June 3, 2022: We Tried

A Day in the Life:

When I woke up this morning I was feeling great and ready to take on Valencia head on, but things went downhill pretty fast. We had already planned on Kassondra staying at the hostel most of the day to finish her last couple of assignments but after going to the market and grabbing breakfast at the Brunch Corner Bryant really wasn’t feeling well. We decided to forego what I had planned for the morning or at the very least delay it so that we could all rest some more.

It was after getting back that I realized that a prior mistake I had made would affect our entire stay in Valencia negatively and I got very upset with myself. About two weeks ago I realized that I needed to book three nights in Valencia but had only booked two and by the time I realized that there was no where left to stay. Literally nowhere, nothing on Hostelworld, nothing on Airbnb, and not even anything on Bookings.com. And the shocking thing about it is, there doesn’t seem to actually be that many people here, there’s no major festivals going on in town, and so I am absolutely baffled. That being said, my work around wound up being booking a night in Alicante and then continuing on to Malaga from there. Alicante is having their own much larger festival this weekend through next week but they had plenty of accommodations available. The train that I booked to take us to Alicante however is smack dab in the middle of the day, and what I realized this afternoon is that two of the activities I had booked prior to arriving in Valencia were going to be after our train had already departed and we would be forced to miss them. This was one of the most frustrating moments for this trip so far because not being able to do the things that I wanted to do was entirely my fault in this scenario.

Kassondra decided on a morning bout of spontaneity to schedule a tattoo for 12:30 and since everything else wasn’t going as planned I decided to tag along for emotional support and to just relax. We made some decisions about some of the next places we’ll be including moving to a slightly better hostel option in Marrakech, booking a longer stay there and a 3-day desert tour, and moving our Seville reservations back and extending those as well. Because of our negative experience in Portugal with customs we decided to forego going there at all at least on this trip and by the end of it I felt pretty good about our plans at least through to the end of Seville.

Once Kassondra’s tattoo was done we went back to the hostel for siesta. With our first few days in Spain behind us it’s become pretty clear that doing anything during siesta is almost impossible. Most of the attractions, restaurants, and shops close and the streets are dead. The nap I took was good though and made me feel much better and by the time I woke up Kassondra was finished with her homework and so that was one stress off of our backs.

We used about an hour of our time before dinner at 7:30 to explore some of the places on my list including El Micalet, Valencia Cathedral, and the Virgin Square. We ate dinner at El Rall, a good place for paella that came recommended by Kassondra’s tattoo artist. We had the Valencian Paella which featured chicken and rabbit. It was a delicious meal but if we were to return I would try the place originally on my itinerary: La Riua, a more local family-owned restaurant.

From there we took a taxi to the Plaza de Rosario where the Festival Ruge Rosario was being held. We were told that there would be live music and dancing but when we arrived the music wasn’t our vibe and there wasn’t much else to do. The advertised Artisan Market was six stalls and of those there were two that weren’t selling their own work. We decided to walk to the water and hung out on the beach for a few minutes before clouds rolled in and we took a taxi back to the hostel just before it started raining. Overall, we tried our best but today just wasn’t our day and it doesn’t seem that we’ll have much more time to get to know Valencia any better.