Spain - Day 4 - Mastering the right hand side of the road - Trip to Valencia

Tuesday 17th February 2009

It was the day, both Dan and I had not been looking forward to. The 600km trip from Granada up to Valencia. I thought I'd better have a go at driving again, plus Dan had read all the maps and knew exactly how to get there! We set off from the Hotel at 9am and jumped straight on the freeway, into a Granada traffic jam. We poked through the traffic for a while, until eventually we were free. 120km speed limits, with awesome 3 lane roads, made it nice to drive. I just had to remember that the right hand lane was for slow people. Which I was one of, in this crappy Kia Piccanto. It has zero power, and struggles to make its way up the slightest of hills. I finally got the hang of it, and we thought we should get some petrol, and possibly something to eat. Breakfast of Spanish Cheese and Bacon Balls (which were made to look like little soccer balls)and Coke - Excellent. We also thought we should put some oil into this crappy car, seeing as it had all leaked out in Malaga.

Back on the road, and I was feeling a little bit more comfortable driving. Although I sat on the speed limit of 120, I had to stick to the slow lane. Drivers obviously have no respect for the speed limit over there and whooshed past us quite frequently.

The scenery was really pretty and changed a lot. We first set off through the snow capped Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was really pretty. Dan snapped a few car photos for me. Every kilometre or so, the highways have emergency phones with a big "SOS" painted down the side. Unfortunately, for Dan, every time we passed one, I broke out into the song SOS by Rhianna (I think!) Even more unfortunate, again for Dan, is that I only know maybe 3 lines of the song. I was definitely sounding like a broken record.

By the time we had reached Alicante, we could finally see the beautiful ocean. The freeway ran right up the coast from Alicante through to Valencia. We wound through lovely mountains, while looking out to see. I wish we had more time to stop and check it out. There was plenty of orange trees to see too!

Just as I rounded a bend in the freeway, I saw a traffic cop frantically waving his arms at me. There had been some flashing sign about 100m previous, but as it was in Spanish we had no idea what it was about. He kept waving his arms, and I got confused and flustered, and started to stop, but then he started waving me through. Confused, I proceeded, and found that it was just a car accident. It was probably one of those speeders…. Just a nasty run up the arse, with some quite significant damage.

Some 7 hours later we arrived in Valencia. Just as we hit the city edge, traffic banked up everywhere, and again I started to freak out a little! After half an hour of not moving, we were able to see what was holding us up. There was massive police trucks and suited up cops blocking the road. No idea what they were doing, but they were a major inconvenience to me. We navigated our way through town, down to the seafront where our B & B was.

It was a lovely house, with a beautiful view of the beach, and the host spoke excellent English. We walked down to the beach for a bit of a look, then caught the local bus into town.

We got off at the Valencia Bullfighting ring, and had a bit of a look. It was nowhere as cool as the Malaga one. The buildings around Valencia we're really pretty. Lots of statues on the tops of buildings. A bit peckish, we thought we had better try some Spanish McDonalds. Not a great deal of difference, we both had a quarter pounders, although Dan had his with a side of 'Patatas Delux" - potato wedges with a yummy sauce. We wearily strolled into the main square, which is surrounded by fancy old buildings. At this point my eyes were hanging out of my head, and I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to fully enjoy the town.

We strolled around looking at the cool stuff, and decided that we should really try some Paella - The Valencia region claim to have invented Paella. Dan had a chicken one, while I was less adventurous and tried one with meats and mushrooms. From here it was back to B & B to plan the journey to Barcelona.

While Dan was studying the maps, I took a long 'hydro' bath (fancy word for a spa bath). It was the best! Then it was bed for a good nights sleep. That is until, I woke in the middle of the night and needed to go to the toilet. A little bit sleepy eyed, stumbling to the toilet I had a slip on the matt, and thumped myself on the edge of the bed (It was one of those annoying beds with a wide wooden frame around it). The lovely bluish, yellowish bruise that came up on my leg is testament to how hard I fell!. Ouchies! This was only the beginning to my run of 3 unfortunate events!