6/15: travel day!

OK so I´ve been lagging on the updating... sorry!

6/15
we got up at 6 am to get ready in time for our bus to Valencia, and as I was checking email before we left the hostel, I saw a girl in the placa outside our hostel, along with a group of other people, who were all heading home from the clubs. Things never close round Barcelona. I watched her take her shoes off, do the worst cartwheel in history with her dress around her neck and her ugly legging things flashing her ass to everyone, and then pick up her shoes and walk away. It was bizarre.

Busabout was great - we overshot the pickup point a bit on the metro and had to backtrack, but as hostel-finding goes it was a stunning success. Got all set on the bus, and I made sure to take my dramamine (or fake-amine, as we´ve been calling it, because it´s generic brand dramamine), so things were just dandy. I´m really really really glad that we chose to use this service rather than rail or something. the guides speak english, all of the pickup/dropoff points are listed online or in the back of the handbook they give you, they have a little scan-card for you that they scan when you get on the bus each time so that they know they have everyone that had booked that trip (like from Barcelona to Valencia). Also, it was great because this one chick was 7 minutes late, and the guide totally chewed her out for it. The bus itself is really nice, with fairly spacious seats and radio plugs for your headphones in front of every seat, air conditioning, and they played a movie that we could plug into as well. There were even curtains on the windows! PLus, when we got close to Valencia the guide gave a short history of the town and region, mentioned big attractions, etc - he talked about the region for 30 minutes or so. Such a great service, and they stopped every 2 hours or so for a bathroom break, leg stretch, and food break, but this time is built into their estimated travel time that they tell you, and they were very on-time. Awesome.

When we got to Valencia we got checked in and immediately took the bus to the beach. We got to the beach at 2 or 2:30 and didn´t leave until 7ish. Crazy! And it was still really nice out when we left. THe beaches here are much nicer than in Barcelona, with long expanses of clean pale sand and the Mediterranean gently lapping at the shore. It was quite quite windy that day, so there was sand blowing onto us constantly - we went into the water for a while and when we came back our towels were literally almost buried. The water is very clear, and it stays shallow for a really really long way here. The waves are nothing like in San Diego, where the waves are constantly pounding you and you had better stay alert or you get creamed. Here, they are gentle little wavelets, like the waves you make when you get into a bathtub. There were lots of people in the ocean with pool floaties and inner tubes, just floating in the ocean. After the beach we went to El Corte Ingles to get stuff for food, so we got a cool cheese platter-type thing and some bread and gouda and chorizo, along with 3 liters of boxed red wine (0.80 €!!!!) and coke light. So we ate tons of cheese and drank a shit load of calimocho and hung out with the Swedes (Linda and Peter) that we met that are in our room also. Went to bed around 1:30 am and accidentally woke up the Italians in the top bunks of Brett and I´s beds, but apparently it was ok because they were going out the club anyway and had been napping. I don´t know what time they got back, but sometime in the middle of the night the one above me jumped out of the bunk and left our bedroom door wide open along with the bathroom door and threw up for 15 minutes. It didn´t sound like he was doing well.