Misadventure Memoirs

The Compulsory Fruit Regime works a treat, only thing is, not really ideal when you’re 20 minutes into a 1.5 hour bus trip! 👀

We’re starting to get to know our fellow touristas. There’s Helena and Nino from Dubbo, Peter and Sue-Ann from Sydney and Chalky and Rose (dunno where they’re from, but best names ever!). 😄 Everyone seems really nice but they’re all old folks! What the hey?! It’s so weird when you only feel 35 on the inside to realise that these ancient fogeys are your tribe now!

I found me some chocolate popcorn at our mid morning roadside stop. Too full from brekky to tuck into it right away, but I’m excited for it later in the day! 👏 Our next stop is a town called (hilariously! Bridget, I’m looking at you…) Peniscola!! Miguel, our tour guide pronounces it “pen-IS-cola” with the emphasis on the iss…but we all know we are visualising dicks and brown fizzy drink in a shapely bottle! 😂

Miguel tells us that Valencia is the paella capital of Spain so we will hunt down a goody tonight. There’s also a local cocktail found nowhere else but Valencia, called Agua De Valencia which consists of gin, vodka, sparkling wine and freshly squeezed orange juice. More about this later. 

Meanwhile, back to our 2 hours in Peniscola where we stopped for lunch. So it’s the middle of the day and 38 degrees, but we needed some stuff from the pharmacy and supermarket, so we walked a couple of k’s back down the road to attend to our personal admin. On our way back towards the beachfront, who should we meet but Chalky & Rose, the latter sporting her new €8 hat which I admired. By now, both Col and I were sweltering, so we each bought a hat and then wandered to a bar on the beach for mojitos and a rando bag of chippies which constituted our lunch. 

Our coach had been parked in the blazing sun all of this time so as we reboarded, (and I’ve noted the saturated back of Col’s tshirt) I made a rough estimate that the temperature inside the bus was probs 10 degrees higher than outside. Despite the aircon wheezing and huffing for our remaining journey to Valencia, it made no tangible difference. My €10 personal fan with usb charger purchased from Ale Hop during our lunch break started looking like a true stroke of genius about now! 😁

Later last evening, after we were rested and refreshed, we caught a taxi to the old part of Valencia and got dropped at Torre Serrano – the ancient gates to the city. It was a beautiful evening to wander around admiring the large open squares, packed with families enjoying a relaxed Sunday meal (although, seeing little kids roaring about at 10pm when there’s school the next day was weird). We delighted in absorbing the atmosphere while admiring the stunning architecture until we were finally ready to have some drinks and find a good restaurant to have paella (apparently a decent paella is not available before 8pm!). It was still in the region of 30 degrees and we had 45 mins to kill so we decided it was time for some good ol’ Agua De Valencia. We downed our whole pitcher in less than 20 minutes and then ordered a bottle of Albariño to have with our seafood paella. 

Not long after we started eating our scrumptious paella, I felt the Freight Train ‘o Booze swing into my station as our evening moved up a notch. I seem to remember us having a couple of misses finding a taxi home and having to walk a ways to the main gate again. The next bit was a blur, but when we got back to our hotel I paid the taxi driver and exited the vehicle while it seemed Col was dawdling. I doubled back to check out the hold up and was alarmed to see Col’s little leggies flailing about trying to make firm purchase with the ground. I took his arm to shepherd him towards the revolving door of the hotel just as the aforementioned legs went all Thunderbirdy and he subsequently faceplanted into the marble facade of the building! He just went full splat! The full sack of spuds! 😳

Within seconds, there were various people there to help. Someone fetched a small bag of ice to help stop the bleeding from the bump on his head and the end of his nose (which fortunately wasn’t bent or broken). Some members of our tour group assisted me to help Col up and usher him inside to sit down. Reception staff called an ambulance in case his fall had been the result of a heart or brain malfunction, but within 10 mins it was clear that he was recovering and we cancelled the ambulance call out. 

By this time, we had a reasonable group of our fellow travellers gathered in Reception to minister to poor Col who was still a bit pale, but just wanted to go to bed with no further fuss. 

Curiosity amongst the group about the cause of the incident was still at an all time high this morning in the lobby at meet-up…speculation running rife. 😄 Some folks (correctly?) picked it for overindulgence in alcohol. However, we’d had overnight to workshop it and I sold it solidly this morning as the evil effects of dehydration! After all, there was evidence! The saturated t-shirt, the heat, the lack of adequate water consumption during the day, the inappropriate lunchtime nutrition…

Maybe half of the group swallowed that version. 😂