but what i have is this so i'll use it more or less. valencia was incredible. we took a 6 hour train there and were supposed to leave at 6am the morning after halloween which naturally meant i didn't sleep at all and got to the train station with my friends claire and sadie to meet our madrid buddy alex and ilya ready to pass out on the train and wake up in the sun but the train ended up being sold out because it was a long weekend for all of spain. so we had to sleep on the ground in the train station for a while until the next train at noon came. we got on and that was that. nice long trip. spain has a lot of country side. i know every country has it's barren parts filling in between the hustle and bustle of life and it's silly and ignorant to think of a country or a region only as cities but spain has a lot and a lot of country space with absolutely nothing. old ghost villages you pass through on the train which i can only imagine used to stop at them when things were going on and better. interesting.
so because of our delay in madrid we got to valencia later than planned and ended up spending the night trying to find the camp ground we were planning on staying at. i've decided that hostels are for suckers and if you don't mind cramming into a tent and sleeping on rocks and being a little cold, camping is the way to go. so we find the site and set up the two little tents we have on this parking lot loose gravel site they give us. people in spain don't know what grass is i've decided. or dirt. but they sure as hell know what rocks are. the campsite guard rode his bike to the spot to show us where it was... picture a 60 year old man riding a bmx bike with double pegs and a huge flashlight in his teeth and you have what i was looking at.
after setting everything up we tried to find the beach, which was according to the guy at the desk, straight ahead. it wasn't. it was pitch black out and we walked for over an hour trying to find the beach, we could hear the roar of the ocean but were ultimately unable to find the darn thing. gave up and went and had a fire and roasted chorizo over it like little hobos on a stick. never had better. i barely ate that day and as hemmingway says, hunger will give you discipline. even if it's not a choice and you just can't afford to eat there's something very comforting about hunger. you know it will be there eventually and sometimes it's almost a waiting game to see when it actually happens. comforting to know that your body will always react in one way or another without doubt.
this is sadie. she's from wisonsin. you can tell because of her red hair.
and this is claire. her hands were cold so she's a sock monster.
anyways woke up and we had all decided sometime between rolling over to get the rock out of my spleen and then out of my kidney subsequently that we couldn't stay there another night. got on the bus and headed to a campsite closer to the city that we had seen coming in. got off and checked two out. one sucked. it was a parking lot they wanted us to camp on. next one was great, grassy and covered with trees. we were sharing a field with some spanish kids who were cool and because we had alex with us who grew up in spain we had a good connection of sorts. i've traveled a bit and have decided that traveling with someone who's native to that country or area is a much loved advantage. being able to have her ask directions or figure something out was awesome, we obviously could have done it without her but not so easily. wonderful.
that day was spent wandering around valencia after a fabulous all you can eat buffet with valencian paella and seafood, great salad and lots of coffee. i was in heaven. the city was gorgeous. old and laid back. i feel that any city next to the beach has a more relaxed atmosphere than those land locked. not sure why. maybe it's just the knowledge that you can go to the beach when you want without having to fly there. madrid is great, but it's missing the ocean. i can't imagine how much better it'd be with. probably as good as barcelona, which is now that i think about it, madrid with an ocean.
we wandered around and climbed huge trees in old parks and saw big buildings and cool markets and later that night wandered into a medieval fair being hosted in the city's bullfighting ring. it was incredible. everyone dressed up in old rags and a blacksmith outside banging out farming instruments and frames and booths with people inside selling all sorts of wondrous food and goodies. lots of scarves and tea and meat and bread. it was absolutely spell casting. we stood around for hours trying things to eat and watching all the people there. two men were walking around in purple tights and one was blowing a bagpipe and the other was playing the drums and it was magic. i wanted to dance my way across old times europe into the black plague. good times.
this is a picture of valencia at night.
this is a big tree.
got back to the campsite around 11 and had bought chocolate and fruit and bread and sausage in the city to roast over a fire and set out to find the beach, this time along a much more defined path. found some dead branches on the way there and carried all our goodies down a ways until we reached a parking lot and saw lots of cars with teenagers in them making out an we knew we were at the right spot. waltzed on pass them and came upon this fantastically huge beach stretching out all the way down the coast on either side with nothing but the stars to light the way. the ocean was black and dark and grey and scared the hell out of me and was pounding on the sand with these huge waves that threatened to creep up and take us all under. i don't think there's anything scarier than the ocean at night. absolutely terrifying. we made a little hobo campfire on the side of a sand dune and looked out over the horizon at these impossibly gigantic cruise and cargo ships harbored outside of the city looking to port, towering over the ocean and lighting it all up in this brilliant glow like floating cities. later after we'd been there for a bit this great golden half moon climbed out of the sea and eased up into the sky and cast this eerie ghost light on the ocean and everything all of a sudden made sense even if for just a little bit.
i slept well that night.
woke up the next morning feeling good, took down the tents and headed into the city. we packed all our gear into lockers in the train station and the lady with short hair there yelled at us for trying to pack everything into one huge locker that we could've put an elephant in but she thought otherwise and berated us until we spent 3 more euros on another humongous locker for one more pack and then left. our train was at 8 the next morning so we figured we'd just stay out most of the night, come back to the station, grab our stuff and be good to go.
we headed to these buildings in valencia that a famous spanish architect had recently constructed that were a cultural center, museums and a huge aquarium. i wanted to check out the aquarium but it was almost 20 euros which is a lot of money for fish so we just walked around instead. it was huge. the architecture of the buildings is incredible, white and skeletal. it reminded me of gaudi just a little bit with the tiny mosaic stones worked into the whole thing. it looks like this. and more. it's incredible. everything was surrounded by shallow pools of water and it blew my mind. it was so warm and by the water it was cool and life was good.
like a big weird whale skeleton.
walked back to the city and started drinking a little on the way back to get a good feeling for the night. we found a store selling 20 cent cans of decent beer so hung out there for a while and then headed over to the fair again to get some goood food and by good i mean delicious. i got a huge sandwich with cooked ham (it's all they eat) and it was greasy and gross and most satisfying. after that i treated myself to a bit of chocolate and washed it all down with some cold wonderful cerveza. life is too good sometimes.
oh, earlier in the day i'd found a simple plan poster too. it was great.
we eventually left the fair around midnight and wandered into some bars. got back to the station around 2 or 3 ready to get our stuff and bundle up for the night in the train station but we'd missed the sign on the door explaining that the room was locked from midnight to five in the morning. oooops. after walking around all day we'd left our sweatshirts in the lockers with the bags because it was so sunny and warm earlier so we had a long night of walking around to keep from freezing, sleeping short little bursts of restless sleep using newspaper as blankets and huddling next to the hand dryer in the bathroom to keep from freezing at 4 in the morning. needless to say that at 8 when the train came i was ready to pass out.
too bad it was the most packed train i've ever been on in my life. i had to run to get a seat. i seriously stepped on an old lady and smacked a little kid. i didn't care. i was getting a seat. i wasn't going to stand up for 6 hours after the best (read terrible) night of my life.
got a seat and passed out. after the first couple stops the train thinned out and people were able to sit down. at one point i woke up and realized that i'd drooled on myself and the people sitting across from me facing me were grossed out. i just looked down and then at them and drooled and smiled. they stopped looking then. went back to sleep and woke up in madrid. life's too good.
hugs.
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