The Aussie Armada in Spain
Ola! Our summer holiday in Spain lasted a week and it was not long enough by far. We’ve seen zilch sun in London, so when we landed at 9pm and stepped off the plane into a dark new place we were comforted by the humidity. Lija described it as almost the same as living in Darwin, I was just dumbfound at the feel of heat on my shoulders…yep, it’s been a while since real sun…
We did Spain with Sarah, one of Lija’s friends she worked with at the NHS. We didn’t realise until the week before, the day we left was a bank holiday so we could have left earlier, but ah well!
Monday August 25th
We had a rocky start at the airport, because we couldn’t find the blue express bus into the city, so Sarah buzzed this information call line and when she realised it was connecting to someone, not a recorded message, she buggered off! So I jumped in right when the attendant said:
Information: ‘Ola! How can I help? (in Spanish)
Me: “Ola! Hable Ingles?” (hi, do you speak english?)
Him: “Un momento” (one moment)
And then a ‘roughly speaking English’ Spanish attendent came on the line and said it was too late for the bus to run, so we said thanks and split a taxi between us. We did think the taxt was going to split us when he was going about 30km/h over the speed limit. The other two were in the back, but I was up front clutching either side of my pants for support, keeping a fake smile plastered on my face as we sped along weaving through traffic like a rollercoaster. Take My Breath Away was playing on the radio as this amazing scenery flew past. It was typical Spanish ten-storey-high apartment blocks with washing hanging from the balconys and on pulleys.
Our first night before the tour started we stayed in a hostel close to the old town. We were glad to see it was air-conditioned from 11pm – 11am. A very clean, well-kept place with bright-coloured tiled bathrooms and a funky looking bar. We hadn’t had dinner so we headed out quite late and found, by the receptionist’s recommendation, a little Italian restaurant al Pomodoro down the side street. I haven’t had pizza since Italy (okay mum got pizza by Alex’s request one night when I was in Melbourne but I felt sick after two slices), so maybe I should say I haven’t had REAL pizza. But this one was amazing. Our waiter called us “chickies” I don’t know if that’s the Italian version of young women, but the Spanish version is “chickas”. I had this great pizza called the Diavolante, with spicy aubergines, fontina cheese, spicy salami, basil, tomato and mozzarella. Can I say AMAZING again?!
We then went for a two hour juant across the Old Town of Valencia, mostly lit upby late night restaurants, bars and the odd club. Off to a great start- bring on the tan!
Tuesday August 26th
Our morning mission, with no choice whether to accept or decline, was to find the hotel we were staying at as a part of our Topdeck tour. From the map in the hostel Lija and I had mental images of where we had to go, which didn’t stop us from slightly swaying off the path, but I’m glad we did because when we could go no further we found a cafe for breakfast, where a couple of tourists were eating. The catch? Not only were they Aussies, but it was one of our mates Tony from the boat in Croatia last year! He was in Spain with his girlfriend doing Tomatina. We didn’t recognise him because he’s bleached his hair and just had an arm of tattoos applied. A nice surprise anyway!
Our hotel is on Avenue de Purto – the street to the port – so we thought it would be relatively easy to get to the beach, straight down, right? haha I scoff. For the first time Valencia hosted the formula 1 and the circuit followed through the port, and we landed on the wrong side of the track. But we eventually got to the beach and someone decided it wasn’t worth going further (ie squidging our feet in the sand or dipping our toes in the water) until we were in our bathers. So we walked along the beach markets and I found a hat and we both bought beach dresses that are light, cool and see through haha (didn’t realise till after)!
Our first jaunt at public transport, we caught the bus back to the hotel, made our own tapas from Lidl and watched some Spanish TV for a while before meeting the rest of the Topdeck group at half seven. Or that’s what we thought. Turned out there were 200 on the tour staying at this hotel alone, Topdeck had taken over four hotels altogether as well as hostel and beach camping. So the ‘meeting’ wasn’t very eventful, and we ended up with Sarah and her roomy Selena drinking pineapple juice and white rum on the beach while people watching. When those two scampered off home, us dirty stop-outs met up with Trev and the boys he’s been travelling with in the bars along the beach.
We met Trev in Turkey in April, and Holmesy and Joycey were also there for Tomatina. Lija had texted asking which hotel they were at because Trev didn’t realise there were four, but we still ended up being a floor above them at the same place!
August 27th Wednesday
An early fight to get breakfast this morning which was chaotic with 200 people at one buffet. Everyone had to be on the buses at 7.45 for an 8am departure. Of course who dragged their feet onto the bus at the last minute but Trev, led by Holmsey who also had to give him a roll from the breakfast buffet. Typical males!
The breakfast was really good though! Rolls, quince jelly and cold cuts, fresh fruit, spanish omellettes and my favourite part – the desserts, including and most definitely praising the Spanish doughnuts (I say with bowed head and slightly coloured face the last morning I ate about five because they were so damn good!)
It didn’t take long to get to the place of La Tomatina – Bunol, a small town an hour from Valencia, but we did park on the very outskirts and had to walk all the way into town up one street, down a winding hill, along a the main street over a bridge and halted. I saw my fellow hostellers and Aussies Niki and Lei at the top of the hill but soon lost them, and as the four of us pushed or way into the crowd – we wanted to see where the greasey pole was, or how close we could get to the centre of action.
I tried to do this the easy way by finding an article I could link to, to tell you all about the food fight. But they all forget one important element. How it begins. So this is what I know:
La Tomatina history
It all apparently started in 1945 at a festival when a group of young people grabbed tomatoes from a nearby stall and started a harmless food fight. Police came and stopped the troublemakers, ending the battle. A year later and each year onwards, locals returned on the same day in August, taking tomatoes for their own version of La Tomatina. In the 50s it was officially banned but villagers continued and got locked up in jail. In ’59 the council allowed the event to take place after public demonstrations for it, but they introduced rules, such as how the food fight was to begin.
It all involved a greasy pole and a ham, by this I mean a full little pig, dead and hanging from the top of the pole. It was not until the locals retrieved the ham from the top that the food fight could start. By 1980 tomatoes were being provided by the city council and the international participants began to grow. Last year there were 30,000. Viva La Tomatina!
People had been there all night and early morning, so it was already quite jam-packed when we began to make our way through the crowds. Sarah joined a conga line of Spanish boys pushing through the crowd, so I held on tight to her and the other two were behind us. Somewhere along the way Lija and Selina got left behind, and that was the last we saw of them until getting back on the bus afterwards. It hadn’t begun and we’d already halved our numbers!
Sarah and I went nuts with the other 30,000 people, we fought our way to the top of the street where we could see the greasey pole, which meant we were in the very thick of it, and then pushed back out a bit where we had some breathing space. The crowd followed each other and so did we, chanting “Ole! Ole!”, clapping and singing. The locals had begun the one-sided water fight, drenching us with buckets of water and hoses from their balconies, and we just shouted for more!
Crazy Spanish guys were ripping shirts off any males that crossed their path with a shirt on, no one got past alive! I watched as Trev, Joycey and Erin came battling through the crowd, and in one fell swing Trevor had lost his shirt ripped to shreds. It is a rule that you not tear t-shirts but one that cannot be controlled in such a mad craze. The shirt ripping turned into shirt throwing, which Sarah and I were stuck on the edges of, but I kind of became involved in. One Spanish guy was holding this shirt aiming to throw it to us onlookers on the edge and I raised my eyebrows. Wrong move. I soon had a t-shirt whack me in the shoulder. To Sarah’s amusement this meant war for several minutes, and I got some good shots in and whacked him real hard.
The crowd went wild when the horn went off to signify the ham had been got and the trucks of tomatoes would soon be making their slow path through the crowds to dump tomatoes at our feet. It took another fifteen minutes for the trucks to push through the crowds to grace us with its load. You can imagine all the people who had squished into this 20 foot wide street then had to squish into four foot on either side of the truck! It was so exhausting being confined I rested my chin on the shoulder of the guy in front and just said, hope you don’t mind me getting so personal, I’m stuffed!
They came, they dumped, they rolled on out again.
And it was war.
Tomatoes were going in every which direction, and I soon lost Sarah amongst wiping the tomato acid from my eyes, pelting tomatoes at random people and staying afloat. The water and the squished tomatoes turned into a pulpy puree of salsa about six inches deep. It got so tight at times that I couldn’t even reach down to get tomatoes so i just jumped up and down splashing them everywhere, grabbing handfuls off the ground and sending them anywhere.
I then came into contact with those Spanish guys from earlier, one who wasn’t happy that I got him hard with a shirt, and all of a sudden there was this commanding lear and I was being pulled at all sides – my two shirts, crop top and bra were being ripped off my body by six guys and I couldn’t do anything about it. Partly because I was stunned because I hadn’t seen this happen to any of the girls and partly because they ripped them clean so fast it took all my effort to hold the remainder of my bra over my chest as I slipped into the crowd before my boardies came off too.
I was stuck though because the third truck had just come through and it couldn’t get up the street because there were too many people pushing and shoving. When I got through the crowds of the tomato-stained, those of us who’d had enough were then subjected to the walk through town in front of all the locals. Well, I was subjected to the walk of shame anyway. Past the locals. Past the TV cameras. Past the coppers. I was exhausted and out of it. I got one of the locals to hose me down a bit, the final ritual of the festival, and kind of felt like a footy player after a rain-struck match being pummelled about.
I will be forever grateful to the girl who saw me slowly making my way back up the hill, and ran out with a spare shirt for me to wear until I could get to my spare change. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I then had another Spanish papa hose me down, oh they take so much pleasure from it, and found out I was one of the first back to the bus. I sat talking to another girl until everyone began making their way back. A hose was pulled over an old factory so I lined up to remove the majority of tomatoes from my hair that had dried and gone crusty in the heat.
On the bus we swapped stories, I think Sarah got out of there early on because she didn’t even have tomatoes in her hair. Lija got stuck down a side street on a hill. She saw girls crying, crouched in corners and stuff. We all got just as squished, but two people went to hospital in serious conditions. I wasn’t without my battlescars – both shoulders have bruises, I got a tomato in the eye (almost another black eye mum!) I banged up my bad ankle with everyone stepping on it, and after a few days Lija and I both came out in tomato rash from all the acid.
I read somewhere that the town of Bunol sparkles after La Tomatina because the acid is a natural cleaner and they don’t touch it again until the following year. How true…?
The air-con was broken on the bus on the way home, so we weren’t impressed and Lija gave the crew the words they deserved – the main reason we were doing a tour and hadn’t organised it ourself was for the ‘easy, comfortable ride in luxurious coaches’ that was offered with Topdeck. I don’t think we’ll be using them again. I was so hot and tired I just fell asleep until we were back in Valencia. We were so exhausted and sore we siesta-ed until half past six when we had to venture out for food.
We went into the Old City but we couldn’t find anything, so we headed back to the beach where we had seafood for dinner. I ordered the squid. It was literally a squid on a plate, grilled in lots of garlic and lemon. It was good but it could have done with something else. Lija and I had a couple of drinks with the boys before heading back armed with gelatis.
August 28th Thursday
We had a leisurely sleep in and a long breakfast before a short walking tour around the Old Town of Valencia. About 50 of us Topdeckers took over the local bus to get into town, and then our guide Natalia took us around and explained the significance of the cathedral, basilica, market, old silk market, the main square, the bull ring and the main station. We didn’t see as much as we thought we would, and we thought the tour would go for longer, but the places we did see Natalia knew her history really well.
Us girls lined up at the train station for almost two hours to get our tickets for tomorrow’s trip to Madrid. It was the lesser of two evils – buying your tickets on the day takes less time, but they fill up quickly. All the trains to Barcelona were sold out and we saw several people travelling on their own not know what to do. So in the end at least we had them beforehand.
We went back to the market after that to get a bag of prawns and a lemon, and sat outside on the steps eating our impromptu lunch. But our main aim was to get to the beach and get in some good quality sun time. So we grabbed our new beach blankets and beach dresses and paid a couple of euros for an umbrella to sit under. We took our underwater cameras into the ocean to use up the remaining film, and then lay basking for the rest of the afternoon. We had dinner at the beach again, but we were there too early instead of too late (we said they must have a two hour window for dinner and either side you’re out of luck!) so we went back to the hostel to change (had to run for the bus which all the locals found hilarious.
I had squid for dinner, which was literally a squid on my plate. Oh, it was grilled in lots of garlic and lemon and butter, a bit odd but still yum. Food is quite expensive in Spain. But we did enjoy gelatis on the long walk back to the hotel.
August 29th Friday
This morning we packed and showed the boys how to get into town on the bus, and we ended up going into the cathedral to get a look at the closest thing ever found to the Holy Grail. Lija and I just walzed in and no one asked for money – the sign to us read 4 euros for an audio guide which we didn’t want, so we went in and wandered around. All of a sudden we get this text from Sarah saying she had been kicked out because she didn’t have a ticket, so we finished looking at the grail, said goodbye to the boys and went out to join her.
The train station was packed, all bags were scanned but people weren’t?! It was a nice new train to get from Valencia to Madrid, air-conditioned with slide-back seats. We talked to some Aussie guys in front of us, but I fell asleep after a bit and woke up once before arriving in Madrid. It seems a bit like Alice Springs in that it’s a city surrounded by dessert, only the city is a much larger scale – I could imagine it would be similar to Las Vegas.
We walked out of the station before realising the main station in Madrid is not the main station where the inter-city trains arrive, so we walked back in to get the metro, only the find the line we needed was closed until the end of September. Gee, it felt just like being a tourist on the London tube. We had to go back outside and get the rail replacement buses, which luckily for us were free. Score!
The five of us and our luggage crammed on the second bus that came along, with our destination not that far, but too far to walk with luggage. Our hostel was literally as central as you can get in Madrid, situated at the Gran Via metro, on the corner of the busy main street, and hooker avenue. For some reason we always end up staying in the part of town presided over by unattractive yet desperate women selling themselves on the street. From Paris to Berlin the red light districts are just as easy to spot as Amsterdam (believe it or not!).
The grouchy old receptionist was keen to make life as difficult as possible in the few minutes we had to spend signing in, and flat refused the boys attention until they put their shirts on, only to tell them when they did that there was no room at the inn. I would have thought at the age of 60+ to work in a youth hostel would require being young at heart or at least the ability to smile.
Our room wasn’t air-conditioned so Lija and I decided to stay out as long as possible. We went for a short walk around the main part of Madrid, and then found somewhere to eat. Nothing fantastic tonight, the good food places were beyond us. On our way back we were walking through the metro area called Sol, and were accosted by Debbie, an Aussie on a mission – recruiting for the nightly pub crawl. Could we refuse? The aim was to stay out as long as possible…
10 euros later and a heap of free drinks we met Aussies, Canadians, Americans and a few of the local Spanish. We went to three different pubs and then a nightclub, and I finished my night at about half three. I walked back to the hostel with the two Canadian guys seeing as someone had left me at the pub and never returned. What’s new. Maybe in the future doctors will be able to physically insert compassion into humans.
Sarah had the door locked so I had to knock until she opened up, and then had to scrub myself in the shower after the smoking at the pubs. They don’t just smoke in Spain, they chain smoke, and there are no laws about smoking indoors. All my clothes went in a pile and weren’t worn again until washed.
August 30th, Saturday
Sarah wanted McDonalds pancakes for breakfast and I wanted hangover food, so it was a stopover at both Maccas and Burger King for our morning fix. The only time I’ll eat that rubbish. Sarah hasn’t been 100% in health, so rather than the original plan to do a walking tour, we jumped on the Madrid Vision tourist bus and went all around the city on the red loop before heading back and jumping off at the places we wanted to see more of.
The first one was an Egyptian temple, the Templo De Debob, which was given to Spain by Egypt about 50 years ago as a thanks for helping us out symbol.
We walked down to the Palacio Real, the palace, and stopped at a cafe overlooking this valley of suburbs with the mountains in the distance and the cable car running from there to the foreground. Although the lunch menu looked reasonable, I had a really nice Spanish omellette, the drinks were double the price of any reasonable amount. We paid four euros for each drink. Rip-off!
After that we took the bus up to the blue line, which wasn’t nearly as exciting and really only had the Real Madrid stadium going for it, so we got that done pretty quick as it was peak heat and we were dehydrating fast. So we headed towards the Parque de El Retiro, Spain’s beautiful central botanic gardens, for our afternoon siesta.
We headed back to the hostel with still no sign of the third musketeer, booked our taxi for half past four AM, and then ventured out to get some tickets for tonight. After a rather average dinner we went to see the Ballet Flamenco de Madrid, which was beautiful. I sat there thinking I want that dress – no I want that dress – no… all the women looked amazing in their Spanish dresses. My favourite was a woman wearing a long black skirt that sort of stuck to her body but flared as she twirled, with a white shirt and a red corset.
The male dancers were either gay or balding and on stage way too much. Sarah and I sat there silently thinking get the girls back on stage so we can see the sexy dresses and imagine its us up there! There was also a Spanish band – an older lady singing, a guy playing guitar, another guy I dunno what you’d call it, not quite yodelling but warbling, and a guy playing on a box.
We went out in search of sangria after that, slight delays with money issues and dodgy cash machines, and found a funky bar where we downed a nice cool glassof sangria before heading back to finish the last of the rum and pineapple on the balcony of the hostel. Yeah, I literally sat in the balcony watching the people on the street. Her highness returned at midnight, only to go out for another four hours until leaving time. I slept at the airport, and on the plane, and on the bus on the way back into London so by midday Sunday I was quite slept-out.
Lija and I were wanting a good ‘ole English breakfast but the bus got stuck in traffic for a half hour, so we went for a Sunday roast instead at a carvery in St James. Needless to say our eyes were bigger than our bellies and we rolled back to Lija’s place to do washing and hang out but I did manage to get back to the hostel before midnight!
What an amazing week, it’s certainly overshadowed and improved my first visit and perception of Spain. I loved that I got to speak so much of the local language and immerse myself in the culture.
Tags: Travel
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