A Year Abroad: Valencia.

My Spanish skills had minimally increased from my time in Barcelona and I was feeling pretty confident haha. I could read Spanish which was cool. The few words I could say though were 'Gracias' and 'Hola'. I picked up the words for exit and things like that as well.
Our train to Valencia was an early one, and I seemed to have made a big deal in the notes I took about not straightening my hair! I think three weeks is probably the longest I've gone since I was in year 8 that a hair straightener hasn't touched my hair at all! What an achievement!
The train travelled along the beautiful coast, the water was so blue and the weather was hot. It was like passing through Mexico or the Wild West, there were cactus things everywhere, the soil was a rich orange colour, it was quite dry, but there were plantation type things everywhere that were green. I thought they were orchards at first, but I'm not sure. A lot of the oranges I buy in France come from Spain, so maybe.
About an hour out from Valencia, our carriage started to fill with smoke and it started to smell a bit like an electrical fire. All of the Spanish people in our carriage started talking to each other, but none of them spoke English. Then one woman went to the alarm button and was asking everyone if she should press it. Nat and I had no idea what was going on, but we knew it wasn't good. And then we entered a tunnel and I thought things were going to go down hill very quickly. The smoke was thickening, and then we pulled up at a station in the tunnel and were told to evacuate. We changed trains there, and another two hours later, arrived at our hostel.
Tip for anyone planning to travel Spain: travel during siesta time. Everything is closed during siesta time (about 2-5pm everyday, at the heat of the day), so there's nothing to do anyway. We ended up arriving in most towns during siesta time, so siestaed too. But if we were to do it again, I'd book during that time so you could siesta on the train and arrive when things were starting to pick back up again.
We just shopped that first afternoon, and got really lost. I was so tired, I went a bit silly. I couldn't stop laughing at everything, and it didn't help that I only knew two Spanish words because I kept repeating them all the time lol.
We made dinner at the hostel and napped before heading out for a pub crawl. We left early though and went and grabbed gelato (there are heaps of gelato stores and biscuit stores all over Spain. My kind of place). Jumped into bed at 2am.
The next morning, we did the free tour. Most hostels offer free walking tours, based on tips. We did them whenever they were available. This one was interesting as we visited the old town and the old city gates. We then had pintxo's for lunch. That night we met an American guy staying at our hostel and went to a bar for drinks with him.

DAY ONE