Valencia, Spain
We got in to town in the afternoon and promptly went out looking for lunch. Valencia is the home of Paella and I'd heard there were places you could get take away Paella, so naturally I went in search of that. I found a great little place with about 8 different types of Paella, naturally I went there for lunch every day. We had a walk through town for a bit and looked at the old buildings and so on. We came across a bucks party, while all in Spanish, we managed to work out what was going on. The buck was dressed in a bird suit and had his arms covered in bird seed and sat at the fountain with the goal of having pigeons sit on his arms and eat. He failed and therefore had to run around the fountain a few times flapping like a bird. All in all, pretty entertaining.
That night a couple of girls and I headed out for dinner at a place recommended by the hostel for great Paella. We stopped first at an odd little Bar and Kitchen and had some drinks. Liz and I shared a jug if Sangria while the other girls had Gin and Tonic and juices. After a great old chat, we figured it was late enough to warrant having dinner in Spanish time. Even then, 9pm was quite an early dinner by Spanish standards. I'd been dying to try the Arozi Negro, black Paella made with squid ink, thankfully, so was Liz, so we shared a pan of it and nearly died from the noms. No really, it was amaze balls!
We headed back to the hostel and a number of the others were going out on a pub crawl. As with all good Spanish time frames, the pub crawl started at 1.30am. We hung out with the other girls and generally had a hilarious time harassing the people who were heading to the pub crawl. They were good entertainment.
The next morning I got up and headed out for breakfast with Liz and we also checked out the fresh produce markets. The meats were amazing and the fresh seafood was still twitching and yawning at us in the shellfish section, while the fish I swear could have up and started swimming right there. The produce was all incredibly fresh looking and appealing, juicy and waiting to be eaten! After some drooling, we headed off, me to my bike tour and Liz to wander the town. That's when my tourist powers went awry, I'd almost have been better off taking public transport with my track record this trip! I walked the entirely wrong way and utterly failed to figure it out or even find myself on the map until I really was further away from my destination than I really wanted. Once back on track, I lost all of my lead time and was almost 20 mins late, ie I got there almost 10 mins after my tour had left :(
But, it was a quiet day so the bike guy rode me down to where the group was, which was only at the first stop and I didn't miss out after all. I quite enjoyed the tour in spite of it being in German. Actually, the guide did repeat everything for me in English but I often already knew or gleaned the basic idea from the German version, which was pretty entertaining. The city has a wide, shallow river bed which dried up once and the locals liked it so much they permanently diverted the river and made the river bed in to a long public garden and sporting fields. They also have an amazing City of Arts and Sciences built in the widest part of the former river. This place is like something out of the future including an IMAX theatre whose building looks like a giant eye complete with a glass awning eyelid THAT BLINKS! I couldn't make it up if I tried and while I didn't hang around to see it take 20 mins to blink, it was quite clear that it could and would. The city also houses the larges Oceanarium in Europe, I wish I went, but alas the bike tour kept on. The Opera house is also equally awesome in it's weird eyeball shape that looks like a roman helm from the front, or maybe a shark or the bow of a boat. And had a massive feather running across the entire roof and only contacts the ground in one place. I seriously could have spent a long time exploring, it was simply amazing.
By the time the bike tour returned (past a bridge with palm trees growing thorough it!) and I navigated my way back to the hostel (via Paella lunch) without getting lost again, I was a bit sunburned and tired, so I indulged in a good old Spanish Siesta. That evening Liz and I had a hankering for Italian, go figure, so we wandered the streets in the cool of the evening till we found a sweet little taverna and indulged in a jug of Sangria and some pizza and pasta. But we couldn't let the entire night go by without some Spanish cuisine so we headed back to our breakfast joint to have dessert.... Churros! There are no words for the amount of hot melted chocolate and oily goodness of the churros that had us both in food coma's by the end. We waddled back to the hostel and off to our respective beds.
The next morning we headed out for breakfast at a different place where they spoke even less English but we still muddled along. We went for another walk through town and sorted out postcard stamps and stuff. It was a bit too early for lunch, so instead we decided life is too short and had dessert first. There is a popular gelato place that makes bizarre flavours including Gazpacho, lobster, tortilla (the Spanish variety, not Mexican) and even Hello Kitty flavour... Not sure what Hello Kitty flavour is made out of, but the smurf flavour had us equally as worried. Instead, I had donut flavour and something we couldn't pronounce and we weren't sure if it was pumpkin but had a miniature couple on top of it, so what could go wrong? It was odd but tasty, we surmised it might have been wedding cake flavour or something.
After a short reprieve, we decided it was in fact lunch time and I took Liz to my take away paella place. Cue another food coma. We had an amazing beef broth based Paella with sausage, chickpeas and potato in it and a whole lot of nom. Afterwards we noticed there were some cakes on the display and we got a piece each for later, Liz opting for the apple cake and I got something with biscuits and chocolate which we think was actually some traditional cake that was also the basis for my gelato flavour. Well, that's what we're going with anyway. I ate it on the Busabout bus later and it was indeed tasty.
First it was on to Madrid where I had tapas dinner with the Busabout people, then I headed off to then catch the overnight train to Lisbon! That's a whole lot of transit... The overnight train was a bit odd, I was on a top bunk and had to heft my backpack in to a shelf above my bed! I didn't sleep well, more dozed and napped. Arriving in Lisbon was a bit of an adventure in guessing which stop to get off at!