So around 3pm on Friday (when I got out of classes) I run over to Barcelona Nord station and grab me two bus tickets to Valencia from B. Nord. These tickets were for 1am. It seemed like a good idea at the time... it takes 5.5 hours to get to Valencia, so why not get the tickets for while I'd be sleeping anyway. Well, that assumed one important fact... that I could sleep on the bus.
Haha... thats funny. I'm never taking a bus I need to sleep on again. So we're all getting on the bus and then I hear a baby. Oh man... on the plane to Barcelona and now on the bus to Valencia. Oh my luck.
Turns out the baby quieted down pretty quickly, but there were these two folks in the back who had too much to drink. At some point they started arguing and after a serious 15 minutes, the bus driver pulls over to the side of the highway and walk backs to the back of the bus. He then proceedes to rail and threaten to make this guy get off the bus if he talks to a single other person on the bus. It was crazy. The bus driver really railed this guy. He was more quiet for the rest of the trip. So hopefully now (around 3am) I would be able to sleep more than 5 minutes. Well, no. The window on the bus is too far from the seat, so you can't lean on it, there isn't enough leg room for the tall persona, ugh! I slept maybe 30 minutes between 1am and 6am.

We get to Valencia, it was so great to be able to get off the bus and walk around. There was a group of about 15/16 people, but Adam and I weren't into running around in such a big group. So we quickly just left the station, having no idea where we were going. We just wandered out of the bus station and started walking. It was a little hair raising, but hey it was fun. We found a bus stop with a bus map on it, so we got a basic idea of what the city was like. We wanted to go hit the old part of the city, and we got a basic idea of where that was from the bus map. So we started walking down some crazy park (which used to be a river) until we saw this ridiculous gate/fortress type thing. It must have been the main entrance to the old city.

We found a map near this (it was a old city tourist map built into the side of a wall) that gave us an idea of where we wanted to head. We saw what was called the main market, so we were hungry and tired, so we needed some caffine and food, and then we also noted the train station... we figured we could get a tourist map and stuff from there. But first is first, we start heading into the old city. We run into the big group again (that seemed lost even though they supposedly had a map), and quickly moved our own way again. We did see some awesome stuff on the way to the market though. The first really nice plaza we say was Plaza de Virgens . The entire ground was covered in marble tile, and the cathedral really close to it was amazing. Going in places costed money, so that wasn't worth it. But I took plenty of pictures of the outside! ;)

We had enough of the square after 30 minutes or so (and the cleaning folks started coming out to clean up the square, so we got out of there way). It was about 7:45 at this point on a Saturday. All the streets were basically empty. Not a soul was stirring. But I mean comon the market had to be open right? Saturday morning market? So we headed straight for where we thought the market was. We found the market, or some back entrance to the market, wandered through, saw some cool stuff. No real breakfast type food though. We decided we needed to find a coffee shop or something. So we headed out of the market, in search of coffee and food, because the market sorta failed us in terms of croissants and coffee. We found this awesome place right across the street from the market entrance, or at least an entrance to the market. We then proceeded to consume some really good cafe con leche and I had a tortilla de jamon y queso which was divine. Tortilla de jamon y queso in espana really means french bread with egg and some flour and other amazing stuff around the jamon (ham), including the queso (cheese). It was awesome. The cafe con leche was really good too... add a packet of sugar... oh man! So we pay our friendly cafe owner and head out.

The next goal was to find a map so we actually knew where we were going and stuff. So we headed in the direction we remember seeing the Valencia Nord train station. We ran into this awesome plaza, with a sweet fountain. And some other awesome architecture.

We did find our tourist map, the metro map, the renfe local map (the local extended metro company in spain). Its around 9am now. We decided that we want to go check out the Museu de Ciencias which is across the city. So we start walking out of the old city toward the giant park (band of park) that seperates the city into two. (this was the park the was an old river). We took Gran Via de Valencia, because well... it was close it took us in the right direction and it sounded like a good idea ;). So yeah, we headed out on that road. Immediately after leaving Valencia Nord we see El Toro the local bull fighting ring (which had a bull fight the day friggin before we got there... how unfair!).

We get onto Gran Via. Apparently some artist is showing off his crazy work along Gran Via for a few months... so it was fun looking at new stuff while we wandered toward the Museu de Ciencias.

We get to the end of Gran Via... well at least the end of our trip on Gran Via and start walking in the park toward Museu de Ciencias. This park is absolutely amazing. I love this park, and so should you. It spans the border of the entire old city and separates some of the new city in a E-W manner. This park is awesome because of all the green space and complete feeling of being away from a metropolitan area that is less than 400ft away at the most. While in some areas you could see skyscrapers around you, something else was always drawing your eye, a fountain, some ridiculous architecture, or a giant tree. It is pretty much an ideal place to go kill 30 minutes to a day if you lived in Valencia. If cities in the US knew how to organize themselves and actually cared about the public spaces they created, every city would have something like this. Just look at central park and how amazing everyone things it is, why doesn't every metropolitan city have a public area like this? Why does ATL fail at life? Anyway... pictures of the park, in chronological order.

And we get to the Museu de Ciencias via the park... which is actually the back way in aparently. There isn't much to say about it other than the buildings are amazing... so I'll let the pictures speak now.

What to do now? Well its about noon, I'm hungry and we want to head off to either Cullyera, Puzol or Bunol (the Tomatina place) which are all a train (extended metro, renfe) ride away. We had talked with the Tourista chica at the train station, and she gave us a Cullyera map, and sleeping on the beach in hammocks really sounded ideal. So we planned on getting some food and heading to Valencia Nord to catch the train to Cullyera. We head back over to the old district (the ambiance of the old city is just amazing, and just being there is fulfilling) to get some food. We go back to the Plaza de Virgens (because its an awesome plaza and had some sweet restuarants). After wavering over some more expensive meals (Jamon Iberica... which is supposed to be amazing!) we decide on a cheaper, but very good cafe. I had myself a good sandwich and some cafe con leche again :)

Now its time to go hit Valencia Nord Estacion to catch the train to Cullyera. We got on the 2:36 train and got to the Cullyera station around 3:20. We then take the local bus to the actual city proper (the train station is a good 15km from the beach). I was expecting a smaller city, but this is actually quite the beach destination for familias espanas. Tons of hotels, there is a Castillo on a hill overlooking the entire city which is awesome. We didn't go in the actual Castillo. We ended up walking almost the entire beach line trying to figure out where we were going to sleep, or find some campsite place which wasn't too public. Alot of the beaches forbid camping... but I think they were more afraid of stuff like fires and the like, rather than people sleeping on the beach. Adam used Google Earth to figure out how far we walked that day, it was in the neighborhood of 6 miles around on the coast (which is far from flat, mind you)... Now add this to what we did in the city... now consider we had all our cloths, hammock stuff and what not on our backs. We did a serious 12/14 mile hike. And my calfs/bones/left leg/left middle toe/left foot was really starting to feel it. We found two palm trees (on a restricted beach unfortunatly) that was probably the least public of a beach and setup our hammocks. It was around 7pm at this point, and we just decided to take an hour or so siesta before we went to go eat dinner and chill out there for a few hours. We both fell asleep for a hour and woke up, packed up the hammocks (we left he rope setup, since it was non trivial) and headed off back down the friggin beach we had just walked 5 miles on. *sigh* We stopped at the first restuarant we found, and it was a great restaurant! We both started off with just something to drink for the first 30 minutes to let our legs calm down from moving. I then ordered a pizza tropico (hawaiian pizza) and we got a litre of Sangria. We probably spent 3 hours at the restaurant. When we left, I was almost sure my calves were going to explode and the shin splints were going to rupture my left leg... thats what I get for not using it alot and this funny limpy coarse walk I have... grr... I'm an iddiot for climbing that wall... anyway... pictures...

We then go to sleep in our hammocks, on the beach around 11pm... less than 20m from the ocean (sea.. if you want to be technical)!

I wake up at 8am and take some photos... we ended up just hanging around the beach until 11am, not wanting to move. We have since figured out the local bus schedule and caught the bus from really close to where we were sleeping back to the train station around noon, with the intent of eating some paella back in Valencia.

We get back to Valencia, and immediately head into the old town (called Carmen I've been informed) to find some Paella. We find this one deal, but the waiter is a jerk and we leave. We then find this other place who sells paella and guess what! Jamon Iberica! For cheaper than I saw it the day before, so that was my lunch, an entire 14euro plate of Jamon Iberica. Adam had a Mixed Paella. I had a few bites, I'm not so impressed with Paella... its, just alot of rice, not alot of meat... I'm probably going to the wrong places, or not wanting to pay enough ;). We ran into a nice family from LA who were touring Europe though at the place we ate, it was nice. Valencia on Sunday definitely felt like a Tourist destination though, more so then Barcelona ever felt so far. It made me sad, but I'm still pretty stoked about Valencia in general. We didn't really have a plan of what we wanted to do until 8pm when our bus left, so we decided to go take some more pictures of the old city, and see some of the stuff we had missed when we didn't have a map. After we did all that (you can pretty much see all of the old Valencia, Carmen, in around a day... the only thing I didn't get to do in Valencia was wander around Calle Caballeros when its crazy at night. Its alot like Las Rhamblas in Barcelona... bar -> food -> bar -> bar -> bar -> food -> club -> bar... you get the idea. Also I want to experience Valencia when its not a weekend and all the American/British people are around. Back on topic... we decided to go hang out in the park that I really really like, for above mentioned reasons. We end up watching some soccer and little kids play with a fountain for like 45/50 minutes. My goal was to go see the Aquarium, but I wasn't feeling into forking out 22euro to go see stuff I had pretty much already seen elsewhere. Its all about the city experience, and what better place than the park on domingo where the local soccer leagues were playing and kids were running around. Its like 4pm now, and we're hungry tired... so we wander out of the park to go find a cafe, I wanted some more cafe con leche... I could be addicted now... and una helado, it was hot. We found one, met this nice lady that ran the place hung out there for 30 minutes and just chilled. At this point we realized that we came to Valencia and had not gone to the beach in Valencia... what a shame! So we needed to fix this. We run over to the closest metro and metro out to the beach (coming back on the purple line is ridiculous, especially when the entire beach is leaving then too). Wander around the beach for 45 minutes. As its nearing 6pm, we want to start heading back to the bus station so we can make our bus. (let me reiterate... the purple line sucks, its above ground, only a few trams on it, not fast enough... and the entire population of san diego wants to get on it)... ugh that sucked. Anyway, we didn't want to pay for another metro ticket so we took the purple line to Reus (kinda where we needed to be, but a little bit of a walk is included to get back to the bus station). We eneded up walking past the cafe we stopped at earlier, which was fun. Then there was the dulceria... oh man... the chocolate chocolate stuffed chocolate center eclairs were amazing. I would eat those forever... it rivaled how amazing reeces are. We got on the bus after that... it was much more uneventful than the first bus ride, but a little more cramped until I just took two open seats in the back and basically layed down and slept for a good portion of the ride.

Morals of that story...
Valencia is awesome.
Buses suck for long trips (long being > 3 hrs)
You can't sleep on buses
I really really like reflecting pools
I would pay 20 euro to go eat at the ducleria again
Sleeping on the beach in the hammock is the most relaxing thing a human being can do
Limping 10+ miles is not recommended