A Case of Dumb Luck

From Valencia

¡Feliz cuatro de julio, amigos! Hope you´re enjoying your day off of work and able to fire up the Weber grill and take in some fireworks somewhere. Doesn´t look like there will be too many explosions going off here today (and I hope there aren´t...terrorist fireworks are never very pretty to look at). It´s a warm, sticky morning here in Valencia. In a few hours, we´ll be scooting out of here, heading to Barcelona to see what´s shaking in that city. This is a travel day, which I never care for. Six hours stuck on a bus isn´t exactly my idea of celebrating my independence from England.

I´m feeling rather ichy at the moment, mainly because I´m still recovering from the previous two nights. The Red Nest Hostel that we´re at has regular activities in the evenings for the travelers passing through. Eric and I partaked (or is it "partook?" Dang, my English is starting to go to pot.) in them these last two nights. On Monday night, the Red Nest´s sister hostel, the Purple Nest (50 points if you can figure out how they painted the interior of that hostel) had their 1 year anniversary and invited everyone from the Red Nest over for drinks. So we had some Cruzcampo and then followed the rest of the greasy hippie hostel bums to La Claca, which is a night club that seems to play only Brit-pop and American music (as a sidenote, I´m quite pleased with a lot of the bands coming through lately in American and British music. The dark, gloomy era of depressed, angry "I want to kill myself" music is finally over! Huzzah! Long live the new-age happy bands!). I never realized how many friggin´ Brits there are in this town. They just keep coming out of the woodwork everywhere you turn. We were at La Claca until 2 am, watching the granola chicks dance like they were having epileptic seizures. Quite entertaining.

Yesterday was one of those days where I just totally had dumb luck. As I´ve mentioned before, I don´t know how I happen to stumble upon the things I do. It´s like I´m Forrest Gump here, just happening to be in the background when big things are happening. Eric and I decided to stick around Valencia for an extra day yesterday, because we felt like we needed a day of rest before we headed off to Barcelona. We didn´t do too much...paid bills online, checked out some cool castle gates, bought some apples at a market. But then we decided to wander down to the ocean to see Port America´s Cup, which was the site of the 32nd America´s Cup being held this year. All I knew about the America´s Cup was that it had something to do with racing boats, and that the USA had the America Cubed boat that it made such a big deal about back in the 90s. Other than that, I was pretty oblivious to the whole thing.

So after making a 4 mile journey to get to Port America´s Cup (I must be honest...I enjoy seeing the word "America" pop up in a positive context here in Spain. It´s at least something about America that I can hold my head high about while traveling over here), we finally made it to the harbor, filled with lots of schooners and big flags. All the competing countries had their friggin´ huge flags flying overhead. Either it was a conclave of international Wal-Marts, or they just marked the headquarters for each racing team. I went over to see America´s base camp, Team BMW Oracle (isn´t BMW a German company???), but I didn´t see a giant American flag at all. Instead, it was just a friggin´huge BMW Oracle flag. Where´s the American pride? Everyone else was proud...why not us? So Eric and I walked into the base headquarters, competed in some multimedia boating games, such as hoist the flag up the virtual boat, and then saw the BMW Oracle movie in an air-conditioned theatre next door. We were the only people at Team BMW Oracle headquarters...man, talk about feeling like a man without a country.

Then, we started hearing things exploding outside. Terrorism? Is that terrorism I hear outside? Oh no! Could Port America´s Cup be under attack? We go running outside, and see fireworks going off and people starting to go cheer like nutballs. So we hurry over to the Swiss base camp, Team Alinghi. I had read somewhere that they were the winners from the last America´s Cup, so I figured maybe that might shed some light on the sudden pandemonium. Some guy was handing out Alinghi flags left and right, so I picked one up. We then went over to the next base camp, Louis Vetton, because I knew the Tres Estrellas Lounge was located there and I wanted to pick up one of their tasty cold beers (in my opinion, Tres Estrellas leads the pack in Spanish cervezas, followed closely behind by Mahou, then Alhambra, then Cruzcampo and then finally San Miguel, which is probably a grade below a PBR). We get there, and people are just swarming the docks of Louis Vetton, waving their Swiss and Alinghi flags. Then the President of the America´s Cup starts speaking and yelling out "Team Alinghi!" and confetti cannons start exploding in the sky while a Red Hot Chili Peppers song is repeated over and over.

It suddenly dawned on my clueless brain that, hey, I think Team Alinghi won the whole America´s Cup...right now!!! "Woo hoo! Team Alinghi!" So I became an Alinghi fan and started waving my flag, while Eric looked on at me like I was a complete moron. In the harbor, all these Alinghi groupies were jumping on their ship and mobbing the sailors. It looked like a fun booze cruise was going on out there, with a long parade of boats trailing the Alinghi as it docked into its base headquarters. Red fireworks exploding over the Swiss building, and they kept playing that damn Chili Peppers song. Even though I was a new fan of Team Alinghi, I don´t care to buy their soundtrack.

Eric and I then trudged back along Valencia´s city streets to meet up with the hostel´s head hippie granola over at the bull fighting ring, who was leading a tapas tour around Valencia. For only 10 €, we would get to sample various tapas from different tapas bars. Seemed like a great deal. However, once we got sucked in, we realized that the 10 € only gave the whole group about two tiny plates of tapas, and then you had to buy your own drinks to get more tapas. So, once again, we got hosed. We got hosed.

But we enjoyed the night anyway, crawling to 3 different tapas bars and enjoying the company of some other hostel bums. There was the lead greasy hippie girl (with multiple lip piercings) who was from Italy, another hostel worker from Spain, two horn-dog 18 year-olds who were from Italy, one American guy (working in Bahrain for the Navy) and a German girl who was taking piano lessons in Valencia. Eric and I represented Team California. We talked about random things, such as their tomato fight (La Tomatina), Italy´s orange fight, and any other fight in Europe involving food. Great conversation.

We then ended up at Club La Claca (again), had some sangria, and decided to call it a night.