a protest in the plaza, agua de valencia, and more!

I hope tomorrow...

Today was our first day without Lucia to guide us (although she did drop by to check on us!), and we made it through by ourselves just fine! Okay, so in actuality we stayed up until 6 or 7am talking to family and friends on messenger and Skype, which caused us to sleep a large portion of the day away. The chats were definitely worth it, though, and when we awoke, we found out some great news: OUR LUGGAGE HAD SHOWED UP WHILE WE WERE SLEEPING! This means we now have more clothes, cute shoes, coats, hair supplies, etc. We can look cute again! Plus, we don't have to worry about it anymore! We're definitely having a lucky streak; let's hope it continues (knock on wood)!!

After getting ready and situating our luggage, Emily and I headed out for el centro de Valencia. Basically, our hostel is only one or two streets away from the very heart and center of Valencia, so it took no time to get there! Our first stop was La Plaza de la Virgen:



That's a huge cathedral in the background of the first picture (I plan on attending mass so I can not only attend church but also see the inside!! :-)), and obviously, there's also a huge fountain! It looks like something that belongs in a movie. It's kind of in the middle of everything, and as you can tell, it's pretty historic. Apparently a lot of the stuff associated with the Fallas happens around here! After some googling, I've learned that apparently a lot of people think the holy grail is housed within the cathedral, and the building of it started in the 1200s! So amazing!

We wandered away from the plaza and down lots of little streets and alleys until we reacher a newer area of Valencia. As we walked, one thing became very clear: the people of Spain are very okay with public displays of affection! Everywhere we looked there was some couple making out or groping each other. I'll admit that everything is very romantic, but seeing that was kind of gross! Whatever! :-)

After lots of investigation, we decided to return to La Plaza de la Virgen for a dinner outdoors at a cute little cafe. However, La Plaza was not the same little peaceful place as when we had left! Instead, there was a huge protest going on outside the door of the cathedral, and people were holding signs that said stuff like, "Stop the massacre!" (in Spanish, of course!), and waving Palestine flags. They were also lighting candles as a sort of vigil. As we ate dinner, the mob got larger and larger, and then these girls showed up wearing huge, extravagant dresses, and they got out, walked around, went in the cathedral, and then cars sped through the alleys, and they were quickly ushered inside of them, and the cars would hit the gas and speed away. And then men wearing these kilt-like skirts appeared! It was so strange! We really have no idea what was going on, but we are thinking that it relates to the Spanish Prime Minister agreeing to support Palestine earlier in the week. We tried to find someone who spoke English to ask, and although we found one group of people from England, we didn't ask. Even with all the commotion, we were able to enjoy a delicious meal of tortellini with ricotta (Note the Coke in glass bottles and orange trees in the background!):

We had been seeing advertisements for "agua de Valencia" all over the place, and since we were unable to drink any with dinner, we decided to set out on a journey to find some authentic agua de Valencia. There was a little shop in the center of the plaza that had it, but they were closing up by the time we paid for our dinner, so we headed to the unknown in hopes to find some! As we were searching, we came across this:

More fountains!! And more beautiful buildings! Why is everything so old and pretty here? I love it! Still, we didn't find any agua de Valencia, even after asking a few stores, "Tienes el agua de Valencia aquí?" We did, however, find Spain's version of Panera (bread co!!), a Burger King, more McDonald's, and... THIS:

SODEXHO!!! For those of you not familiar with MSU, Sodexho is the company who prepares all of our meals and catering at the dining hall at MSU. Sometimes they have good food, but the majority of the time it's very routine and nasty, and thus, Emily and I are glad we don't have to eat it this semester! However, seeing this sign in SPAIN blew us away!! Sodexho in Spain?! Are they following us?! I hope the Spaniards don't think that American food is like Sodexho! haha! And seriously, who would PAY to eat at a place that has Sodexho food? :-)

We were about to give up and return to the hostel, but we accidentally stumbled upon a tiny bar and decided to try our luck one more time. You could tell that most of the people in it were "townies", and what do you know, they had agua de Valencia! They only served it in pitchers, but we decided we could just share one, so we ordered up the agua de Valencia and waited! It finally arrived!:


It's apparently made with FRESH Valencian orange juice, champagne, vodka, and gin. It was really good at first, but started to get stronger and stronger... Still, we can say we had the agua de Valencia! The fun part is that we spoke to our waitress in Spanish, but as we were leaving, she started talking in perfect English (with a British accent)! Oh well, at least we got some Spanish practice!

When we returned to the hostel, I got to talk to my mom and Rachel on Skype, and Em talked to Chris and Henry. We got hungry around 1AM, though, so we decided we'd walk back to the McDonald's we had seen earlier and get some ice cream. Turns out the the McDonald's over here are NOT open 24/7 (Although they are much bigger and more upscale than in America! With covered parking lots and two stories!), so we went to some local ice cream place. I'm still amazed that people are out so late! I'm REALLY amazed that older people are at that late! It's just no big deal to them.

Now we are back at the hostel, and we have two new roommates for the night. There is a new boy and a new girl. We heard them earlier speaking English, although we were both halfway asleep, so we didn't talk to them. Our other roommate speaks NO English or Spanish, so we're not sure where she's from, but we're assuming either France or Italy. I'm going to bed soon; we are spending more time with Lucia tomorrow! We have a few leads on apartments, so pray that something works out SOON! If not, Lucia has offered to let us stay with her (for free!!) until we find something, so all will be well! Good-night from Spain! Love you all!

...is like today.