Word Association: Valencia Edition

Two days in Granada, then it was off to Valencia. Let's keep the word association game going. Valencia.........that's right, Paella! Valencia is the birthplace of paella, so I was excited to get some delicious rice in a pan from the source, especially after the sub-par offering in Sevilla. Carolyn and I got into Valencia bright and early after our overnight bus, and we headed straight to Valencia's huge market to get some breakfast. The market was lively, selling fresh fruit, pastries and meats. After getting some snacks, we pretty much explored town to get our bearings. Sevilla and Granada were both beautiful cities, but I liked Valencia the most out of the three. It was a good combination of small streets and plazas, but also a bigger city feel. After walking around town for a few hours, we went to the tourist office to ask for some paella recommendations, where we were directed to a famous place called La Riua. We headed straight to the restaurant since we were starving, only to find out it didn't open until 2pm. The next two hours was two of the longest hours of my life.

The open air market.

One of many beautiful, small streets.

After attempting to distract myself from food, we finally headed to La Riua to get the goods. Valencia isn't only known for paella in general, but for their specific paella with chicken and rabbit. Wanting to get the authentic stuff, we ordered it and waited patiently for 45 minutes as the paella cooked. After 45 minutes of my leg shaking under the table and cold sweats, the paella finally arrived in a giant pan, and Carolyn and I dug in like there was no tomorrow. The paella was really tasty, especially with the added flavor of extreme hunger.

Where have you been all my life?

After gorging ourselves, we took an afternoon siesta at our hostel, before heading out on another free tour. There we met Chris from Colorado, who also shared our passion for paella (As an aside, Chris is also a gelato fiend. Once in Verona, he went to 16 gelato shops within a few hours to spend the last of his 30 euros!). After our tour, our guide recommended another famous paella place, El Rall. The three of us headed over there and ordered the seafood paella, round two for Carolyn and me that day. Again, very delicious and filling, especially the crunchy bits at the bottom of the pan.

More!

The next day, Carolyn and I decided to visit the Oceanographic, Valencia's famous aquarium. We rented bikes then took a beautiful bike ride through Valencia's green belt that used to be a river but was filled in and converted to a park. The aquarium was fun and even had the underwater tubes you could walk through and see sharks and other fish swim all around you. Think Jaws 3D…if you can.

On our way to the aquarium.

In honor of shark week.

 After the aquarium, we headed to the beach to meet up with Chris and his hostel friends Justin and Alexia. After five hours or so on the beach, we all headed back into town to meet up for dinner. We were pleasantly surprised when we saw our friend Anan (from Sevilla) in our hostel. He told us he'd be in Valencia, but it was just a coincidence that he stayed in the exact same hostel as us. We headed to Montaditos to get some snacks before meeting up with the rest of the group for what other than paella. Another signature dish of Valencia we tried is their horchata, which is a milky drink made out of tiger nuts (that sounds wrong, but I'm not going to re-write it). It's kind of like soy milk, but a slightly stronger flavor.

Tiger nuts.

One pan to rule then all.

When we finished dinner, we tried to go to a bar to redeem some free drinks, but surprise, surprise, they wouldn't let me in because I looked too disheveled (actually only kind of true, it was because I had a tank top on, but I'm sure the rest of my "look" didn't help the cause). We finally found a restaurant where I could sit outside, away from high-class society, and we ordered yet another Valencia specialty: Agua de Valencia. It's pretty much orange juice with champagne and vodka. A note to all you cities out there trying to get tourists to spend money: make up as many local signature dishes as you can, and get a giant rake to haul in your earnings.

Enjoying agua de Valencia at a place that accepts me for who I am.

I really enjoyed my time in Valencia, hanging out with new friends and sampling all of Valencia's famous dishes. But watch out, Valencia! Next time I'm here, I'm bringing a razor and a button-up and I'm redeeming that free drink!

Word Association: Granada Edition

After the fun time in Sevilla, Carolyn and I headed to Granada for a couple of days to meet up with Carolyn's gracious friend RJ. I honestly didn't know anything about Granada before I went (except for the answering machine song in The Simpsons), but quickly learned a very important lesson in word association: Granada = free tapas!

More Flamenco dancing we saw due to the Corpus Cristi festival.

RJ told us that Granada was unique in that whenever you ordered a drink, a free tapas would always come free with it. Now, I'm not really a big drinker, but with this kind of motivation, I had to step up my game. Before we met up for tapas, RJ took Carolyn and I to an area of Granada influenced by the Moors known for tea and hookah. It was a really nice area to walk around and also get a beautiful view of the Alhambra (more on this in a bit).

Tea and hookah with RJ.

Awesome view of the Alhambra.

After our tea and hookah, RJ and his girlfriend Anna (a very lovely girl) took us out one to try a few of his favorite tapas places. The first place we went was Poe, which was a very unique tapas place in that the owner and his wife were British and African, respectively, so the tapas they served were a fusion of a lot of different cuisines and were so good. Again, I'm not a big drinker, but one drink I did enjoy was called clara, which is a mix of lemonade and beer. Along with my drink, I got a couple of delicious, small rice dishes: one with spicy pork, thai style, and the other a saucy chicken dish. The second place we went to was known for their seafood. Along with our drinks, we got some cucumber with vinagrette, deep fried cod, and a really good octopus salad.

Tapas from Poe.

Octopus salad.

The night continued when we met up with a RJ's friends Flora and Esmeralda and went to a giant fair to celebrate the Corpus Cristi festival. The fair was outrageous. If the Puyallup Fair was Nate Robinson, the Corpus Cristi festival was Shaq...on steroids. Pretty much everything was on steroids. We had to call it quits at 4am, but there were still tons of families with young kids out when we left. They even had clubs at this fair! We rode a few rides, but the best part of the night was at the end when we got some churros dipped in chocolate. One order of churros came in a giant swirl of deep fried doughy goodness, but because the guy liked us, he gave us one free. We shouldn't have eaten the second one, but of course we did.

At the fair!

Churro madness.

Like I've mentioned before, it's always nice to balance fun/eating with some culture, so Carolyn and I went to Granada's most famous sight, the Alhambra, a Moorish palace built in the 14th century. It was beautiful and probably the most well-kempt and scenic palace we'd seen on our whole trip. There were a lot of pristine gardens as well as gorgeous views of the city from the towers. Along with getting a dose of culture, I also thought it would be a great experience to attend a Catholic mass in Granada's largest cathedral. Never having attended a Catholic mass before, I was pretty sure I'd be a little confused, but then I remembered it would also be in Spanish, so being confused twice would cancel out. Right? Right. Because of the Corpus Cristi festival, the mass was special and ended with a giant float-type thing being carried out of the cathedral by 20 or so boys into the streets while music played. Definitely a very interesting and unique experience that I was happy to be able to see.

The open air hall.

The lookout for the army.

Where's Waldo?

My first experience at mass.

One last note about my time in Granada. I'm sure most of you who have seen some pictures of me on the trip think I look slightly to extremely homeless. Well, in Granada I finally got to play the part. The owner of our hostel was kind of a grumpy old lady and not very accommodating, so when I asked to rest in the hostel lounge after we checked out (I was a little sick), she of course said I couldn't, so I had to find an alternative place to rest for the day. To the park! I found a nice shaded park not too far from our hostel and made camp for about five hours. Finally my facial hair and sleeping situation was in concert. Thanks, Granada!

Bullfights, Flamenco Dances, and Naps in Sevilla

After plenty of beach time in Greece, we made it to our next destination: Sevilla, Spain. When we first got to our hostel, we were a little disappointed because it was so big (four stories!) and there were so many people, we thought it might be a little chaotic and hard to meet people. Luckily we were proven wrong and met a lot of amazing new friends while doing a lot of "Spanish" things in the mean time. What types of "Spanish" things you ask? One includes mandatory naps. If that doesn't get you excited to read the rest of this post, I can't help you.

One great thing about Spain is that they offer free tours in a most of the major cities, and are connected with many of the hostels. This means you get to explore the city and learn about its history for a few hours while also meeting people from your hostel. One thing I noticed immediately about Sevilla was how beautiful the small streets and plazas were, and how scenic it was just to walk around. Our free tour was really interesting and helped us get acclimated to the city since the streets were so windy and narrow (and sooo hot - Sevilla was 40 degrees Celsius!). On our tour, we got to meet about 10 other people from our hostel, which we spent a good amount of time with over the next three days.

Some cool/weird architecture.

On the walking tour.

We wanted to get right into the Spain experience, so our first day we set out for tapas. Most people in Sevilla don't speak English, so most of our time in Sevilla tapas bars was spent trying to translate menus. We did pretty well for the most part getting a lot of bread and ham (they love their jamon in Spain), although I didn't love the salted cod (bacalao). We also got some paella, but we went to a random place and it didn't turn out to be too good (luckily we tried much better as we went through Spain, stay tuned for a future post). The restaurant we frequented the most was 100 Mantaditos, a restaurant that sold 100 different types of mini sandwiches. Our South African friend Daniel recommended the place to us one Wednesday night because there was a special that day for 1 euro sandwiches ("It'll change your life, bru!"). Too bad for us, everyone else in Sevilla was fiending 1 euro montaditos as well, so the wait was about an hour (at 11pm! But when we ate at midnight, it was more than satisfying (although I don't think my life was changed, bru:)).

Mmmm, 1 euro montaditos.

Late night hanging out with tinto verano.

One day on the hostel's rooftop deck (where we spent many evenings drinking sangria trying to beat the heat), a few of us heard that there was going to be a bull fight because of the Corpus Christi festival (generally bull fights are only on Sundays, so we thought we'd miss it). We decided it'd be a really cool experience to check it out, even though we all heard it was a bit gruesome. It turned out to be more than a bit gruesome (which is probably why it's already been banned in other Spanish cities), but was still a very interesting experience. Apart from how gruesome it was, it was really impressive to see how the bullfighters control the bulls, at times turning their backs on them only being a few feet away.

The roof deck where we spent many a hot evening.

Rooting for the bull the whole way.

To lighten the mood a bit after the bull fight, we met up with a more people from our hostel to watch some Flamenco dancing. We were in a hot, crowded room, but it was a really enjoyable experience beause the dancers and singers were so passionate about it you couldn't help but get into it too. We ended the night of Spanish culture with a fantastic night of dancing at one of the bars near Sevilla's river front. Definitely one of the more fun and eventful days of my trip so far.

Beautiful flamenco dancing in a hot room.

Dance party!!!

One Spanish institution I was wholeheartedly behind was their afternoon siestas. I've been known to enjoy a nap or two, so Spain was my kind of place. Everyday, from 2-5 or so, the whole city shut down and napped because of the intense heat. Not wanting to be disrespectful of their culture, I joined in.

The last two days of our trip were spent (when I wasn't napping) exploring some of Sevilla's historic sites such as the cathedral, royal palace, and a few of the beautiful plazas and parks. The cathedral was massive (3^rd largest in the world!) and just kind of took my breath away when I walked in. Even with palace/cathedral/ruins fatigue from my two months of traveling, I was still blown away.

Huuuuuuuuuuge cathedral.

View from the cathedral tower.

Plaza de Espana.

Inside the palace.

Originally we only planned to spend a couple of days in Sevilla, but because of the great friends we made, we extended our stay to four days (a few other friends extended their trips as well). It was definitely amazing how close knit our group got in the short time we spent together, and something that made our stay in Sevilla very special...and life changing, bru.

Hello to Zarina, Leif, Daniel, Anan, Lara, Chris, Angel, Jackie, Lin, Ip, Alex and the rest of the Oasis crew! Per Zarina, reunion in Glasgow or southeast Asia ASAP :).