Valencia

So I took a weekend trip to Valencia, where it was sunny and beautiful and amazing. We rented bicycles, we ate paella valenciana, we went to the theatre, we went to the aquarium, we played on playgrounds, we ate lots of pastry and drank lots of coffee, and we took many pictures of artistic graffiti.

And with that, I am just going to post pictures with limited commentary and save it for the end.



Three types of paella: seafood, vegetarian, and valenciana.



We were hungry.



There was much more green life in Valencia than there is in Madrid.



(These are technically lemon trees and not Valencia orange trees, whatever. Citrus, right?)



The graffiti in Valencia really was very cool.





There were interesting juxtapositions between it and the other beautiful elements of the city.



Very Spanish-looking.



As always, we had to break for coffee and pastry.





And then we rented bicycles!



Dead bikes.



We also visited the aquarium (apparently it's one of the bigger ones in Spain), which was pretty amazing because you actually walk around these underwater tunnels while the fish swim all around you.



So then I took a lot of stupid pictures of fish, so here's an obligatory seahorse and we'll just be done with that now.

We went to see Camus's Caligula on a spur-of-the-moment idea after biking past the theater. We got student tickets for €10 to sit in the third row. (We were so close that we could see the actors sweating - a little like when you get amazing seats at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.) The acting was pretty incredible, and I was miraculously able to follow what was going on. (It was helpful that half the play was, "Oh look, this guy is absolutely batshit crazy!" and the rest of it was his advisers' reactions to his insanity and their plot to kill him. Not that shocking of a plotline, really.)

Other observations:

I was not informed that they do not actually speak Spanish in Valencia. They speak Valenciano, which is apparently a dialect of Catalan (the language they speak in Barcelona). While most people in Valencia speak Castilian Spanish as well, the street signs are all only in Valenciano. Thank you, Spain, why does nobody in this country actually speak the same language.

I sat next to a Russian girl on the bus, and she was very impressed with my crocheting. (She also completely fooled me by utterly ignoring the five American girls around her for the first two hours of the bus ride and then suddenly turning to me and asking, "So where are you from?" in perfect English. A bit disconcerting, that. We did have a very interesting conversation for the next two hours, however.) I also finished my crochet project, which means that sometime this week I am going to have to go on a quest for yarn.

Paella valenciana (in the picture, it's the rightmost dish, with the very yellow rice) is delicious, but I have decided I prefer the seafood paella because the rice is so much more flavorful since it's cooked with the seafood broth and everything. Paella valenciana has chicken or rabbit instead of seafood and the rice is cooked with mostly saffron and sweet paprika instead of the smoky stuff you find in seafood paella. It was still delicious, but not quite as interesting. I did, however, love the inclusion of all sorts of beans, including some type of giant, white buttery bean whose origins I am still unclear on.

And finally, I managed to completely perplex, embarrass myself in front of, and amuse my señora this morning at breakfast when I attempted to tell her about our trip. I was doing very well up until I got to the part about the aquarium. I didn't know how to say aquarium in Spanish, nor did I know how to say zoo (I was working towards "fish zoo"), and so, after grasping at straws, I ended up with, "Fuimos al museo de pez" (literal translation: "We went to the fish museum"). The ensuing look she gave me was both mortifying and really, really entertaining.

For the record, the word is "acuario." I give up on this language.