February 5 - Day 5

We are having a great time. Jacques is in heaven with the food. Unfortunately, even though we walk all day long I think that we will be going home fatter than when we arrived.

Our morning begins with coffee and checking out the e-mails that arrived during the night and then Jacques goes to the bakery that is 1 minute away from our apartment to get fresh bread. So, breakfast consists of this delicious bread with Serrano ham and cheese. With fresh strawberries, yogurt and a glass of orange juice. As you can see quite the hefty breakfast.

After breakfast, we head out exploring until around 2:00 when we have la comida (lunch). We usually opt for ‘’le menu del dia’’ (menu of the day) which consists of 3 courses for a set price. An example is the menu that I talked about the other day. The prices range from 4.50 euros to 16 euros for the better ones. The plates are unbelievably large. One course is as much if not more than we usually eat for supper at home and there are always 2 of these plates plus dessert and often a drink included. We’ve been wanting to go out for tapas in the evening but so far, we are so overstuffed from lunch that we end up staying home and skipping supper altogether.

Even if the city of Valencia doesn’t seem to have an enormous amount of historic buildings, the people make up for it. Most people try very hard to communicate and take the time to pantomime and show us what we want. Yesterday, the waitress in the restaurant went to get her son with his tablet so he could translate the menu for us. He even had it on speaker, so we could hear what the next course was in English.

The supermarket is about 2 minutes from the apartment. The lady behind the meat counter is already starting to know us and gives us samples to try every day. She knows a meat lover when she sees one.

One of Jacques' favourite cheese is called la tetina, for the Acadians reading this you can figure out exactly what it looks like. You English people can probably guess.

Today we walked over 19 km. just looking around and sight seeing. My feet are starting to be sore. Tomorrow will be a slower day, I hope.

I managed to do my first laundry in Spain. I had to ask if I had the right kind of soap at the grocery store. It turned out that I had a floor cleaner in hand. But I’m still proud that I was able to ask for soap to clean clothes. I had forgotten the word for laundry, but they understood and took me to the right aisle. And I think that the laundry is clean, we’ll know when we will wear it.