This is an old blog, I am sorry but I found the story interesting.
Valencia was a quick but memorable trip mostly because of the unexpected. When my friend Jon came we decided that we would go to some different soccer games, as we are both soccer fans. We decided we would hit up a saturday game in Valencia and then a sunday game in Madrid between Atletco de madrid and Villareal. The Valencia game was the largest adventure. We rented a car and went to Valencia to watch the soccer game. Everything proceeded according to plan. I got a car, not a problem, the large pepe.com sticker on the side of the car was a little embarrassing bust really, not a big deal since neither Jon nor I are too concerned with image. Anyone reading this who knows Jon would have to agree that he is probably one of the least image conscious people and would certainly not be bothered by a small thing such as a sub par car. Anyway, we pulled out of Madrid without a problem and since we were making good time, we decided that we would go ahead and take some of the back roads and maybe stop somewhere. We ended up stopping at a place called maria de Molina. It is a nice town with an old castle.
a nifty little castle that we were able to explore.
After our stop to see the castle we continued on to Valencia and we got there with about two and half hours to spare. Which was great because we still had to pick up the tickets from will call. We parked the car and then went to the stadium, to the will call window. I go up to the ticket window and I kindly tell the woman behind the window that we have purchased tickets on the internet and would like to pick them up. She looks at me with a very puzzled look and says, “what”? I repeated what I had previously said, and she said….”where are you from?” I replied telling her that we were not from Valencia but that we had purchased tickets on-line. She then asked for my ID and I gave her my Spanish ID. She then proceeded to look at the back which tells your place of birth and she called a co-worker over to look at it and they both laughed at me. I asked what the problem was and she explained that you had to pick up the tickets at the bank. Now this is something that she would have known from the second that I asked her where to pick up tickets purchased on-line but she felt the need to laugh at me, all because I didn’t know how the system worked. I love Spanish customer service.
SO now Jon and I had to look for a bank, which are all closed on Saturday night. But we soon figured out that what we had to do was go to an ATM. The problem was that we could not find a “La Caixia” with an ATM that worked. Every single one was only in Catalan and did not work. After going to three different ATMs, we found the one that worked. With our tickets in hand we got a beer and a sandwich from a street vendor and headed into the stadium.
The game was cool but we were so far away.
Anyway, the cool part came after the game. We did not know this when we were at the game but there was actually a huge festival going on in Valencia. The festival is called las Feias. It was only after the game when we decided to go walking around the town did we discover the huge festival. The festival is a huge street party that keeps all people out and parading well into the morning. I could not believe it. It was 2 in the morning and there were so many people on the streets, young and old that had it not been dark you would have sworn it was 2 in the afternoon. here are some of the pictures from the festival.
all of these floats are made out of paper mache and ultimately burned. We didn’t get to stay for the burning because we had to go to another soccer game the next day. The next day we went to a soccer game in Madrid and had much better seats. IT was actually cool because we arrived a little late and in doing so walked in after the game had already started. The stadium was already buzzing with energy. Jon walked in and said he felt like a kid in a candy store.
