2 Nights in Valencia

Sorry it has been a while since my last post but we have been in Valencia and I didn't bring my Computer.  The entire IES program took 8 charter buses for a 3 day, 2 night cultural experience of Southern Catalonia. 

Day 1
My bus left at 8:30 in the morning so my roommate and I woke up around 7:45 to shower and eat breakfast.  Waking up wasn't too bad and I just planned on sleeping on the bus.  Our first stop was Torres Vineyards, which was on the way to Valencia.  Torres is one of the largest vineyards in the world.  They make many different wines and a few brandies.  In 2006, I think, they won the award for best winery in Europe, and they also won an award for one of their brandies.  The entire winery is enormous with wineries in Spain, Chile, and Northern California.  They also import grapes from France and Itlay.  I am not sure how much wine they make but they can produce 16 million bottles of Brandy a year and way more wine.  This is what we took the tour in

The tour was very strange.  It was interesting and we learned a lot but it was very touristy, and there were no grapes because it is winter.  First we went around the Estate, but since the car had windows all of my pictures came out strange.  After seeing the grounds we went down into this tunnel and they had a movie playing with some narrator about the history, and we saw where they age the wine.

They age the wine up to 18 months and then age it some more in the bottle.  After the tour we did some "wine tasting" but our program decided to be cheap and give us only one taste of the cheapest wine.  I was kind of let down because I thought we were going to drink 3 or 4 and I was planning on buying my favorite one.  So I just went and bought a bottle of red wine that stuck out to me.  It was called Celeste and it was bottled in a castle in the mountains in Spain.  I wanted to sleep on the bus so I also bought a wine key (btw, I used the term wine key and not one person on the bus knew what I was talking about).  I opened my bottle and had about a glass and a half and then slept like a baby for the next two hours.

We arrived at the hotel around 5:15 and some people were going on a run at 6:30.  If you look at a map of Valencia you can see that a river used to run through the middle of the city.  However, it would flood a lot so they diverted it around the city.  Now what used to be a river is now a park that is great for running and biking because all the cars take the bridges over it.  We ran for about 50 minutes and it was a lot of fun.  Dinner was at 8:30.  We had some Paella, spaghetti, bread, and some other food.  Everyone was very impressed with the dinner because their home stay food is not that great or they have apartments or dorms, but the food at my home stay was so much better.  It made me feel extremely lucky about my living situation.  I also sat next to a girl from Cornell which was pretty cool, and we talked about Ithaca for a while. 

After dinner I took my bottle of wine and went to the hotel next door where some other buses were staying, and most of the people I have been hanging out with.  We got a little tipsy and went to the old part of Valencia where there are a lot of bars.  All of the professors and advisers said it was the place to go but it really wasn't that great.  We just danced and had some expensive drinks.  It was fun but nothing too exciting. 

Day 2
Breakfast was at 9 and we had to be ready by 10.  Our plan for the first part of the day was to go to the Aquarium.  Here is a map of the place.  It is the largest aquarium in Europe

It would have been a lot better if it wasn't raining the entire time but most of it was inside so it wasn't too bad.  We also went to the Barcelona aquarium with class on Tuesday but it was like comparing a kitty pool to the ocean.  They had many different sections including a dolphin show.  I took some videos

I have a ton of pictures but they didn't come out that well since you are not allowed to use flash and I don't have a great camera. 

After the aquarium a few of us went to get lunch next to the hotel.  We decided to get the buffet.  This lunch was amazing.  The first course was a buffet with Mediterranean salads, pasta, pizza, tuna on bread, and some kind of fried potato and cheese thing.  I was pretty full by the end of that.  Then for the second course we could choose between pizza or ravioli.  I got the pizza and it was a giant 12 inch pizza.  I ate about half of it and wanted to kill myself.  Then there was a final course dessert which was a cookie, ice cream sandwich.  We were all kind of nervous about the price since we didn't really understand what our waitress said but it ended up costing less than 10 euros and included a free drink.  We were amazed by the amount of food for the price.  I wanted to take a nice ciesta but I only had time for a nice hot shower before we had to do a walking tour of Valencia.  We had the option of not going but our adviser kind of guilt tripped everyone into coming, but I am glad she did because it was well worth it.  We went to a Cathedral that was increadible

Here is a nice model of the Cathedral since it is so huge, but it is from about the same angle as my picture, just from a birds eye view.  The Cathedral was very nice with tons of paintings, arches, gold, statues, and priceless objects.  One being the mummified arm of some saint, I forget his name. 

After this I took a long nap and woke up for dinner still full from lunch.  Dinner was the same as the night before and I didn't eat that much.  Everyone I talked to was extremely tired from the day and most people didn't go out.  I was also very tired but had the mindset that we were only in Valencia for one more night and I had to make the most of it, and I am glad I did.  Some of my friends wanted to go out so I went to have a few beers with them in the hotel and then we wanted to get some Agua De Valencia at a bar.  Agua de Valencia is basically a Mamosa with Cava (Spanish Champagne).  We herd of a good area to go that was close to the hotel.  We walked into a few places that were closing or didn't have the drink and eventually stumbled into a bar where a band was setting up.  Although they also didn't have the drink, we decided to stay.  The band started playing some classic rock from groups like the Rolling Stones and some other recognizable songs.  I have a video of them playing I Can't Get No Satisfaction but it was taking a long time to upload so I'll post it later.  But here is a picture of what they looked like

By this point in the night I was very impressed with what we found.  Just by chance we wandered into a bar where some Spanish Hombres were playing the rolling stones.  We stayed for about 2 hours and were grabbing our coats when I saw this Spanish Mujer getting on stage

I was with 3 girls and one other guy and we all looked at each other and said that we had to stay to see where this was going.  As we all kind of expected, she did a full strip tease for about 10 minutes.  We were all in shock because we had no idea what this place was.  The whole time the band was playing behind here and there was also no cover charge for this place.  So we just saw a live band and a sexy Spanish strip tease for free.  I also have another picture but it is not really appropriate for this so I will leave it out.  Sex is much less censored here in Spain.  At the news stands you can buy Playboys and Hustlers and this strip tease was more sexy and a performance.  In America, first this would never happen, and it would be much more pornographic and as much as an "art form."  Anyway, after that we went home and were very glad that we went out.

The next morning we were leaving for Barcelona at 8:45 in the morning.  We stopped in an old town called Tortossa but everyone was miserable and it was raining so we didn't really get much out of the tour.  I also got yelled at by my tour guide for talking which was very embarrassing.  I slept for most of the bus ride until about 3 when we stopped for lunch.  For lunch we were having a typical Spanish meal consisting of charred onion type things called Calçots

They were pretty good, especially with the sauce that you see.  We also had a lot of wine from these cool jugs called Porrons.  Here is a video of me drinking it.

Apparently it is the most sanitary way to drink wine, and it is also very fun.  Here is another video of Jourdan and Sierra drinking it.  He was pretty good at it. 

Later, one of the RA's was walking around video taping some of the people who could do it really well and this kid Rob at our table tried it.  He was good when the camera was not on but this time he tried and the wine came out the top and went all over his face.  I wish I had it on camera and I want to get it from the RA because it was hilarious. 

After the lunch we were all kind of drunk and passed out on the bus.  Our next stop was back in Barcelona.  It was a very fun trip, as you can probably tell but it would have been a lot better if it was not raining the entire time