America's Cup in Valencia

Saturday May 19th, 2007

We awoke early the next morning and made our way to the train station.  We caught a train to Valencia, a large city located on the coast just south of Barcelona.  Originally, we weren't going here but it was impossible to find a hostel in Barcelona that Saturday night.  In the end, we were very fortunate to have spent some time in this touristy city.

The train took about 8 hours to arrive in Valencia.  It wasn't very fast and was not very direct.  In our coach, our air conditioning did not work, so it was very hot and uncomfortable.  It was terrible.  At certain stops, they would arrive in a deserted station and turn off the engines and air conditioning in the entire train.  They would stay there for about 20 to 30 minutes before leaving again.  Brandon met a British lady who said that they had these long stops for the smokers.  I guess recently the (some) trains have become non smoking.  Even during the time between stops, people still were smoking between the carriages.

Finally we arrived in Valencia around 4pm.  We unloaded our bags and made our way down the America's Cup.  The America's Cup is a 3 month long sail boat competition with many different teams from all over the world.  The event took place on the coast where there was a massive cove with sail boating company's all along the coast line.  Each team/sponsor had there own separate buildings which were all brand new. It was all very new and high tech.  They had simulations for sail boats and different research centres where you could feel and test the material used on the sail boats.  We entered the Ford tent, and they sat us down in large reclining chairs. We had oxygen hooked up to us while they presented to us a new vehicle they were releasing.  It was pretty cool despite being all in Spanish. They had a giant Plasma TV screen, probably like 24 plasma screen TV's together which showed the races and highlights that had happened that day.  They had a large futuristic Louis Vuitton store which was about 4 stories high.  They were big sponsors of this tournament.  The neat thing about this is that admission to America's Cup including all the tents and buildings with simulations was all free.

Being down there on the port, we were able to catch our first glimpses of the Mediterranean Sea and our first sniffs of the fresh salty sea! It was beautiful.

We were getting hungry so we attempted to find a reasonable priced restaurant for dinner. This was not an easy thing to do down at the grounds of America's Cup. We finally settled on this one place and tried ordering a salad. However, it turned out to be a small plate of shrimp, olives, some peppers and onions - no lettuce. It was a pricey salad that was definitely not worth the 6 € we paid. We then asked the waitress, for salad WITH lettuce and she brought us out what we wanted -  a nice big  plate of lettuce with carrots, corn and some meat on top. Then she brought us some bread which we thought was complementary but it was not.  By the end of the meal we payed almost 30 euros for a salad, a small seafood salad, 2 drinks, and some bread.  We weren't impressed.

We walked around for bit looking for some possible bars where we could maybe meet some people, but these bars consisted of people who owned many yachts or who were very weathly.  Many of the drinks were very expensive.  So at about 11:300 pm, Brandon and I decided it was time to start heading back to our hostel.  However, before we could do that we had to make a stop and admire the futuristic architecture of the Science and Art Museums.  The buildings were on the way back to our hostel so we figured why not.  Plus, that was really our only chance to get a good gliumpse at the buildings since we were leaving early the next morning.  So with a decent map in our hands we set out into the black yonder.  Little did we know of the adventure that lay ahead...

Now one could say it started with my decision to skip the route the bus took, but really there clearly there was another road that would lead us right in front of the buildings.  Unfortunately, witht the illogical sequence and poor labelling of streets, we managed to miss the turn.  Not to worry, because Brandon (the navigator) quickly replanned a new route that would get us back on track.  However, this so called plan involved walking through construction zones, shoulderless highways and overpasses, and jumping over concrete hgihway dividers.  We were both a little nervous as it was not the nicest area for such an adventure but thankfully the roads were not busy!  After this thrilling adventure, we arrived at last to our destination.  These buildings looked like they came right out of the Jetson's cartoon.  They were large pools in between them too.  I could have stayed there for hours and marvelled at the architecture but after 40 minutes, Brandon figured it was to time go.  Luckily this trip was uneventful and we made it back without any problems.