Day 27: Valencia

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So, I had a senior moment. When the girls said ten to, for some reason I thought it was ten to 8:00 am, even though the shuttle bus was 20 minutes away. I quickly discovered, they meant ten to 7:00, not 8:00. I forgot we're not capable of teleportation yet. I went downstairs and it was a ghost town. The front desk staff said I definitely needed to catch a taxi to have a chance. The driver got me there at just after 8:00. It was a metro (train) station, but there no buses around. There was a family with the same problem. We quickly figured out we needed to be at the parking lot around the corner out of sight. We squeezed in four abreast in the back seat drove over there. Luckily, our bus was running late. It was pretty chaotic but they got everyone to the event. Apparently 22,000 people participate in this event. The town has a population of 10,000. I found two girls I recognized from the hostel and got extremely lucky picking out the two Australian girls I was supposed to meet in the first place while waiting for a storage locker. We made our way down the main road into the narrow streets of the town. We were packed in there like sardines. The locals from their balconies were spraying us and dumping buckets of water on us. The pouch we picked up for your phone and wallet to hang from your neck worked like a charm. It was kind of cold out, so it didn't feel that great. The festival is started by a gunshot. For the first 15 minutes nothing was happening. Maybe some tomatoes in the distance. Is it even going to reach us? I then realized an open bed truck was very slowly creeping towards us. They were scooping tomatoes out of the back by hand. When the truck got closer, there were organizers very forcefully pushing people onto the sidewalk. The large men surrounding the truck were shoving people back and down the street to make room for it. It got very personal touching what seemed like 12 people at once. People learned their lesson the second time around got out of the way much quicker. The second to fifth trucks in addition to the scooping out had chunky tomato sludge pouring out the back. This is what made things really messy. It was about five inches deep completely submerging your ankles. People were using empty beer cups to pour the sludge on other's heads. The goggles I had on protected me from some direct shots, but eventually they fogged up and juice started seeping past them. I was unlucky a couple of times. When I was taking a breath through my mouth, someone slinging slop got some in it. It started to get pretty disgusting after a while. I didn't see it but there was people pissing in it and vomiting too. Everyone was covered head to toe. There was fine chunks of it in my hair. I peeled off the t-shirt and tossed it aside like many others did. There were locals with their low powered hoses cleaning people off. Once we got back to the starting point we stood in line for nearly a half an hour for a proper hose down. The only thing was, with 20 people to go in front of us, they ran out of water. We literally washed excess shit off of ourselves in the puddles from the people being hosed off. I decided to catch a first come first serve shuttle bus back to the hostel. I was hungry and tired. I swear check three times which direction to go on the Metro and still managed to go the wrong way. I starting getting frustrated. I was legitimately hangry. Once back at the hostel I showered for 40 minutes washing my hair three times. The smell was getting to me. There was an after party, later in the night but I didn't feel like going. Plus I had to get up at 6:00 am for the flight to London. I ran into Bailey in the kitchen. She gave me the rest of her tortilla. I told her my plan of just wanting to go the beach and relax, as I had yet to do that. She said that sounded nice and decided to join. We made the trek down there (40 minutes) and it was beautiful. Perfect temperature and velvety sand for days. It was really nice to have playful conversation and just chilling out. Halfway through our visit there was a large structure fire in the distance. Knowing what happened recently in Barcelona a few weeks earlier, an attack came to mind. We talked about dinner and to go out with a nice one as we both were heading home in two days. Settled on a place that had seafood for me and something for her two. As with many places in Europe, there was a man offering roses to couples. He initially said two euros, then one, then gave it to us for free. We said good to know we made a cute enough fake couple that we could get free roses. We ended giving him a euro we he came back because we felt guilty. The food was actually subpar. The clams and mussels were hard as if they were sitting out for awhile. We tried catching the train back but it's not nearly as reliable as other bigger cities. We gave up and caught a taxi back to the hostel. We said goodbye. I ended up giving the rose to two girls at the hostel bar. They were the only two in there because everyone was at the afterparty. I packed and showered to get ready for the next morning.

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