Valencia

Naman and a couple of his pals snagged a great deal on a flight to Barcelona for a weekend. From Barcelona, they decided to travel to Valencia, and I decided to meet them! Melissa, Randi, and Anna all met up in Amsterdam and although I'm sad to miss the fun and a visit from a New York friend I am glad I went somewhere new. The trip was so much fun! Saturday was my favorite day ever.

Leaving Berlin and arriving in Spain, my passport wasn't touched. I understand that they don’t need to do the full stamp ordeal but doesn’t someone need to verify my identity?

I love cities where there is easy and fast public transportation to and from the airport. Valencia’s metro was so easy I was in town and all checked in within and hour of landing.

First order of business, Paella! We went with Paella Valencia since this is the birthplace of this dish we wanted the classic. Thinking we were going to get something with all kinds of shellfish heads and eyeballs we were surprised when Paella Valencia was just chicken and snap peas. Maybe we didn’t go to the best place because I think I’ve had better paella in New York.

My spanish was struggling. Naman knows spanish too so he was helping me out with the simple words I kept forgetting. All I could think was german words! Or a weird mixture of the two kept coming out of my mouth making no sense at all.

After lunch, I made us stop at a grocery store so I could look for exotic fruits. I thought there would be some new finds but the only exotic thing we saw was the Cherimoya and lots of them. Cherimoyas are native to Spain and I’m glad I tried them before I went on this trip.

Our other friends arrived shortly after and we kicked off the sight seeing. We climped to the top of this church and took some pictures. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the local beverages. Somewhere along the line we acquired some silly sunglasses which were a huge hit! We went to a club where there was a stage so I obviously got on the stage and danced with a guy who I named Meatloaf, for obvious reasons. Meatloaf and his friends had these red hats and we shared our sunglasses and they shared their hats.
Saturday, my favorite day ever, started with McDonalds. Next, we went to a bike store and rented bikes for the day. I broke my rule of never ever biking without a helmet but I was extra extra careful when we were on the streets. The city of Valencia had some big problems with flooding in 1957 and had to fill in their river. The river bed runs through the city and is now a park! Biking through this park was so much fun. There were so many people out and about and there were orange trees and flowers and sun and warm. 

The best part about the park is that it ends at la ciudad de artes y ciencias. This was a complex of unique looking buildings full of interesting stuff. We were pretty sure that’s what the future looks like. But there was a dinosaur so I guess there will be dinosaurs in the future. The science museum was having an exhibit on Star Trek! This trip was meant to be. The gang wanted to go to the Aquarium and I like those too and didn’t want to make everyone nerd out with me so we decided to go there. Luckily it was unreasonably priced so we all went to the science museum instead! The museum had all the exhibits that we’re used to from a science musuem and more. I’ve always said that most science museums are nearly the same except for the ones that aren’t good at all. This one really proved me wrong, and I could have spent a week in there. 

The best part of the museum, obviously, was the Star Trek exhibit. For those of you who don’t know, I am not a trekkie. I like Star Trek. The movies from the original series and the Next Gen tv series. None of the other stuff. I also dressed up for the last movie and that was a lot of fun. for further information, please visit my first blogging adventure: sogetthisblog.blogspot.com. We weren’t supposed to take pictures in the exhibit but I felt like a couple woudln’t hurt. they had a real replica of the bridge from Next Gen! they also had all the costumes from the most recent movie and it was great to see my muse in person. They were taking pictures of people and photoshopping them into Star Trek related posters so I snagged one of those. 

After the museum, we biked down to the beach. It was some sort of holiday and there were fireworks over the beach for about 20 minutes. We watched them as we biked to the beach. When we got there, people had cleared out enough that we were able to ride our bikes along the shore. It was a little weird and kind of tricky but it was also quite fun. there were random oranges that had washed ashore, I guess that’s what happens when you have a lot of orange trees.

We went back to town to return our bikes. After such a fun day I was sad to turn in my new pal! I gave it a big hug goodbye and vowed to get a bike in Berlin ASAP!

Here was another cool thing about Valencia, the stores were open until 10PM! I’ve become so accustomed to everything closing early I didn’t even think it was possible. We stopped in a department store and I located an exotic fruit however all of the specimens were moldy so unfortunately I had to pass.

The guys all left early on Sunday and my flight wasn’t until 1:30. I took a slow walk through the city and back to the park. It was such a relaxing day and such warm weather I didn’t want to get on the plane to come back to cold, stressful Berlin (but I did because after sleeping in a hostel, I actually missed Gneisenaustr). By Sunday, my Spanish was back to normal. I was having short conversations and asking questions with no problem. It was really fun to speak and understand something, hopefully my German gets there soon.

Getting back to Berlin I ran into a little bit of a passport problem. As I was leaving the gate, a security person asked to see my passport. This was a shocker. He paged through it looking for when I entered the EU, since all he could find was from January, he asked me to explain what was going on and how I got to Spain. He wanted to know if I was a resident why I didn't have a Visa. ha. You and me both, brother. This was not going well. I tried to explain the whole story, including Frau Layouni who promised to email me. I visibly saw his head spin with confusion and he just waved me through so I would stop talking. Welcome home!


P.S. Naman took way more and better pictures than I did. Check out his picasa album here