We arrived in Valencia after a two hour train ride and hiked to HÔme Youth Hostel. The weather was great hovering at around 21˚ C (we still haven’t figured out the Celsius system still but we know that 20-26˚ is perfect) and sunny. The first thing we noticed on our walked to the hostel was the amazing, antiquated architecture. Everything from the train stations to the statues had an 18th century feel to it. On our journey we noticed more socio-political signs and banners in a plaza a few blocks away from the hostel and we thought we’d be caught in another rally a mere 12 hours after the aforementioned gathering in Madrid. After getting HÔme, we took an hour and a half Turisitc bus tour through rustic Valencia (they also have a Maritime route) to get a feel for the historical and cultural context of the city. The tour was a great option as we only have ¾ of a day there and it allowed us to hit 80% of the sights relatively quickly. Matt, however, was apparently very tired and fell asleep a few times on the surprisingly comfortable bus seats. I got a great video of him bobbing up and down for the better part of three minutes. At the end of the tour we got dropped off in Plaza de la Reina we got gelato and wandered around the area for a while spending most of our time window shopping and taking pictures. We bought a few postcards on the way back to the hostel before dinner. I was particularly excited about dinner because I read on trip advisor that we should got to a Café in Plaza Torres de Quart to watch thousands of bats take flight at dusk (Valencia is notorious for having a huge bat population and the bat developed into a de facto provincial mascot) the base of the at dusk to watch thousands of bats take off for the night. We posted up at Restaurante La pieza de sal in a table under the towers and eagerly awaited the show. To our disappointment, we saw about 75 bats flying sporadically throughout the evening rather than thousands. Apparently it happens randomly and we got unlucky but the rest of the almost everything else seemed to work out well. The food was the delicious. We got a Spanish version of bacon cheese fries (Spanish cheese and an herb sauce drizzled over the fries and bacon really set it off) before our entrée of Lomo atún de la pimienta. We got back to the hostel and almost immediately left to wander the city with a few other hostels. We really hit it off with some guys that were graduating from Med school at Oklahoma, a guy from a small town in Bavaria there by himself on holiday (upper twenties, a girl from New Jersey, and four Germans that were studying in Valencia. Good company made for a good night before we ultimately got back to our hostel before our flight to Ibiza, Spain.
Plaza we saw upon leaving the train station
Spanish countryside on the way to Valencia
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