Advertisement
Published: August 29th 2010
Edit Blog Post
033
Andy Driving.. After France we drove down to Spain and stayed at Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava. It was a great campsite which sat on top of the cliffs and the beaches were below. The first night we got there we indulged in Spanish cuisine... seafood paella and sangria. It just so happened that they had a flamenco performance on that night which was a great welcoming to Spain, we couldn’t have asked for anything more... until the rain came along and ruined it!
After Tossa de Mar we picked up our mates Bondi and Lynda from Barcelona and headed down the coast to a small town called L’ametlla. We stayed in a camping ground just outside of town but on the coast. It was a scorcher the day we arrived and after the van trip from Barcelona we were all thirsty. We got this amazing Sangria from the camp ground restaurant. It had a bottle of wine, rum, whisky, gin, malibu and fruit juice... delicious! That night we went into town. The town is settled around a fishing harbour and there was a festival going on in a shed at the port. We went and checked it out and
037
Our first Paella in Spain! there was a whole bunch of people cooking rice and drinking beer. So, we grabbed a beer and tried some of the rice... we figured it must have been a burnt rice festival because it tasted foul. Then we found a nice restaurant and ordered seafood for dinner. We had mussels and calamari to start and shared a big seafood paella for mains, not to mention a couple of bottles of Spanish plonk... a little expensive but definitely worth it... best paella yet!
We hung around L’ametlla for another couple of days then headed down to Valencia for the la tomatina tomato fight. We got up at 5:30am the day of the festival, caught a taxi to the train station and then a train to Bunol which is a town just outside Valencia. The train was packed with thousands and thousands of aussies and kiwis. We got to Bunol at about 8am and had a hotdog and a couple of Sangria’s(1 litre cup each!)... breakfast of champions? There were stalls everywhere selling beer, sangria and food. Then we headed to the street where the tomato fight was. We’ll give you a brief run-down of what happens at la tomatina...
040
Flamenco dancers there is a ham stuck to the top of a pole about 6m high and if someone climbs the pole and gets the ham then the tomato trucks start heading down the street and the fight begins. The only problem is that the pole is covered in pig fat which makes it slippery and hard to climb. If no one gets the ham by 11am the fights starts anyway. By 9am the street was packed with people and we were in amongst the crowd chanting and waiting in suspense. There were local residents on the roof tops pouring buckets of water over everyone. We had to wait until 11am before the fight started but people were getting restless and started throwing anything and everything. Then as 11am came around all hell broke loose, there were tomatoes flying from the rooftops, the crowd was going crazy as if we were all in a mosh pit at a huge concert. Words can’t describe it. There was no room to move especially when the trucks were squeezing through the crowded streets. We were right next to the wall getting crushed into it!! The tomato fight finished at midday and the streets were red
with tomato ‘soup’. Great day!
On our last night we went into Valencia city and caught up with another Perth friend Troy. We went to a very fancy tapas bar where everything is on display and you go up and choose what you want. It wasn’t traditional tapas, it was fancy finger food , each thing was 1.80 euros so we thought it was a bargain!! wrong! With beers on top it came to 131 euros!! After dinner we went to a bar that Troy recommended called Gecko, it was a Balinese themed bar. The night flew by and before we knew it, it was 3am and realised that Bondi and Lynda had a train to catch in the morning. Being the responsible adults that we are, we called it a night. The next morning there were 4 zombies walking around the campsite trying to pack up and organise themselves. We all enjoyed Valencia City even though it was a bit smelly! Bondi and Lynda headed off to Morocco and we are now in Mazarron in the south of Spain. It’s time to give the poor liver a break.
Next stop Granada in the Sierra Nevada before heading
across to Portugal.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.25s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0632s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb