Spain Adventures: Valencia on Very Little Sleep

Hola again! This weekend we went to Valencia. This experience has taught me never to take a 5:30 AM flight, even if it is only 10 euros, because the trains stop running at 11:30, so we had to camp out in the airport all night, on the cold floor. We got rather slaphappy around 4 in the morning, which ended with us speaking to each other in British accents since everyone seems to know right away that we're Americans. Anyway, I somehow made it through my first day in Valencia on about one hour of sleep. It was okay, though, because the first day we pretty much just sat around at the beach getting sunburned (well, I did at least). I also got my first experience of seeing toplessness at a European beach. And the creepy guys who watch.

That night I actually got to sleep. Hooray! Unfortunately, there were 10 of us, and only 8 could fit in a room at the hostel. So one other girl and I were put in a room with 6 strangers... who happened to be frat boys from Holland. Joy. It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't gotten back at 6:30 in the morning and proceeded to have an unnecessarily loud conversation in Dutch.

The second day was more fun, in my opinion. Everyone went back to the beach except for me and the other girl stuck with the messy boys from Holland, since we wanted to do something else. We ended up on a free walking tour around Valencia. Our British tour guide was great and told us all kinds of interesting things about Valencia's history. Then we stuck around for the tapas tour, which took us to a few different bars to try things like tortilla española (my favorite food ever), ensaladilla rusa (Russian salad made with potatoes and tuna), and paella, which Valencia is famous for. Our tour guide was nice enough to try and speed things along so that we could make our plane that evening. A quick 40-minute plane ride later brought us back to Madrid.

Now for pictures.