Day 11

Day 11 was a much-needed day to myself.  I woke up around 10:30 and went down to breakfast without Taylor, who slept wwwaaayyy in.  In “el comedor” (the breakfast-only dining hall) I ate my bread and tomato sauce and drank my café con leche and best glass of orange juice in the world while I read the local Valencian newspaper, “Levante.”  The big stories were all things that I had read online a few days before (cruise ship disaster, Wikipedia shutdown, etc.) but I found it rather interesting to read the editorials and very local news.  The language here in Valencia is called Catalan, and is just different enough from “regular Spanish” (Castellan) that I had to give up half way through each article because I couldn’t understand.  A bit frustrating, but interesting nonetheless. 

After breakfast, I went up and showered and packed my daypack full of fruit and bread from the dining hall, grabbed my camera and my notebook and headed out into the city, opposite the direction we walk to school.

Early on in my walk, I found this castle-looking structure and asked the man at the gate if it was open to the public and if I needed to pay to go in.  He asked if I was a student and then let me in for free—how great!  Here’s what it looked like:

I spent a good 20 minutes up there at the top, soaking in yet another incredible view of this amazing city, taking tons of pictures and just enjoying the breeze and the nice day.

From there, I continued my walk through the city, passing by tons of pastry shops, flower shops, cafés, fruit stands and so much more.  After a while, I found what I had unknowingly been looking for: El Jardin Botanico.  A botanical garden!  Right here in the city!  I remembered how much I enjoyed the botanical gardens in Athens, so I figured this one would be just as good, if not better.  I paid the 2-euro entrance fee (looking back, though, I probably could have just showed my student I.D and gotten in for free…) and walked in and was immediately mesmerized by all the wonderful plant-life before me.  Over the course of the next two hours, I took about a zillion pictures!  Here are a few of my favorites:

After finishing the circuit and seeing everything there was to see, I left and headed back to the dorms for lunch and told everyone about the great places I had found.

Not much else happened the rest of the day, and I ended up just working a bit on my presentation for class on Monday while everyone else took a siesta.  Around 6 or 7, though, just as it was getting dark, I was sitting out on the balcony and watched as about 20 or 30 people, all dressed in white, walked by on the street below me carrying drums and bells and a few bagpipes.  They weren’t playing the instruments, just carrying them, and I didn’t think much of it other than “Hmm…I guess they’re doing a concert somewhere tonight,” but about 15 minutes later, the drumming and bagpiping started to ring out through the streets somewhere off in the distance, so of course I ran outside and followed the sound around corners and down alleys until I finally caught up.  It seemed to be a parade, complete with a drum core and people marching and children dancing and a big crowd clapping and cheering and following them through the maze of streets.  The people at the front and back of the crowd held banners with handwritten words in that “other Spanish” that I can’t quite read, so I was a bit confused.  Everyone seemed happy, though—like they were having a good time and this was a regular, family thing to do—so I just followed along and took pictures and smiled when people looked at me.  A few times, the crowd stopped moving and formed a big circle around the drummers and dancers, and chanted and clapped as the people dressed in white made a big human-pyramid in the middle of the street!  I was completely confused but cheered along anyway.  Here’s what it looked like:

Only after walking back to the dorms and talking to my teacher did I finally realize what the “parade” was all about: it was actually a protest for public education reform! “It was so peaceful!” I told him.  “They were dancing and cheering and making human-pyramids with little kids!  It didn't look like a protest at all!”  He laughed and explained the whole thing to me.  Protest or not, it was quite the experience.

Not much else happened the rest of the night, as everyone stayed in and went to bed early so that we would have lots of energy for our big excursion to the Valencia Aquarium—El Oceanografic.  I’ll tell you all about it in my next post!  Until then…

Much love to all.

C