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back from Valencia, Spain yesterday...i'll try to recap the trip i guess...it was good...let's see it started on sept 28th...i went to target at 10 (had to be at the airport at 11 or so) to get my glasses...they weren't in yet...they said they were supposed to arrive...i waited 30 minutes and they checked again and then they were saying the lab said they had to resubmit it or something...like uh, the order just disappeared (even though they claimed it had already shipped the week before) so they fucked me over and i didn't get my glasses...oh well...rush to the aiport and we're off, arriving in Spain the next morning...of course only got a couple hours of sleep on the plane...the Madrid airport is like the worst thing ever...it's like a group of different, separate airports...you have to take a bus and leave the airport to get to different "terminals"...added to the fact that you can't understand anyone when you're trying to figure out where you're supposed to go...and the people there are kinda jerky and it's fast and hectic...but we managed and made it to Valencia...i'll probably highlight in this post and go into details later...let's see...our first hotel was right on the beach...Mary Beth was smart and asked for a window looking out on the beach (there are only a few rooms with a view 'cuz it's a small and crammed hotel) but so we got a room with an awesome window view and the Mediterranean was right there...we went swimming most days we stayed there...i didn't pack beach shoes and we were close enough i just walked barefoot from the hotel to the beach, just around the block...we were really tired the first day we were the there, as it was pretty much the second day in row of mostly being up (followd by the days of not enough sleep surrounding the wedding)...Valencia is a city of dogs...people are walking dogs all over the place...i mean, we saw TONS of dogs...and most of them weren't even on leashes...it's a kind of dog heaven there...
the second day there we went to the City of Arts and Sciences...the buildings are really amazing...L'Oceanogràfic was nice...saw a few things of note there: a whole school of fish ganging up and attacking a ray (not a stingray, but a smaller kind of ray) suddenly and for no apparent reason, giant spider crabs doing it, and the Horace of sea lions...the science museum was a little disappointing...i mean, it's awesome to walk around outside, the inside's alright but the museum itself is geared more towards children...some parts were alright, and it was worth it just to go inside...
we stayed five nights at the first hotel then went to the bed and breakfast in the old city...it's run by these two gay dudes that were awesome and nice...their place is amazing...and it's right in the old city...at first it's hard as hell navigating around the old city...as you can imagine, streets planned in medieval times go in every possible direction except for north, south, east, and west...and they are numerous and small with the distinctions between street and alley and street and sidewalk often blurred...it's not that big once you get used to it and doesn't take long to get from one place to another...add this to most streets not being listed or shown on the somewhat abstracted tourist maps we had, and when they were the street names were in spanish where MOST actual street signs were in valencian (a different language, a variation of catelan, somewhat a cross between spanish and french...often not difficult to recognize the spanish equivalent, but when you're wandering around sometimes you miss the meanings when you don't know what to look for...) but when you're initially wandering and confused you can make very time-consuming, errant paths...but it's an awesome place to wander around in...every building is amazing...it's true of the other parts of the city, but it's especially true in the old city...my favorite sites were probably the two remaining city gates/towers as the last remnants of the old city wall...
i'll take a break here and make reference to the whole being in a country where you don't speak the language thing...yikes, i wish to hell i hadn't forgotten the spanish i used to know...and i didn't have any time to brush up beforehand with getting ready for the wedding and getting my schoolwork finished...much of the time people replied to me i had NO idea as to what the hell they'd just said so i'd sit there with this stupid look on my face...and much of the time they tried to be helpful and speak english words to me it made it even more confusing, because their accents were so heavy and their english was as bad as my spanish and i would've done better hearing them speak spanish (so long as it was in an equivalent, simplified, one-word-at-a-time fashion...) so i felt bad...at one point i tried to say something about a tip and instead used the word for bathroom...nice one...it's funny though 'cuz the people who run the bed and breakfast are dutch and speak english much more than spanish...they'd only been living in Spain for a year and knew no more spanish when they moved than we do...so i was a little surprised by that, though pleasantly...it is relieving to communicate in actual sentences after a week of half-understood broken spanish...now i feel ready to help every foreign traveler i meet...
the day before we left we took the bus down to El Palmar, a tiny tiny tiny village about 5 kilometers south of Valencia that's supposed to specialize in paella...as in THE place in the world for paella...it was very difficult to find any information about this bus, because it's some weird line that's seems half part of the regular metry system...not one of the regular lines, but still part of it and i think run by a different company but in conjuction, i dunno...information was scarce...we figured out where the stop was after several days...it was an adventure leaving the city...we got to the little village and it was tiny indeed...it varied from being one, two, or (briefly) three streets wide...it had a ton of restaurants and nothing else (other than residences)...we knew one of the restaurants we were supposed to go to and had a great meal and then waited about three hours for a bus...we're sitting in the single town square with a little fountain where the bus dropped us off...we're a little worried because there's no sign for a bus...no buses come and we're getting worried we ask someone and i *think* he tells us it comes to the fountain...so we keep waiting and ask someone about the time and we hear it should arrive soon...then a nice old man came up and told us the bus was somewhere else...not really understanding EXACTLY where that was, after much pointing and walking in about the only direction to walk in the town i recognized a word that meant "rotary" in spanish so we went to the rotary just on the edge of town and sure enough there was a bus sign...so the bus comes, we get on it and it continues right past the point we had been waiting anyway...i don't know what was going on there...i don't know if we missed other buses or that was the only one to finally come...that bus line i know does not run often, once an hour or so...at the most...maybe there's a lull in the day (as there is with most things in Spain...) it's still a mystery...
i know there's more stuff i could say...i'll catch up later...this post is already too long to read...when we got back home i called my mom and my aunt is in a coma from overdosing on her medication...she's stable now but the doctors don't expect her to live...i don't really know what's going on right now...so that's pretty bad...it seemed like it had just happened when i talked to my mom, because they were just leaving to go down to wherever she is...so, obviously, not good...
the second day there we went to the City of Arts and Sciences...the buildings are really amazing...L'Oceanogràfic was nice...saw a few things of note there: a whole school of fish ganging up and attacking a ray (not a stingray, but a smaller kind of ray) suddenly and for no apparent reason, giant spider crabs doing it, and the Horace of sea lions...the science museum was a little disappointing...i mean, it's awesome to walk around outside, the inside's alright but the museum itself is geared more towards children...some parts were alright, and it was worth it just to go inside...
we stayed five nights at the first hotel then went to the bed and breakfast in the old city...it's run by these two gay dudes that were awesome and nice...their place is amazing...and it's right in the old city...at first it's hard as hell navigating around the old city...as you can imagine, streets planned in medieval times go in every possible direction except for north, south, east, and west...and they are numerous and small with the distinctions between street and alley and street and sidewalk often blurred...it's not that big once you get used to it and doesn't take long to get from one place to another...add this to most streets not being listed or shown on the somewhat abstracted tourist maps we had, and when they were the street names were in spanish where MOST actual street signs were in valencian (a different language, a variation of catelan, somewhat a cross between spanish and french...often not difficult to recognize the spanish equivalent, but when you're wandering around sometimes you miss the meanings when you don't know what to look for...) but when you're initially wandering and confused you can make very time-consuming, errant paths...but it's an awesome place to wander around in...every building is amazing...it's true of the other parts of the city, but it's especially true in the old city...my favorite sites were probably the two remaining city gates/towers as the last remnants of the old city wall...
i'll take a break here and make reference to the whole being in a country where you don't speak the language thing...yikes, i wish to hell i hadn't forgotten the spanish i used to know...and i didn't have any time to brush up beforehand with getting ready for the wedding and getting my schoolwork finished...much of the time people replied to me i had NO idea as to what the hell they'd just said so i'd sit there with this stupid look on my face...and much of the time they tried to be helpful and speak english words to me it made it even more confusing, because their accents were so heavy and their english was as bad as my spanish and i would've done better hearing them speak spanish (so long as it was in an equivalent, simplified, one-word-at-a-time fashion...) so i felt bad...at one point i tried to say something about a tip and instead used the word for bathroom...nice one...it's funny though 'cuz the people who run the bed and breakfast are dutch and speak english much more than spanish...they'd only been living in Spain for a year and knew no more spanish when they moved than we do...so i was a little surprised by that, though pleasantly...it is relieving to communicate in actual sentences after a week of half-understood broken spanish...now i feel ready to help every foreign traveler i meet...
the day before we left we took the bus down to El Palmar, a tiny tiny tiny village about 5 kilometers south of Valencia that's supposed to specialize in paella...as in THE place in the world for paella...it was very difficult to find any information about this bus, because it's some weird line that's seems half part of the regular metry system...not one of the regular lines, but still part of it and i think run by a different company but in conjuction, i dunno...information was scarce...we figured out where the stop was after several days...it was an adventure leaving the city...we got to the little village and it was tiny indeed...it varied from being one, two, or (briefly) three streets wide...it had a ton of restaurants and nothing else (other than residences)...we knew one of the restaurants we were supposed to go to and had a great meal and then waited about three hours for a bus...we're sitting in the single town square with a little fountain where the bus dropped us off...we're a little worried because there's no sign for a bus...no buses come and we're getting worried we ask someone and i *think* he tells us it comes to the fountain...so we keep waiting and ask someone about the time and we hear it should arrive soon...then a nice old man came up and told us the bus was somewhere else...not really understanding EXACTLY where that was, after much pointing and walking in about the only direction to walk in the town i recognized a word that meant "rotary" in spanish so we went to the rotary just on the edge of town and sure enough there was a bus sign...so the bus comes, we get on it and it continues right past the point we had been waiting anyway...i don't know what was going on there...i don't know if we missed other buses or that was the only one to finally come...that bus line i know does not run often, once an hour or so...at the most...maybe there's a lull in the day (as there is with most things in Spain...) it's still a mystery...
i know there's more stuff i could say...i'll catch up later...this post is already too long to read...when we got back home i called my mom and my aunt is in a coma from overdosing on her medication...she's stable now but the doctors don't expect her to live...i don't really know what's going on right now...so that's pretty bad...it seemed like it had just happened when i talked to my mom, because they were just leaving to go down to wherever she is...so, obviously, not good...
