Viva Espana

I was invited to a weekend away for the Stag Do of an old work colleague. I wasn't going to know anyone else who was going - they might all be heavy drinking types who enjoyed clubbing and strip bars. Given that they were friends of my friend and that the weekend away was in sunny Valencia during a chilly February back home, I thought I'd accept.

The weekend started with an early wake-up on the Saturday morning. My flight was at 8am from Gatwick (on Easyjet), which meant leaving my flat at 5.30am. That was considerably better than the alternative - a 6am Ryanair flight from Stansted. The other ten guys who came along were all from Norwich (including my friend), so they had selected the latter option. This meant that they arrived in Spain a couple of hours before me, but I had more sleep - ha!

I dropped my bags off and met the gang, who were having a beer or two and a few glasses of Sangria in the Plaza de la Virgen in front of the cathedral. I thought it would be rude not to join in, after all Sangria is traditional! We then climbed up the belltower of the cathedral and got some pretty good views of the city. We also got some pretty good views of the sporty one of the gang doing chin-ups from a bar below the massive bell.

Inspired by the sightseeing aspect to the tour, the next plan was to take an open-top bus tour of the city. There were two routes one could take - either around the old town, or a longer route which took in the port and beach areas of the city. I'd have chosen the first one myself, but the majority view was to take the second route. It has to be said that it was not the most interesting tour, although the route did pass some nice areas. The area of the 'City of Arts and Sciences' is really impressive, then the port area is ok, and there is the Formula 1 street circuit to see. But the recorded commentary was pretty poor. Whenever we passed something that could potentially be interesting, we were told that to learn more about it we should 'buy the DVD available from the driver after the tour'. Two of our group decided to sack off the tour and go to use the 'Valenbici', which are bikes for hire to traverse the city, much like the Boris bikes in London. I assume that the idea has not yet made it to Norwich. Meanwhile, the early start, the sunshine and the dreary commentary got the better of me and I dozed off for part of the tour.

In the evening, we went to a rather splendid restaurant. After some calamari, prawns and ham starters, we had some delicious traditional Valencian paella, which is a meat paella which traditionally includes chicken and (shh, don't tell Amanda) rabbit. And we had some delicious seafood paella as well. It was all reasonably priced too!

Then we had a few drinks in the central area of the city. We found a great bar which had bottles of various local artisan ales. I found another member of the group who was more of a connoisseur when it came to beer, while the others stuck to the San Miguel or similar.After a few more beers, everyone was flagging due to the early starts, so the night didn't turn out to be the crazily late Saturday night I was expecting.

The Sunday morning was spent in the Aquarium in the science and nature park. The displays were fairly good, but the architecture of the whole site was the highlight. Each type of water / geographical area containing the fish and wildlife was in a different interestingly shaped building in a separate part of the complex.

We got back to the centre of town to find out that that day was the start of the Fallas festival in the weeks leading up to the start of Spring. This meant that at 2pm there were ten minutes of firecrackers in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, called La Mascleta. It was very noisy and we were all amazed that the all the windows of the buildings in the square didn't break. It took a few minutes for my hearing to recover.

That evening, we went on the lad's event we had all signed up - going to see a Spanish football match. Valencia vs Sevilla at the Mestalla. We were fairly high up in the stands, but not as high as the Sevilla fans who were obviously put as far away from the pitch as they could possibly get. Valencia looked quite strong until the 30 minutes mark and took the lead, but Sevilla came back into it and drew level just before half time. The second half was almost all Sevilla and it was no surprise when they took the lead. They held on to win 2-1. The eleven of us were all wearing Valencia T-shirts which the best men had arranged prior to our trip. Each one had a nickname and a different number from one to eleven on the back, so we had a whole team! The Stag had 'El Venado' on his shirt. This was supposed to be Spanish for 'The Stag', but unfortunately Spanish doesn't (apparently) have a word for 'Stag', so the shirt either said 'The Deer' or 'The Venison'. Our matching shirts were obviously spotted outside the ground, and so 'The Venison' ended up being interviewed by a journalist with a film camera outside the stadium after the match, fortunately in English! He spoke about Valencia's defeat spoiling his Stag Weekend, and how was bitterly disappointed that Mehmet Topal had not been playing.

After that, it was time for another traditional holiday event - being ripped off with rubbish food in a touristy area. After last night's food had been so good, it was time for normality to be resumed. We wanted something quick and easy, that's why we ended up near the hotel. I chose the tapas, I thought while in Spain, do as the Romans do, and have some tapas. Eventually I ended up with three bowls of chips, one with some dates wrapped in bacon which I had asked for. The patatas bravas, admittedly I had also ordered those, were in fact a bowl of chips with tomato ketchup and mayonnaise on top. I now have a 100% record of bad tapas in Spain. Not a patch on the Queen's Head and Artichoke's tapas! As far as I know, the home of tapas is in fact the Regents Park area of London.

The weekend had been sunny so far, about 25 degrees C during the day, so on Monday we went to the beach, after a traditional Valencian breakfast of horchata, a sweet nutty drink, and fartons, which as well as being hilarious, are dough sticks. We played a bit of football on the beach and I dipped my toe into the freezing Med. The others were staying until Tuesday morning, but Easyjet flights were fairly late in the evening, so I decide to head back on Monday night. So after lunch at the beach (more paella, no chips), I headed back to the centre for a final wander round.

I had really enjoyed my trip away. I had had a good mix of spending time with the stag party and spending time wandering around the city on my own. Valencia seems like a really pleasant city, just don't eat in the cafes around the Xativa underground station....!