Andalucia Diary – Seasonal Travel Notes

Valencia is to host the America’s Cup this year, the world’s greatest and most prestigious
yacht race. The city’s dock area is under going a renaissance and the city has
generally got a positive buzz about it. One of the things I miss about living in my part of Andalucia is that we´re not in a real city. But once you´ve here lived on the med it´s hard to consider living in a landlocked city like Seville. The sea and the feeling of space and tranquility it provides becomes so important. Barcelona combines urban vibe with med living but it has that whole Catalan victim-mentality thing going on that I would fine really annoying after a while.  Plus it is always jammed packed with tourists and drucken Brits on stag parties. That´s why I wanted to visit Valencia. Valencia is vibrant, alive and proud to be Spanish. The city has a quaint old town,
impressive period districts as well as the super modern City of Arts &
Sciences and the opera house.I was spending the long weekend with a close friend of mine who had flown out on the new RyanAir service from UK,
presently offering heavily discounted or free tickets (taxes only). (Check-in and boarding is rubbish on RyanAir, but hey, it´s cheap.We explored the fascinating an
entertaining L‘Óceanografic centre, with thousands of fish from all types of
species from across the world’s oceans and seas. There´s an impressive shark tunnel too! It is certainly a  bit like a theme park, but
for grown-ups too!
Service in the Oceanus restaurant was shockingly bad
though. I had high hopes that with the America’s
Cup coming, everything would be service, service, and more service in Valencia. Not in this
restaurant though. The staff couldn’t make eye contact, swanned around doing
nothing and also screwed up our order. Well, you know how sometimes, when you first arrive in a place, you just
need things to go smoothly. I was tired, I was on my break and I wanted to be
pampered. When a dodgy meat cutlet,
smothered in gloppy gravy arrived at the table, instead of swordfish skewers I
lost it. I waltzed up to the front desk
and vented. Yes, it was great practice
for my Spanish and I effectively communicated that I thought the service was
lousy. The sassy waitresses shot back – it was drama all the way. I felt I was doing it for the good of Valencia,
for helping them turn the corner and provide great service to all the
international visitors that will arrive for the America’s
Cup! But in reality I think I was just
letting off some steam after a few tough weeks and this was the perfect excuse!
My highlight of the weekend could have been the fact that
José Galisteo Garcia from Operacion Triumfo (OT), was staying at our hotel. I was addicted OT, a Spanish version of Fame Academy
and Jose was my favorite contestant! I wanted to be cool and let him
check-in, so didn’t rush up to him like a teenager. Instead I went out and bought new jeans to look my
best for when I would inevitable bump into him in the hotel bar later in the
day. Sadly when I returned, he was posing on a lobby sofa with a short, fat female
guard “protecting” him whilst outside the hotel his young fans were peering in
through the glass windows. What a let
down. He’s talent show contestant, not a super
star! The magic was gone….

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