SURFING
DINE
The Mediterranean is pretty dismal wave wise.
I think I surfed 10 times in 7 ½ months if we are
just talking general vicinity to Valencia. I had
a lot of good waves right in town; Las Arenas
is definitely the most popular wave because it
is the easiest to access from the city. It’s pretty
mushy but there were a few days it would line
up right off the jetty and offer up some solid 4-5
turn waves. I had to ride a city bike from my flat
2 miles and 2 miles back or so and people would
literally stop cars and take pictures because I was
just biking with my board through traffic. There
is such potential for all the areas around, but I am
not naming any spots for the sake of the guys who
took me to spots that were 5 times better than Las
Arenas and only 1 or 2 guys out compared to the
50 people who can barely surf at Arenas.
Since I am a broke college student I typically
cooked for myself in my flat. If I wasn’t cooking in
the flat I was definitely eating tapas. They rule in
Spain and everywhere usually has a specialty one. I
always went for the special one, even if I had no clue
what it exactly was.
J O U R N A L
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P H O T O S
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V A L E N T I
WOMEN
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Everyone was really nice, but the language
barriers proved to be a problem. Moving past
basic conversational Spanish in a club where it is
already hard enough to hear your own thoughts
proved to be difficult. The girls can all dance
and they are all gorgeous. Most of them liked
foreigners, extra cool points if you could speak a
little bit of Spanish.
I usually shopped at two grocery stores, the
Mercadona which has all the cheapest and generic
stuff. They hardly have any name brand items, but
they were by far the cheapest and had the most stuff
actually in there. There also was another store called
Mas y Mas which was literally across the street
from me so I usually would just walk in there to get
some things and then go to Mercadona around the
block. Buying everything there isn’t like home, you
only buy things for the next day or so. People there
shop like everyday. It took some time to get used
too. Everything is closed on Sunday, and I mean
everything so if you forgot to shop the day before
you were basically screwed unless you wanted to go
all the way across town to the mall where they have
a Carrefour, which is basically a European Wal-Mart.
AT T I T U D E
Loved it and I would definitely go again. Spain is
amazing and Valencia is an amazing city. There is
always some festival or fiesta somewhere in town
and they are crazy about their fireworks. Fallas is
the local Valenican holiday where they shut down
everything and literally shoot fireworks, build
giant statues, drink, party, and did I say shoot
fireworks? The statues they build are huge things
that they end up burning on the last night of
Fallas called Le Crema. Literally 150 foot statues
just get lit on fire and everyone just watches and
drinks nonstop.