Submitted by Caitlin Baker on the 2012 spring semester program in Granada, Spain…
This past weekend my roommate, Alexandra, and I took an impromptu trip to Valencia. We only decided to go about a week before, but we really wanted to get to see another part of Spain. We had Friday classes last week (we only have four Friday classes the whole semester) so our best option as far as timing was to take the overnight bus there (leave 11:30 pm and arrive 7:00 am the next day) and then the train back. We didn’t really mind though because we were thinking we would just sleep on the bus and then get an early start in Valencia and maximize our time there. But.. it didn’t end up being as smooth as we thought. We barely slept on the bus and arrived in Valencia pretty exhausted. Not to mention it was still cold in the early morning and we weren’t supposed to check into our hostel until 1:30pm! I guess we may have been a bit naive in our planning… but in our defense we didn’t have many other options! 🙂
Our start was rough, but the day ended up turning around. We drank a few cups of coffee and went to our hostel. Researching a good hostel beforehand ended up being our saving grace. The staff there ended up being SO nice and super helpful! They let us check-in early and offered us breakfast. After recouping for an hour or so there, we headed out to explore.
Valencia is a really pretty city and has a very cheerful feel to it. March is the month of their biggest festival, Las Falles, which seemed to make the city especially fun and friendly. People come from all over Europe to see the celebration which starts on the 15th and ends on the 19th. The city really goes all out for it, creating huge, hand-painted dolls (they kind of look like floats from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade), fireworks, parties, etc. In the days leading up to the Falles they have La Mascletà, which is 5-10 minutes of fireworks held every day at 2:00 pm on the dot in one of the plazas. We went to see it and it was pretty cool, but the part that was most impressive was the amount of people that crowd into the plaza to watch. The plaza itself was packed and every building within it was bursting with people in the windows and balconies. You could barely move!
We were able to explore basically the whole city center and saw some of the famous architecture and historic buildings. We also went to the beach, but only stayed for an hour or two because it was really windy! It was a short trip but we really felt like we saw a lot of Valencia and really had a great time. I think too, that it was a good warm-up traveling experience for our Spring Break that we have coming up at the end of the month. The train home on Sunday was a much smoother ride, not to mention more beautiful!