Monday
We had an amazing day today. Being February 29, we had to assist a
geocaching event in order to earn a souvenir badge so before we left for Spain,
we published an event in Turia park. We had about 15 people who came, some
spoke a bit of English some not at all. 3 ladies had a 4-hour drive back home.
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| Our geocaching event |
After that event we headed out to the outskirts of the city where
another geocaching event was being held at 7:30. We should have known better by
now. We assumed supper would be served not too long after we arrived but not
so. It (the supper) started being served at 9:45. Needless to say by then us
Canadian were hungry having not eaten since noon and that being a small
sandwich that we had prepared at the apartment. So, when the plates started arriving,
we cleaned off the plates much quicker than the locals. The meal was typical
Valecian for a gathering. Everything was served in front of us to be divided
between 4 people and of course no serving utensils. The first thing to be
served was good, it was an ensalada rusa which is basically potato salad,
second thing was calamari sleeves also good but when the third plate came I
asked what it was. They told me it was morro, which just happens to be pig
snout. It was deep fried with a little bit of salt and a lemon wedge on the
side. When in Rome do as the Romans do, so we also had some. Actually, it
wasn’t as bad as it sounds. it tasted like (cuen de lard) pork rind. This plate
was also cleaned. all the wine must have helped because we all said that it
wasn’t too bad. The rest of the meal after was pretty mundane with patatas
bravas and 3 types of bocadillos (sandwiches). Through all this meal, the wine
and beer were free flowing.
While in the area, we saw a group of older gentlemen gathered in a
nearby park. We discovered that pet pigeons are very popular in the area and
they had all brought their pigeons, so they could also spend some time
together. Each owner paints their pigeons a different color pattern so that
they can tell them apart.
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| Morro (AKA Pig snout) |
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| calamari
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| bocadillos (sandwiches) |
At the end we had coffee and carajillo (a liqueur). Since the
metro stopped at 11:30 and the event only finished at 1:30 a local geocachers
gave us a drive back at our apartment after we had all gone out to find a new
cache that had come out during supper.
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| Geocache of the evening |
Tuesday
After going to bed at 2:00 this morning we slept in a bit later
than usual, but we wanted to be away when the cleaning lady came so we took the
Metro and went, you guessed it, geocaching again. This time we thought
according to goggle maps that we were going in another dry riverbed but no it
was what felt like a mountain but in reality, was probably just a big hill. Anyway,
another day with over 21 km and 30,000 steps and 11 caches. It’s a lot of steps
per cache but we had a great hike and I even managed to amuse some young people
when I tried to ask them in Spanish which road we needed to take to get to the
park or the forest as they called it. They must have been happy that my
pronunciation was so good and all my words in the proper order. I can’t see why
else they would have burst out laughing. Their English was no better than my Spanish,
so it took a while to get our information. They were interested in where we
were from and how cold etc. it was in Canada, so I showed them a few pictures
of the snow we had on the ground before we left. I didn’t tell them that there
was no snow left.
Tonight, early to bed and no wine.
Tomorrow we will take it easy. There is one puzzle cache that we
have solved that we want to find and then Jacques wants to film the Mascleta at
2:00. The Masclata is a daily fireworks show in the central square of Valencia
and is part of the annual Fallas festival. The Mascleta occurs every day during
the 2-week festival. There is the occasional puff of colored smoke, but it is
mostly about the noise and the smell of gunpowder. It is so loud that you can
feel the concussion of the fireworks shells exploding. About 100,000 people
show up every day for the 5-10 minute show.
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| People gathering for the show |
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| Show's over |
We also want to go buy tickets for one of the bull fights that
will happen next week. I’m not sure that I will enjoy it. Apparently, it’s a
bit gruesome but I’ll never have another chance to go and as someone told me,
whether I go or not the bull doesn’t stand a chance of surviving.
Our visitors will be leaving in a few days so during their
remaining time here, we continue our daily walks, sightseeing and of course,
geocaching. During one of our outings, we stopped at a local bar for lunch.
Service was great until 2:00. at that point, it was time for the daily
Mascleta. It is televised every day so for 10 minutes, everyone was glued to
the TV to watch the spectacle. After that everything returned back to normal.
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| The decorations are starting to come out for the Fallas festival |
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| Add caption |
