valencia

June 19, 2006 by j.

In Valencia now and I have to say, I’m not all that impressed, not after the last few cities that we passed through. So, will leave you with some general observations about Spain in this entry.

If you watch Seinfeld and know about the contract between pigeons and cars… there seems to be a contract between pedestrians and cars here. If you hear a car coming, you get out of the way. Even if you’re walking down some narrow alley and “getting out of the way” means flattening yourself against the building wall, then that’s what you do. Because the car definitely ain’t slowing down. There’s no screaming or shaking of the fist or panickedly pulling your children to safety, you just get out of the way for the 2 seconds it takes the car to pass. A much more efficient system imho.

Cars here tend to take their turns wide without slowing down much. The result is that intersections have been built in a more rounded fashion, and the pedestrian crossing zone is a ways away from the actual street intersection (necessary for seeing the coming car and deciding which direction you want to run for your life in).

It gets dark really late here, like 10:30/11 pm.

Things we have done recently:

• Experienced a Turkish bath in Granada. Consists of showering, dunking yourself in freaking ballshrinking-temperature waters (WHY?!?!), then soaking blissfully in a warm bath with 10 or 15 of your closest friends. Or in our case, hairy men and fat women. Then we’re calling one by one out of the water for a massage which leaves you very oily. Then more hot water. Then another frigid cold dunk (WHY?!?!) And then we are turned out onto the street sopping wet and oily, to continue our day in high fashion.
• Ate at a pincho bar. Which means grabbing food off of communal plates on the bar and then paying at the end via a complicated system of toothpick hierarchy. Tres yum.
• Traveled via sleeper car. Not a bad experience at all.

Next stop, Ibiza!

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