Getting to Valencia

There are two new blogs today! Read the one after to actually read about Valencia.

Last weekend I had my first weekend excursion, my first stay at a hostel, my first view of the Mediterranean and a lot of traveling lessons. Spain’s three biggest cities are (in order): Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Valencia is on the east coast of Spain, between Barcelona and la Costa del Sol. It is still a part of Catalonia, one of the bigger, separatists regions of Spain. Catalonia is more or less a state and includes both Barcelona and Valencia. They speak their own language their, Catalan, which is a mix between Spanish and French, but much closer to French than Spanish. Of course because it is part of Spain, you can still find people that speak Spanish, however Catalan is spoken by many of the locals and many signs are in Catalan rather than Spanish. We were super cautious as this was our first trip, and booked our hostel as well as our bus tickets about a week and a half in advance. I will probably always book my hostels in advance, however I will definitely never book my bus online again…unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary.

Spain is not that big, about the size of Texas is all. The biggest bus company in Spain is ALSA, and supposedly runs many places in Spain. So when we went online and booked our bus tickets, nobody questioned the itinerary. Our departure was set as MADRID BAJARAS (the airport in Madrid) and our destination was VALENCIA DE DON JUAN, the only stop in Valencia that the bus company offered. We just typed in Valencia, and it popped up. Because Madrid had bus ports with different names, Valencia and Madrid are two of the biggest cities in Spain, and ALSA is one of the biggest bus companies, nobody thought twice about it. So we got to the airport early (around 8:30 for our bus that was leaving at 9, meaning we woke up around 6:30 so we could leave Alcalá at 7). There were six of us: Allison, Caitlyn, David, Eric, Sharlee and I, and many of us had gone out the night before. Allison had pulled an all-nighter and was still slightly intoxicated when we left Alcalá. We got to the airport and saw one bus with the words MADRID-LEON on it. It was the only ALSA bus, and we figured it must be ours. Leon didn’t look right, however, and so I went up to the bus driver to confirm it was our bus while everybody else printed their tickets.
- Esta autobus, va a Valencia? – I asked.
- The bus driver looked at me – Claro, Valencia de don Juan?
- Es el único Valencia, verdad?
- No, Valencia tiene una playa, Valencia de don Juan es un pueblo pequeñísimo en el norte de España
At this point I pretty much panicked. Valencia was directly east. We had booked our hostels, had told our director we were going there and were all set on the beach and the museum of sciences. I guess it wouldn’t have been terrible to go to Valencia de don Juan, but the bus driver informed me that it was a town with about 2000 people 5 hours north of Madrid…so in the middle of nowhere. Trying to explain this to mis compañeros was difficult, as they thought I was confused about how to print my ticket and kept trying to show me how to use the machine. The bus driver saw I wasn’t making any progress with my friends, so he came over and while I was explaining it in English he was trying to talk over me and explain it to them in Spanish, which obviously did not help matters. At about 8:45, everyone finally seemed to get it. We then all panicked and David and I ran up and down the airport looking for flights to Valencia (online they were only 35 euro). We couldn’t find anything under 250 euro for the same day though, so we tried explaining the situation to the bus driver. Luckily he was very helpful and very nice, and offered to drop us off at the bus stop where the buses to Valencia left. He also told us the correct bus company and wished us luck.

Eventually everything worked out and we even got refunds on our don Juan tickets! We arrived in Valencia at 3 pm on Friday.