What a great weekend it was!
Here’s what I did:
On Thursday, while everyone else was in class, I woke up
alarm clock-free and took my time getting ready for the day. I was in an explorer’s mood and wanted to see
a new side of the city, so after an early lunch, I set out across El Rio to the side of town I haven't seen yet. The day was
warm (~70 degrees) and in my sweater and jeans it was more pleasant to
walk on the shady side of the street than in the sun.
What I expected to be yet another action-packed part of the city
actually turned out to be a more residential area filled with lots of rundown
apartment buildings and laundromats and smaller, less spectacular markets. Nothing that I saw was too exciting, hence my
lack of pictures, but the walk was still enjoyable as it’s always fun to go new
places and see new things. After an hour
or so of aimless strolling, I found my way back to El Rio and, seeing as there
was not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was all too pleasant, I decided
to continue on down the length of the park to what has become my favorite place
in the whole city.
Remember?
There, I found a nice patch of shade under a weeping willow
and took off my shoes and sprawled out in the grass. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the day wash over me without a worry in the world. The temperature was perfect and
the slight breeze made it so the branches over my head swayed in and out of the sun, causing a flicker of shadow and light on my closed eyelids. It was a peaceful feeling and in no way bothersome; no—instead it seemed to bring me in and out of many quick, successive day dreams which I found all together satisfying...
When I snapped out of my revery, awoken by a barking dog and a burst of energy, I grabbed my things and continued on through the park. I came to the little bench at the very end by
the waterfall and pulled out my book and read for a while. There was tons of life around me: kids
yelling and playing on the playgrounds, teenage girls taking goofy pictures and
giggling to themselves, couples out with their dogs, enjoying the day and the
sun just like me, and tons of bicyclists just passing through. The setting was just perfect and made for a very relaxing afternoon.
When the temperature fell with the sun, I
packed up my things for good and made the long walk through El Rio back to the
dorms. Along the way, I saw A LOT of
people wearing red and white striped soccer jerseys, and I figured that they
were just a part of a tour group or something.
Not until I stood next to them at a crosswalk and read the badge on their jersey did I realize that they were all Stoke City fans (English) in town for the big Europa League soccer game against Valencia that night! How cool! The closer I got to my side of town, coinciding with closeness to the stadium, the more white and red-clad people there were, until finally, in the plaza right by the dorms, there was a huge crowd of them standing in a big circle just singing songs and drinking beer and getting ready for the game! It was quite a sight to see--check it out:
When I got back to my room, I told Taylor all about it and we rushed over to our soccer-watching bar to catch the
game. It’s really
cool that we’re good friends with the husband-wife bar owners now, and that they know to expect us for all the big soccer games and bring us each a beer as soon as we sit down. Makes me feel like a local!
Valencia won 1-0 in a less-than-exciting game, and afterwards we had a big dinner in the dining hall and I went to bed early
so that I would have lots of energy the next day at…THE BEACH!
On Friday I slept in again and had breakfast around 11. The majority of the girls from the group left
around that time for their weekend trip to Paris, so the guys decided the night
before to take advantage of the great weather and lack of baggage and hit the beach. Most everyone else opted for the ten-minute bus ride to the coast, but Taylor and I decided that it was such a nice day that we should rather save
the money and just walk.
Not our best
decision.
We made it aaallllll the way
to the end of El Rio, which made for a pleasant walk indeed, but when it ended and we had to
make the decision of where to go from there, the street signs were utterly unhelpful and, without a map, we had to guess. The way we went, everything from the Valencia that we know and love disappeared
and we found ourselves miles away in a desolate area of farm land and abandoned buildings and barns. We walked down some train tracks for a while, then along the highway, and finally through a slew of silent side streets, and eventually came to a park where we asked a woman if
she could point us in the direction of the main beach. Instead of being nice, though, like we expected, she just laughed and
told us we had a long way to go and was not much help at all. Frustrated, we continued on in the very vague
direction that she pointed and hoped that we would start to see or hear or smell some sign of the ocean soon. Thirty tired minutes later, we did…only it wasn’t the beach,
but the Valencia port filled with tons of industrial-type machines and
factories and smoke stacks and trucks.
Not quite what we were looking for, but a step in the right
direction. We found a security guard out front of one of the buildings and asked him how to get
to the beach, and he, scanning our disgruntled faces and sweaty shirts, laughed and told us that
it was about two kilometers away and that the road we
were on would eventually get us there. Our spirits lifted, we walked on until the palm trees sprouted and before we knew it, we
were there--on the sandy beaches of La Playa Valenciana, relaxing in the sun with the water at our feet. Delayed gratification is the best kind! Here are the pictures from our journey:
Remember the Gulliver's Travels playground I told you about?
And these funky buildings...
But that was the end of familiar sights. From here on, we were LOST...
 |
| We made it! |
Taylor and I sat there in the sand, staring out over the
slow-rolling waves for a good hour or so while the sun started its descent
behind us. Around 6, as it was just starting to get too cold for our short
sleeves and we contemplated going home, a group of the Spanish kids from our dorms walked up out of nowhere and sat down beside us. We talked for a while and told them about our frustrating day...well, Taylor, having gotten to know them a bit at the lunch table, carried our part of the conversation while I kind of just sat there and smiled and chimed in occasionally. The Spanish kids--four girls and two boys--passed around and shared with us the snack foods and drinks and
sandwiches they had just bought, and we all sat in a
big circle while one of the guys played his guitar.
This was my first real, non-lunchroom type interaction with the Spanish
kids so I was a bit nervous and self-conscious about my speaking abilities, but
they were all super friendly and played American songs for us and we swapped college stories to lots of laughter.
It was a great moment in a great environment with great people. I can now say that I have Spanish
friends! How cool! And now that the ice has been broken, talking with them will always be the easier. Fantastic.
When the sun finally fell completely, Taylor and I, in our
bathing suits and t-shirts, could stand the cold no longer so we bid the group
farewell and took the bus back to the dorms, where we had dinner and spent
the night in.
On Saturday we took a group trip around noon to El Museo
Fallero—a museum displaying all of the winning “Fallas” from the HUGE annual
festival in Valencia called “Las Fallas.” I’ll try to give you guys a better summary of the festival once I get a taste for what it really is, but my teachers have described it to me
like this: all year long, artists in Valencia work on these HUGE papier-mâché floats/statues/sculptures/scenes
called "Fallas" (Fy-ahs), and during the five day festival in March, the finished products
are paraded through the streets in celebration. As I
understand it, the festival is a tribute to St. Joseph and the history of carpentry in Spain, and the act of making the Fallas is a demonstration of their
graciousness for their excess of supplies over the course of the year.
For five straight days, then—morning, afternoon and especially night WITHOUT BREAK—the
city is lit up by fireworks and fire crackers and noise makers and smoke bombs and
drunk, yelling hooligans that have come in from all over the country to take
over the city. There are numerous
parades, concerts, and demonstrations that take place over the course of the five
days, all the while the people are going crazy and shooting fireworks at each
other and throwing cherry bombs at your feet and generally causing as much
(controlled) destruction as possible.
The climax of the festival is over the final two days when all but one of the beautiful Fallas are burned to the ground in huge, dramatic fashion. That is how I understand it, but as I said,
I’ll try to explain it again once it starts up and I experience it myself...
So anyway, the museum that we went to was where they keep
the ONE Fallas that doesn’t get destroyed. The city votes for their
favorite Fallas of the whole festival, and that one is put into the museum with
the hundreds of other “winners” that have been saved over the years, dating
back as far as the early 1900s. Needless
to say, the museum was incredible, as these structures are genuine works of art,
and obviously required hours and hours and hours of time and thought and
patience to design, build, paint, and detail.
Some of them are childish and cartoonish, others represent aspects of
Valencian and Spanish culture, and others are social criticisms for better or worse. Most of them have a “caricature” feel to them, but
some are more serious and geniuinely “beautiful.” The subjects over the years range dramatically and all are extremely unique. I was furious when I
read the sign on the front door that said, “NO FOTOS,” and it makes me even
more upset now that I can’t share them here with you. I guess you’ll just have to wait until I take
some “live” pictures of my own in a few weeks! For what it's worth, this is what the museum looked liked from the outside:
After the museum, I decided to forgo the bus ride
back with the group and instead walk the length of the city through El
Rio. It was a nice, peaceful walk, but
as I was too warmly dressed for the perfect weather, I was sweating by the end
and forced to shower when I got back.
After lunch I moved my desk chair out to the balcony and did some
reading and people-watching of the bustling street below me. It was a great way to pass the beautiful Saturday
afternoon.
At night after dinner, Taylor and I’s new Spanish friends invited us up
to their room to hang out for a while. We spent a good three or four hours listening
to the guitar get passed around the circle as each person played their favorite
set of songs, and I was teased (IN SPANISH)
for not knowing how to play. We shared stories again and taught each other
new words and phrases from each other’s language, and shared a lot of laughs
with our new friends. At around 2 AM we
went out into the city to find a bar or discotech, but
as the streets were filled with drunk, angry Englishmen, the Spaniards wanted
nothing to do with it and we decided to just
head back and play some more music and call it a night. Fine by me.
On Sunday, I spent most of the day reading out on the
balcony again, just enjoying the warm weather and relaxing as best I could.
I went out for a walk in the afternoon but actually got a little too hot and decided my time would be
better spent back on my perch.
The streets were busy with tourists because of the kickoff celebration of
Las Fallas that night, so there was lots to see and more importantly hear, as a
few drum-laden parades passed by underneath me. Check it out:
When it got dark, I went out to look for the fireworks display that would signal the official start of "The Fallas Season," but as the streets were absolutely packed with people walking every direction, I had to guess and unfortunately got it wrong for the second time in the weekend. Had I known that the castle-looking structure that I climbed a few weeks ago was where they would be launched from, I would have left much earlier to get a good spot, but
instead I spent the last waning moments of daylight frantically pacing around
the wrong part of the city and had to settle for a more distant view, shown here:
Not bad at all, but this is what it could have been:
Bummer, yes, but it was still cool. Don't worry, though—this is only the very
beginning of the party! For the next few
days nothing happens at all, then starting March 1 there will be events every
single day leading up to and increasing in intensity until March 15 when the HUGE celebration
starts and lasts for five whole days before finally climaxing into 48 hours of pyrotechnic glory. I absolutely can’t
wait—what a unique experience it will be!
So that was my weekend--pretty chill, eh? Not sure what’s in store for me this week,
but I took care of my Spanish literature midterm today so my school-related
worries are over. I expect I’ll spend some time at the beach again now that it's warmer, but who knows? This place is full of surprises! Until next time…
Much love to all.
C
