Valencia and La Tomatina

Valencia's Main Train station
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So Valencia…well there’s a lot that happens here during the year but what brought us here in August was the infamous La Tomatina, tomato fight festival.

As always John and I had organised ourselves at the last minute, well for us it was quite in advance, say about one week but for Valencia when the Tomatina is on we left it to the last minute. It was extremely hard to find any budget accommodation. All hostels and city budget hotels were fully booked, well offcourse because every backpacker in Spain was there. I managed to book us in to a hotel, 4 stars for an excellent Internet price of 50 euros per night, usual price is 80 euros. We had paid 45 euros for hostels so we were happy with this. Once we arrived it seemed the whole hotel was full of people just like us, smelly backpackers feeling a little uncomfortable in a hotel. We had booked a room with a king bed but so had everyone else and all the kings had been given out, so we were yet again in a twin share room.

One of the Beautiful buildings in the old part of Valencia
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The hotel wasn’t in Valencia, but we had a metro stop 2 minutes walk and it only took 6 stops until we had arrived in the old part of town where you’ll find the restaurants and shops as well as the main train station. Only annoying thing is that the metro closes early, around 12am so we had to catch a taxi home if any later than that, only cost about 8 euros though J.

I’m going to stop here and let John write about La Tomatina.

La Tomatina

The biggest tomato fight in the world, which started 61 years ago and is held in small town not far from Valencia called Buñol.

Erin enjoying her Sangria while waiting for her paella
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On the day we got up mega early at 5.15 am thinking that we were pretty smart because we thought we would try and beat the huge amount of people who catch the train to get to the event. So we got our taxi at 5.45 am and headed to the train station in the middle of Valencia. We arrived at about 6 am and to our disappointment it was already pretty packed! Oh well so we waited for our train which left at 7.08 am and during this hour the train station just kept getting busier and busier. As soon as the platform number came up for our train it was as tho a bomb went off and everyone was rushing for an exit. So we forced our way through and eventually got on our train.

mmm...Erin must be really enjoying her food.
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It took about 50 minutes (standing the whole way) to get there with stops along the way to pick up locals who had to go to work. They didn’t look to impressed that the train was already packed out to the brim but somehow still managed to squeeze in. So we arrived at Buñol at approximately 8 am. The tomato fight didn’t start till 11 am so we had a fair bit of time to kill. We walked down a massive windy hill to get to the city centre and we had breakfast. We also bought a waterproof bag with a disposable waterproof camera and some goggles. We headed to the street by about 10 am where it all happens. We felt like sardines in a tin and there was already a fair few drunken locals doing chants and causing trouble. They had stared a ring where they would drag in 1 male at a time and basically all would grab a piece of his T-shirt and just keep pulling at it until it eventually ripped off! People looked in pain afterwards and we were very close to it so I was shitting my pants thinking I could be in next. I forced my way through the crowd to get away. We decided to move to a place where it wasn’t so busy but where the tomato truck still came through.

John kickin back on the train...
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As the clock nearly hit 11 am everyone was getting excited and as soon as the truck was in sight everyone went crazy! There were about 10 people on the truck who would throw constant handfuls of tomatoes off the side for everyone. Here is where it gets brutal, every 5 seconds you would cop a tomato to the head. Erin was not impressed and very distraught (I don’t know what she was expecting though) I was having a great time throwing tomatoes as hard as I could every which way. After not too long Erin cracked it and threw her one and only tomato at the ground in frustration and we exited as quick as we could which was very hard to do because no one would move, so Erin just stuck her head down to avoid hits and I guided her out of the chaos. We eventually made it out and watched from a safe distance. Erin was much happier except she was feeling a bit ill from the strong tomato stench. We were still very much covered in tomatoes even though we weren’t in there for that long but we still experienced what it was all about. I tried to get myself back in but it was just too hard to push through. It was about 11.45 am when we decided to have our shower, which was freezing yet refreshing. We got all cleaned up and headed back to the train up the top of the huge hill, which completely drained us. We caught our train back home, which was packed as you would expect and went back to our Hotel for a nice afternoon nap.

Unfortunately we can’t put pictures up of this, as I didn’t want to risk my digital camera getting destroyed. Hopefully we can get the pics put on a CD some how so we can put some up, if not you will have to wait till we get back. That is all from me, back to you Erin.

We only planned to stay in Valencia for 2 nights but we couldn’t find any decent priced flights up north so we stayed another night. On what was meant to be our last night we went out for some traditional Spanish cuisine. So we hit the city for some Sangria and Paella (Pa-a-ya). Valencia is said to be the home of the paella. The rest of our time in Valencia was used to organise ourselves. We could only find cheap flights from Barcelona to Warsaw, so we had to get up extremely early yet again for the third time that week to catch a train to Barcelona.

So our two weeks (or there about) in Spain had come to an end. We had a great time in Spain, I think we both would like to return one day. I know John would really love to get back to a La Tomatina in the future and stay in the tomato fight for the whole hour it goes for.

Write soon, love Erin and John.