After our epic ticket ordeal we bussed to over to Las ciudad de las artes y ciencias or the city of arts and science. This consists of five beautifully designed modern buildings that house things such as their science center, imax, and aquarium.
L'oceanographic is their aquarium and is supposedly the largest in Europe. We had a blast here. They divide the park into different seas and it is amazing to see what lives where. In the artic they had beluga whales and walruses. It was great. They even had a shark tunnel and I stood they looking up for quite some time. We also saw the dolphin show which is the best I can remember seeing. They would launch their instructors off their noses and did tricks I had never seen.
After the aquarium we went and shopped for a bit and mom sat and had a glass of wine. By this time we decided to look for someplace to eat dinner and chose a nicer restaurant in a beautiful plaza. There was a wedding going on which made people watching fun. I have seen so many people here get married in the most beautiful places, it is crazy.
We shared a mixed salad, paella of duck and shitake mushrooms, and a bottle of brut cava. After dinner we headed over to the bull ring. We grabbed a few beers and our seats and it began.
There was an orchestra playing music and tons of families. Bull fighting is a very cultural event. The show started with the master of ceremonies riding around on a horse, then the presentation of the matadors. There were two main and then their helpers. The first bull was released and it was very intense to see how the procession of events occurred.
1. The matador dodges the bull and the crow shouts ole or toro when he narrowly escapes.
2. They take two cotton covered spears and jab them into the bull head on. This is tricky because you could easily get gored. They do this about 3-4 times so around 6 spears hang from the bull. You can see it worked when the cotton turns bloody. (Yes this is extremely brutal but it is the culture, kids of all ages were here)
3. The main matador uses a red cape and hid a sword behind it and when the bull runs through the cape he get stabbed. This happens until the bull is so weak the matador can almost touch it.
4. The bull finally dies and is drug off my horses and cooked the next day in the market.
Blunt but true
The first followed suit but the second was rouge, he even tried to jump over the fencing much to two little girls horror. The matador killed him quicker and was carried around the ring in celebration.
After that they brought out the large castrated steer whom are huge but very calm. They had bells around their neck and looked frightened. Then they released one crazy black bull at a time and he chased them around because the bell aggravated it. They released more black bulls and it got to be quite chaotic.
They sequenced through this a few times and one time two of the black bulls ran into eachother head on an fell unconcious for a bit. The first one that got up started goring the other and rolled him about 6 times until he died. It was insane.
Bull fighting was very interesting but not necessarily my cup of tea. I'm glad we got to experience it though.
This morning Alicia didn't feel well and we packed so we got a late start. We stored our luggage at the train station and went for lunch on the beach. After lunch we walked the beach and shopped at some of the vendors. Alicia got bbq corn on the cob since she hadn't had it since her braces were off.
We then stumbled upon what we thought was a final game for a beach futbol tourney but it turned out to be futvolley, the craziest game ever! Think volleyball net and all with no hands. They srved by kicking the ball off of little piles of sand. We got free hats, noisemakers, and tshirts and became instant futvolley fans.
Afterwards we bought a water and took the bus back into town. We had heard from Jimmy and Kyle and decided to go meet them for a goodbye drink. On our way to their hostel we randomly encountered two guys who were looking for the same place we were going. They were from france and had just driven down to Spain. Crazy right.
We finally found the guys had had cervesas limons or beer and fanta lemon. They were pretty good, not bad but I would rather have a plain beer. We said our goodbyes and Alicia mom and I picked up our luggage and had some tapas in the train station bar haha.
Now we are sitting a little later after our actual dinner of kebab.. So good. And are waiting for our train. I am so excited to go to Granada there is so much to do in that city. Valencia was beautiful but the pace of life is slow here which makes it ideal for vacation but their really wasn't a ton to do.
Hopefully I can sleep on this night train. :/
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