This weekend was seriously one of the best I've ever had, even if I'm sunburned on my back so badly that I can barely sit down and/or carry my backpack around.
Friday night a bunch of us went out for tapas, and they were as good as everyone had made them out to be. If you don't know how tapas works, it's pretty simple: there's a huge buffet-style lineup of slices of bread that have various stuff on top of them. You grab a plate and pick the ones you want. Every individual piece has one of three toothpicks in it, and each toothpick is priced differently -- I think the prices were 1.35, 1.70, and 2.00 depending on which toothpick you got. So anyways, you just pick the ones you want and hang out for as long as you want to, and at the end you just take your toothpicks up to the front and pay for what you ate. They also have sangria, so of course we were all over that. It's 10 euros for a liter, AND it's delicious, so you really can't go wrong.
After tapas on Friday, I went home and showered before meeting up with Rachel so we could go over to Will's side of town to check out the bars and clubs over there. We met up and walked up towards the train station and called Will to make sure we were going the right way (in retrospect we shouldn't have done that at all since that just ended up screwing us over), and he gave us some directions that we completely misinterpreted. So, instead of crossing in front of the train tracks and going, I don't know, four or so blocks down to meet Will and Ben and Sergi, we walked ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN our side of the train tracks, through a parking lot, the sidewalk ended, crossed a bridge that said "PELIGROSO" "ILEGAL" "NO SE USA", thought we were going to die, pretty sure we saw some drug deals, got stared at by sketchy teenagers in alleyways, and eventually found our way to the guys after a solid hour, hour and a half of wandering around Valencia. This appears to be a common theme in my life.
It all turned out fine in the end though, and we headed up to Barrio Carmen to see what kind of stuff was going on. Found a couple of fun clubs, and ended up at one that played mostly old school American music (Greased Lightening, among others that I can't remember, but seriously it was all American stuff). Those places are a time sucker though -- by the time we left there it was probably around 4 or so? We left and were going to check out somewhere else, and a promoter-type guy came up and told us about his club or whatever, so we decided we would go check it out. Now, normally these places are at the most a block or so away, but this one was a good ten, fifteen minute walk... First bad omen. We eventually got there and went downstairs and it was mad sketchy, and Sergi took one look around and said "Peligroso" (dangerous), and since he's actually from Valencia we decided that we could sit this one out and we all flew back up the stairs and out. We hung out by the bullfighting arena/train station for a little longer, and at around 5 parted ways and headed home. I'm really glad Rach and I live so close together, since it makes going home late at night way less terrifying (not that it's terrifying, but walking anywhere at 5 am is always a little frightening).
Saturday morning we left for Peñíscola at 11am. It was absolutely GORGEOUS, I'll put some pictures up later today. We spent a few hours at the beach, and then went up to the castle overlooking the city. After taking far too many pictures and spending far too much time laughing at absolutely stupid things, we went to a little café and got some sangria, paella, and agua de Valencia. I didn't actually eat any of the paella, because I had eaten my bocadillo pretty recently, but the sangria and agua were quite delicious.
After getting home from Peñíscola and surveying my lovely sunburn, Rach and I headed over to meet Kate and Erica at a place near school called El Castillo (I think...) where you can get a chupito or cerveza for 1 euro, which is crazy cheap. The bartenders kind of suck, but they don't make tips here, so there isn't that extra incentive to provide excellent service. Working in the foodservice industry, I can't decided which system I like better. In the States, you really have to make an effort to be nice to everyone, and you have the chance to make a lot more money than you would ever make here as a bartender. But you also might get a shitty table, or multiple shitty tables, or it could be a really slow Wednesday night and you only get two tables, and on those days you basically make nothing. At least here you're guaranteed some amount of money (technically we are too in the States, but let's be real that all goes to taxes).
After El Castillo the five of us (Phillip showed up eventually) grabbed a couple taxis and went down to check out the club scene down at the beach. We went to a place called High Cube for a little bit, and then wanted to go to Las Animas. Apparently if you go in before 2:30 it's free, but of course we were unable to take advantage of that little perk. We waited in line and ended up talking to these crazy British people the entire time. It was definitely amusing; we got in line right behind them and after about a minute one of them turned around and said something to the effect of "YOU'RE SPEAKING ENGLISH ARE YOU FROM AMERICA OH THIS IS GREAT". Apparently they had all been here 6 months to a year, so they also all spoke Spanish decently. We didn't end up going to Las Animas, and decided to head back to High Cube, but on the way we ran into a few people from Scotland. Well, one of them was from either Edinborough or Glasgow -- he was appalled that we didn't know the difference between the two but I never actually found out where he was from -- but the other one was from Reno, Nevada and spoke with a strange accent that was half laxbro and half Scottish bagpipe player. At some point we found Will, wandering alone out of High Cube, so we scooped him up and all sort of just walked into the club. Totally cool with not having to pay though. We ended up going home at 5 or so, once again.
Sunday was interesting, mostly because all of my electronic devices died and so our plans to go to the beach at noon completely failed due to the fact that I didn't wake up until around 2. Rach was apparently convinced that I was dead, but I actually was not. After eating lunch I hopped on the bus and headed to the beach to meet up with Rach, Kate, and Erica. We tanned and napped and chatted for a few hours, and at 6 got on a bus to the city center to go back and have tapas (seriously guys, tapas). Apparently there was this huge religious festival thing going on with candles and large fake people and turtles and wolf-dragons, so walking back through the crowds was an experience. Oh, and we got some ice cream at some point too. So yeah.
We meandered back through the city to get back home, and I think I got home around 9:15 or 9:30. I was planning on staying up and doing my homework, but I'm pretty sure I passed out at around 10... oops. However, that meant that I was able to wake up at 7:30 and head to school way early so I could finish it before class. Which brings me to where I am right now, sitting in the cafeteria, wishing I had more coffee, and trying to kill the next half hour of time that I have before I have to go to art. I'll probably end up studying for my supermegahorrible medical Spanish midterm that I have tomorrow. Or I might head down towards the Mercadona (one of the grocery store chains here) to get something to eat for lunch, because my madre was mysteriously not awake that I could tell when I left for class this morning. Vamos a ver.
Hasta luego!
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