bit weird to be in an American place and then to step back out onto the spanish sidewalks, but kind of amazing. We had an early night, just kicking it with some fellow travelers at our hostal bar. There are about 200 people staying here, its kind of out of control! But there´s air conditioning at night so who really cares.

Friday was a delightfully cloudy day, so we walked from our hostal through the Central Park of Valencia all the way to the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias (city of arts and sciences) to check out the supposed best and biggest aquarium in Europe. And it was AMAZING. Some of the many aquatic sights we saw were seahorses and dwarf seahorses that were the size of my thumbnail, sea dragons, tons of sharks that swam over your head as you walked down a tunnel, beluga whales, penguins, walruses, and loads of amazing fish. It was enough to make me contemplate learning to scuba dive! maybe..

Afterwards we continued our exploration of the city, which is fairly compact, and made a lovely dinner of lentils and veggies in the hostal kitchen. We then went to this hole in the wall cafe called Cafe del Duende, where it seemed like nothing special until this rather heavyset gentlemen came onto the tiny stage and started playing a haunting flamenco melody, and a flamenco singer began singing and there was a man and a woman who alternated flamenco dancing, inspiring all sorts of emotions from the crowd, unbelievable. We stood there, mesmirized for 2 hours before we realized how much time had past. It made me ache for Spain, although I am still here. It was the strangest, most bittersweet feeling. The flamenco show was definitely one of my top ten favourite Spanish experiences.

Today we didn´t really have a plan so we checked out some markets, more plazas and cathedrals, chilled here at the hostal, and are planning on heading out later to the bohemian, funky neighborhood called Barrio El Carmen. Really a wonderful weekend, but I´m starting to vibrate with tension about heading back to Barcelona tomorrow for a few days. Ole!