Whatever: Valencia

This past weekend I went to Valencia, Spain with John Easlea, Shaun Yasaki, Nate Rodda, Barbara Denlinger, and Lizzie Falknor. We flew out of Paris, and took a train to Paris on Friday morning. The time schedule was really close, leaving around 10 minutes to get from the tram to the train. So if anything went wrong, we were probably not going to make the train. On the tram ride towards the train station, the tram seemed to not be working right because it was accelerating really slow, but it turns out the guy was probably just taking his time because we were a little ahead of schedule. In the end we got to Valencia just fine.

Friday: 5am: leave the house towards the tram to catch a 6am train to Paris. 10:35 : flight leaves Paris and we land in Valencia shortly after noon. We check into our hostel and start walking around, looking for food. We happened upon a kebab place, which is a great meal option in Europe, only costing 5.50 or so. After eating we walked around Valencia and tried to familiarize ourself with the city by just randomly walking around. All in all, the areas to hang out in Valencia for tourists is pretty small, which is nice. Back in the 50's there was a flood that ruined a lot of the city, so they diverted the river around the city. Afterwards all kinds of plan life sprung up on the the fertile former riverbed. Now there is a park all the way through the city with soccer fields and gardens throughout, which is super cool. It's nice for tourists to navigate with that as a point of familiarity throughout the city. We found the soccer stadium and bought some tickets off of scalpers for the following day's game against Murcia. The tickets turned out to be in the visitors section, but they were pretty good seats. Then we found a restaurant with paella, the traditional Valencian dish. It's cooked in a large frying pan and consists of rice, and whatever meats and vegetables you decide to put in it. It's a great tasting meal. We walked around some more then went back to the hostel for sleep.
Saturday: after a short vending machine breakfast (which was pretty good) we headed to La Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias (city of arts and sciences). The architecture of the center was simply mindblowingly amazing. We saw an IMAX presentation on the alps, which was really, really cool. We actually saw in the movie the exact spot where we were last weekend near Grindelwald, Switzerland. The movie was about a mountain that we practically slept under. After the movie, we went to the center of sciences, which wasn't as cool as some other science places I've been (COSI) but was still fun. Then we went to a tapas restaurant (another typical Spanish food). Basically it's a menu full of appetizers. This restaurant had tiny sandwiches which were only 1.20. They had a selection of 100 different types, which is pretty cool. It's a great tasting, cheap, filling dinner. Then we went back to the hostel for a nap before leaving for a 10pm Valencia CF game. They ended up winning 3-0 with their star scoring 2 goals. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel.
Sunday: We first went to check out a market in the morning, which turned out to be a disappointment because there weren't any places to buy food there for breakfast. We ended up going back to the same tapas place for a brunch at around 11am. After that we walked around some more and ran into some traditional Spanish dancing in the streets, which was neat to see. Then in the afternoon, we headed to the beach. It wasn't quite warm enough to swim, but plenty warm to sit there and enjoy the sun we hadn't quite been getting recently in Nantes. In the evening we headed back, walked around the city some more, then headed to another paella restaurant. The next morning we headed home.

Paella in its frying pan