valencia... not really

Nisarga insisted that he needed, yes needed, more beach time before we left Spain. Ok, fair enough. We are heading to the UK after this where we are almost guaranteed that the weather will suck, and then India where we know we aren’t going to be even near a beach until December or January the earliest. And he didn’t spend every summer of his childhood on an island for a month so the novelty is still there. Alright! So Valencia was a good place to break up the journey between Granada and Barcelona, where we have to return in order to pick up some things we left there and take our flight out to London.

So after mesmerizing Almeria, we head to the bus station in Granada knowing that busses leave every 1-2 hours for Valencia and we expect to be on the next bus out of town. It’s 23:15, and the next bus is at 23:30. However, the next bus with two seats available is at 15:30 the next day! Thankfully for us, and unfortunately for him, the owner of the guest house where we had been staying informs us that 3 reservations didn’t show up and that we could come on over. We get our old room back and sleep in until almost noon. At that point we head back to the bus station, put our bags in lockers, and spend the rest of the day walking around Granada. The overnight bus we take makes no less than 20 stops, HONESTLY, and we arrive in Valencia a day later then anticipated and totally worn out. Now this means that we will only have one night and two days in Valencia because we have to reach Barcelona by Thursday night in order to get our stuff. Ok, well, something is better than nothing!

We take the city bus from the bus station to the train station and we get a bit of a sight seeing tour. Good thing too, because that’s the last of Valencia we see. We are staying with a friend who lives in a quite village outside the city and near the beach. Nisarga makes it clear he has no interest to go sightseeing and quite honestly I’m too tired to make a sincere effort as well so we drop the idea. We spend the day in the house, hanging out with our beloved hosts, also Osho sannyasins and into Gurdjieff, and do pretty much nothing.

Ever since we arrived in Spain, yes since the very first day, Nisarga has been talking about how excited he is to have paella. I had suggested he hold on and wait until we get to Valencia, the birthplace of paella. A few times we thought we found vegetarian or just seafood paella, but it never was the case. So it worked out that he actually never ate any paella on this trip up until now. So here we are, birthplace of paella, beach near by with a family owned paella restaurant that comes highly recommended, and Nisarga is still fasting. That’s right… our second (and last) day in Valencia is day 5 of his fast. So what happens? You guessed it! No paella. And no beach! He is feeling his energy shifting inwards so he chooses to stay at home and spend some time alone, while the rest of us go to the beach and have paella. This man is amazing!

I must admit, after Almeria, this beach is crowded, mainstream, dirty, and uptight. No one is even topless! This is Spain for goodness sake. Still, it’s my last day on the beach for another half a year and I made the most of it. But the lunch is the highlight of this brief trip to Valencia! We are joined by our host’s friend and his wife and their young son. And they are foodies!!! Oh yes! They are locals here and have all kinds of recommendations for typical specialities from the area. I say yes to everything! And it’s soooo good. And the paella, which is also my first on this trip to Spain, is soooo good! I want seconds but I don’t dare order a second plate. So I start asking about cava, the Spanish champagne, and he starts explaining the differences and what I should look for if I want to buy a bottle… and then he gets up and gets a bottle and opens it and starts serving us! What a splendid surprise!!!

Mind you now, bubbly has a very special effect on me… it knocks me out! And we have a train to catch to Barcelona in a few hours. But it’s yummy! And I had been wishing inside me that there would be an opportunity for me to drink some cava as I had not yet on this trip, and with Nisarga fasting it seemed quite unlikely that we would buy a bottle for ourselves. After the cava and truffles and ice-cream and very interesting conversation, we are on our way out, but of course there is some horchata granizada to try still! Has the word “no” come out of my mouth once during this lunch??? Nope! By the time the horchata is down I have been given tips on a happy marriage (by two women who have been married for a couple of decades and are still happy and in love) and on when to become a mother; yes, I know, I’m late!

And it’s also getting late now for us to make the train… which is totally killing my buzz. So he offers us his car to take all the way to Valencia instead of taking the local train to the train station. We make it back to the apartment to pick up Nisarga, and I take a quick shower. We get our stuff back in the car and we make a mad dash for the Valencia train station. There are two obstacles, apart from us already being terribly late. The first is that there is a lot of traffic on account of the city preparing for their first Formula 1 race, this Sunday, and blocking off a bunch of streets, plus there are more people in town due this event. Second obstacle is that we never printed our tickets from the internet. Finally, we make it on board the train and the doors literally close right behind us.

So that was our not even 48 hours in Valencia, and not even in Valencia proper. Nisarga did ask me to take pictures of the paella and the lunch, which I dutifully did, but I erased them before downloading them accidentally. So all you have here is a picture of a picture of a paella. Of course there are no pictures of Valencia to share since we didn’t actually spend any time in the city.