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Published: April 21st 2008
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After leaving Toledo, we arrived in Atocha (Madrid train station) and decided to leave our large backpacks in lockers and grab what we needed for the night and set out for a hotel. This can sometimes be an easy goal and other times, not as easy. You wind up stopping at a hotel, asking the price, seeing if breakfast is included and then ask to view the room to see if it’s worth the money all while trying to speak and understand spanish. We eventually found a very cute loft apt that was in a great area that was cheaper than the hotel with the bunk elevators! We’ll know for next time and would even be able to make food in the mini kitchen! Anyway, we dropped our stuff and headed out for food. I was on a mission for veggies since we’d been eating bread, bread and more bread. It seemed the best place for that was an Asian restaurant, so we were on the hunt. On our hunt we passed a Campero Chicken, which was a flashback to our engagement trip in Guatemala. It is not in the states, but is has the best chicken fingers ever- even beats
Chic-Fil-A, so we had no choice but to stop and share a few bites before finding a delicious Japanese restaurant so I could have my veggies. I have to say, seeing people of Asian descent speaking Spanish more fluently than us was an unexpected experience.
After our restful night in Madrid, we boarded yet anther high speed Renfe train (Adam and I joked that we were paying for Renfe Jr.’s college education) and headed to Valencia. I was elated to be heading towards the beach. I always have an intense draw to the ocean, but living in St. Louis and being extremely landlocked only reinforces my urge to see waves crash. We arrived and I always like to take a picture of a sign with the city name on it so when I relook at pictures with my poor memory, I’ll know what the pictures are from, but a security guard came running over and strongly stated that photographs were prohibited. I mean really, we weren’t trying to steal state secrets, and at every other train station I’ve done the same thing, so I found this fairly ridiculous. We got a map and directions to the beach from the
tourist office and headed out. Once out of the train station, Valencia was immediately charming. The city’s bullring, was directly next to the train station and the city center was 2-3 blocks from the station, one of the closest to the center of town I’ve ever been to. We headed to our researched hotel, that of course was full, but as I’ve learned a good hotel knows of other good hotels, so they sent us in the direction of Hotel Florida- now how can that be bad? We dropped our stuff off and immediately went in search of the bus stop that would take us to the beach. Adam took the role of map reader and thoroughly enjoyed it. And we barely got lost 😉
The bus ride to the beach was longer than anticipated, but well worth the wait. If the day had been warmer it would’ve been perfect. We finally broke down and ate at the chain that I until then I had refused to eat at Pans & Company (Bread Co.) and had the best chicken, brie and mushroom sandwich ever! I intend on trying to duplicate it soon. We rented chairs and spent some glorious
La Playa
The cold Mediterranean time reading feet from the Mediterranean Sea. It was too cold to stay in my suit for long, but smelling the ocean and feeling its breeze invigorated me. When we returned to the city, we took a siesta (still love these!) and then went in search for Paella as Valencia is where paella is from, but weren’t able to find what we wanted so we had more tortilla Espanola, and some grilled veggies. We continued to walk around and discovered how Valencia seemed to be the shopping outlet of Spain. On every corner was a store. El Cortes Ingles (a department store) was all over the city, in addition to H & M, Zara and much more. The next morning we debated between taking a bus (supposedly cheaper than trains, but the station was much further away) and continuing on our train trek. I was leaning towards the train because of location and the chances of getting car/bus sick, so eventually we decided on continuing to pay for Renfe Jr.’s college and bought a train ticket. Afterwards, we explored Valencia more including the market place and had some fresh squeezed Valencia orange juice (yum!) before grabbing our stuff and getting
Jugo de Naranja
Valencian fresh squeezed orange juice. They had the coolest machines! on the train to Barcelona (our final destination).
The weather was finally starting to be warmer and sunny and we were loving it! More in Barcelona……..
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