Cuenca and Valencia.

i’m sitting on my bed right now—listening to some celine dion and thinking about this past heck of a weekend. we spent it in cuenca and valencia—two totally different, but utterly beautiful cities. here’s how it went down.

warning: very long blogpost ensues. this blog is kind of taking the place of my travel journal, mostly because i’m lazy and too tired to write in my journal at night.

thursday:

the alarm sounded—a clever, annoying mezcla of beatboxing and techno (super irritating to wake up to)—at exactly 6:00. laura and i got out of bed at 6:00. okay, fine. more like 6:17. we blearily packed, gulped down our breakfast of zumo (juice) and a package of sweet bread (about the size of two swiss rolls), and hauled two backpacks and a carry-on to the bus. welcomeee weekend.

airplanes, trains, and busses are all designed to make sleeping as hard as possible, so i just closed my eyes and listened to adele (FABULOUS musician, btw) on my ipod. several hours later, we arrived at a national park where we hiked for about  an hour and a half—lots of rocks—huge, volcanic, interestingly shaped…and lots of green—trees, flowers, wild grass. it was beautiful. wilder. smelled like rain and freedom and springtime.

then we continued on our way to cuenca. spain’s mountainous countryside might be one of the most beautiful countrysides in the world…but bless its heart, the twisting narrow roads made about ¾ of our bus motion sick. it was awful. but cuenca was worth it.

i would like to point out the beautiful mountains. i would also like
to point out the hoodie tied around my waist and say that it is
perfectly acceptable for me to do this in europe,. futhermore, i look cool.

laura and i got separated from the group, so we walked around the city for a while...ate a magnum bar (only the BEST ICE CREAM BAR IN THE WORLD), and then found a stony little path that eventually led down to the river. holyyy crap.  we found a little green dock over the river and just sat down, dangled our feet over the edge… and stared at the sky, listened to the water, and soaked it all in for an hour and a half. i can’t even put into words how amazing that hour and a half was.

that's me on the bridge. laura took the picture from the dock.

another picture of the river from the dock.
we spent a good hour and a half here.
however, i could have spent a couple more hours here,
just sitting on the dock. no prob.

then we got a call from our director and we had to high tail it back to the bus. oops.

we arrived in valecia a couple hours later. hellooo palm trees  and warm weather—and suite room in a hotel. laura and i were thrilled about walking around the room barefoot, having space to spread out, and the prospect of long long hot hot showers.

our director took our entire group out to dinner at a really nice Italian restaurant. the food was delicious. the company was even better. our group is so fantastic. we left the restaurant a little after midnight.

my shower that night was everything i’d ever dreamed of. &then i went to sleep.

friday:

i ate my weight in croissants and pastries for breakfast.

then we went to a porcelain factory--Lladro. this porcelain factory is famous world-wide. the work that goes into each piece is incredible—the price is even more incredible. who needs a house if you can sleep with your 125,000 euro porcelain boat? not kidding. see the picture below.

this porcelain baby costs 125,000 euros. that converts into
178,500 american dollars. whoaaa.

in all seriousness, the porcelain is beautiful—so expressive. i thought about buying something. then i realized that even the smallest pieces were at least $100. and i refuse to buy a tiny porcelain chihuahua  (puh-lease, darling, i don’t even like REAL Chihuahuas) for 70 euros.

then we went to the aquarium in valencia—saw lots of fish, watched a dolphin show, and mostly just waited till we could leave for the beach.

finally, FINALLY, we could go to the beach. it was a little later (our director’s wife didn’t want to go earlier because of all the topless women that usually populate European beaches), so not so much sun. but, BUT, i swam in the mediterranean ocean. yes. ohhh yes. i have no pictures of the beach because i forgot my camera. whoops.

later, a group of us went back to downtown valencia for dinner and to chill. we got back to our hotel around midnight. then we had a dance party in one of our rooms in the hotel. we went to sleep pretty late that night.

saturday:

this was our ‘touristy day.’ meaning, we had a guide show us around valencia. however, our entire group was dead…so dead tired. i don’t remember much of what our guide said. we did go see the cathedral in valencia though.

despues, laura and i bought a churro and tried the horchata here (valencia is famous for it). i think the horchata in mexico is better. this stuff is a little more bitter. some people in our group liked the bitterness though.

horchata, chocolate caliente, y churros.
i love my life.

then we went to the equivalent of an indoors farmers market. there needs to be one of these right next to where i live. it was amazing—everything looked so FRESH. laura and i bought a kilo of strawberries, went outside, and ate the entire dang container right then and there. so frikkin delicious.

 then we all went back to the beach to catch some sun (our director’s wife decided it’d be fine). the mediterranean looked temptingly blue, but i didn’t get in the water this time because i didn’t want to be wet and salty for the trip back to alcala. however,  i did listen to bob marley, lay out in the sun, and dig my toes in the sand. it felt almost unreal, but so good. the weather was perfect.

after the beach and after lunch, we all piled back on the bus to alcala. end of adventure. cue sad face.

p.s. last wednesday, we went to the el teatro real (the royal theater) in madrid. it's famous. we watched bodas de sangre and a flamenco dance exhibition. i really really really enjoyed it.

laura and i alll dressed up for el teatro.