Giggling in Valenica
I wake up at half past five and am happy to see the first bright stripe on the horizon. Yeah, the sunrise is right in front of me. Here I have to thank my bladder, because it was the one that woke me up.
We then took down our tent in peace, but still without the blazing sun. Everything put away. It's nice when we are travelling with minimal luggage. Everything is quickly put away. But it still takes a while. Of course, we are spoiled, I don't want to have to put the stuff away in the rain. But well, we are in the summer holidays.
Unfortunately, we leave this place again because we want to head towards Valencia today. The route there turns out to be not very nice and with every quarter of an hour the sun is higher and we crack the 30 degree mark for the first time. This is really intense on the motorbike.
On the way we take breaks from time to time, one for breakfast right by the sea. Here we drink coffee and eat toast with tomato puree. Really delicious, I wouldn't have thought so. We continue to the next beach, where we jump into the water. The beach is stony, so it's good that I have my airy barefoot shoes with me, I go straight into the water with them. I'm sure they'll dry quickly on the moto.
I'm already looking for a campsite, but I can hardly find one near Valencia that I like and is affordable. Without further ado, I book us a hostel in the middle of Valencia for 15 euros per person, funny... We are definitely too old for hostels. The average is 18+, but today we don't care.
We go into town and experience our first Spanish city. We stroll far too early, the city is almost empty. It's around 3 a.m. We tourists realise that it's siesta time here. So we go to the youth hostel and get some sleep. At 6 we go out again and realise that this is clearly the better time for Valencia.
We walk through churches, look at the imposing architecture, which is Christian and Moorish. We stroll through the old town and watch artists and observe people. Many women have made themselves really pretty for the evening. And now we are hungry. Really hungry. According to the notice in the hostel, we know that the paella comes from Valencia. So it must be paella. When it arrives, we are thrilled. The waiter, however, recommends the Ague de Valencia, probably an aperitif. All right, we'll have it. He brings it and says, "You drink and then you are happy. All right, we think.
5 minutes later, we are still waiting for the paella, we are completely drunk and just cackling. We find everything funny. Smiling, the waiter answers the question about the contents of the "water". Orange juice, champagne, vodka, gin and sugar. Well, cheers.
The paella was very very good, I had the vegetarian and Gerd the Valencian. Is that how you say it? This one was also great.
But then came the highlight. Our Kathi recommended that we eat churros with melted chocolate. Wow, that was a feast. Like chocolate fondue with fruit and churros.
We staggered to our hostel, which was thankfully just down the road and only about 500 m from the old town, and were in bed shortly before 10. The others in our room were just getting ready to leave, we just wanted to sleep off our fun drunkenness. We had a short phone call with Moppi, but at some point the internet went down and then we had to break off. He was still beaming with joy when he told us about his Gampel Festival. We would have loved to hear more, he was so cheerful 🙂
We hope we can talk to him again on the phone tomorrow.
A few words about travelling itself. I sit on the bike and let the landscape rush past me. It feels a bit like taking a shower under a rain shower. I take in the impressions and enjoy it. I look for hours at olive tree plantations and later at thousands and thousands of orange tree plantations. Unfortunately, the oranges are not yet ripe. To be honest, I have no idea when oranges should be ripe. But it is simply impressive how many orange trees there are.
Later we drive past a fig tree. It smells incredibly good. I ask Gerd to turn around and I would like to harvest some figs. Unfortunately, although they already smell like ripeness, they are not yet. They are all still green and hard. Well, it doesn't seem to be fig season.
I perceive the journey on the motorbike incredibly through the scents. Here a fig tree, there the sea breeze. Here the paella in a restaurant, there a fresh espresso. But I also notice unpleasant things, me with my nose. Last night we were lying in the tent, and to weigh us down we had put our motorbike cases in the four corners of the tent. Of course, I was lying with my head on the suitcase, which is normally on the exhaust pipe. So I smelled petrol or something all night. I kept waking up with the smell of petrol in my nose. Tonight we slept in a 6-bedded room in the hostel, I don't think I need to explain how it smelled like hiking boot muffler and our eternally wet towels. But somehow, even though I prefer fig trees and sea breezes, all scents belong. I love travelling.
