Saturday in the Park - April 30, 2016

Saturday in the park

I think, it was the thirty of April

People dancing, people laughing

A man selling ice cream

Singing Spanish songs

"Puede que cavar ? si puedo"

Can you dig it? Yes, I can

And I've been waiting such a long time

For Saturday in this Jardines del Turia (Valencia Park)

Our first gorgeous partially sunny day...perfect for walking.

First we saw this Happy Andalusian event with these lovely 

black Pure Spanish Horses and Flamenco outfits, it was cool.

As we continued our walk what else would you expect us 

(me) to find? Of course baseball!  They play thanks to the 

descendants of immigrants from Cuba.

Interesting graffiti from the heart

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Plaza de la Virgen.

I had the interesting experience of having a Desperado beer - 
a beer with tequilla flavoring.....it was like a Coors with lime....I'd suggest you don't try it. 

Practicing to live like a Spaniard - Thursday & Friday, April 28 & 29, 2016

We just returned from dinner, at 11:15 pm, which is why I titled this entry as practicing to live like a Spaniard.  It's is amazing how late the Spanish people eat dinner.  On average the Spanish people go to sleep at 12:15 am on week days and 12:53 am on weekends.  While we were eating a family arrived to eat with 2 young children at 10:25 pm.....

Since we wanted something different to eat for dinner than Tapas, we chose this Italian restaurant as it was within 2 blocks of our hotel One Shot 46  it is called La Fabbrica.  We had a wonderful burrata cheese salad and Margarita pizza.  Our waitress was Maria Marin and she may become our very first Spanish friend.  She spoke impeccable English, as she lived in Tampa from 4th grade to high school. She was warm, friendly and AMAZING. She gave us he name of her cousin who helps people find apartments.  She gave us her contact info and told us that if her cousin does not speak English she would translate for us.  It is such and overwhelming feeling to be offered such a gift of help and support from someone you just met, so I do hope that she will become our first Spanish friend.  BTW she gave "paid for" one of my 2 glasses of wine and also gave us each a Lemonchello.  

OK so the past few days we have been trying to get a feel for the different parts of Valencia.  We've walked, taken the bus and taxi's!
I know it seems to make sense but the trees the city has planted throughout the city are Valencia orange trees with a few Jacaranda's mixed in.

 Given that we are living out of our suitcases I haven't broken out my camera.  So the photo's I've taken (below) are all from my iPhone.  Overall we like Valencia we are just trying to figure out if we want to live in a city or try to find a place further south along the coast.   

Oh I do want to list a few other places we eaten as we have loved each of them.  For dinner last night we ate at Trenca Dish and for lunch today we ate at Bar & Kitchen .

We did visit the Museu de Belles Arts de Valencia, and I took quite a few photo's enjoy.

"Our Heavenly Father"

Valencia women

The Journey Begins - Valencia, Spain - Tuesday, April 26 through Wednesday, April 27, 2016

After about 6 months of planning and working towards this, our departure day arrived.  All of our family and friends helped us accomplish everything we needed to prior to our departure.  Thank you all so very much.   We could not have done it without your love, support and help.  

It certainly was exhausting preparing everything and very emotional leaving all the family and friends we love.  But we only live once, what the hell right?   We already miss all of you and hope that you will come to visit us during our time in Spain.

We used frequent flyer miles for our one way ticket to Valencia. This made our journey a bit long with two connections.  Overall it took us about 25 hours to get here.

We were fortunate to get Business class seats for the flights from IAD (Washington/Dulles) to ZRH (Zurich) and from ZRH to VLC (Valencia).  United is so wonderful (not) to their customers that with an almost empty plane from SFO to IAD they didn't even upgrade us to Economy Plus.  But it worked out as everyone on the plane could have had a row of 3 seats to themselves to lay down on. I do have to say how cool it is to be able to, mid-trip, take a shower in the Business lounge at the Zurich airport.  Outside the airport it was just a light snow falling.

Upon arrival in Valencia it was 22 Celsius which is about 71 Fahrenheit.

We are staying in the One Shot Hotel - Calle Colon # 46 - the in room brochure says "The Unique and Spontaneous Hotels that Supports Art"

We have not yet wandered around as we needed to get a few hours of sleep.  I expect we will walk around a little this evening to find a place for a little dinner before we crash.