Di and Cam

Hi all,

All has been quiet on the blog front of late. This has been primarily due to two quick-fire trips away. The first of these was to Valencia (Spain) to watch the America’s Cup regatta. We had been anticipating this trip for a while as we had it planned well before we left New Zealand and it lived up to our expectations. After skipping a summer we were especially excited by the prospect of 32 DegreesC and golden sandy beaches.

On Monday morning we meet two other couples (Laura and Mark, and Dan and Jo) and worked our way to Gatwick Airport where our EasyJet Airbus was waiting.

Upon arrival in Valencia we jumped into taxi and headed off to the house Mark had booked for us all 12 months prior. Upon our arrival we found that our house was about 200m from the beach and had ocean view. We were very happy. Below is the view from our balcony.

The rest of the day we explored the area and got supplies. What we discovered was an amazing contrast of new and old buildings. What would be classed as prime beachside real estate was often empty or in ruins. Our house looked over a half demolished block of buildings. This had evidently been like this since WW2. That night we stayed in and enjoyed a few drinks and the warm weather. Below is a view of the vacant lot infront of our house.

The next morning we ventured to the beach. This was the widest and longest beach I had ever seen (in fact we are still convinced that it stretches all the way to Barcelona). We proceeded to hire deck chairs and laze in the sun. The water wasn’t actually that warm, similar to the water in New Zealand in the middle of summer. We had wondered why none of the locals were swimming and gathered that this was the reason. This is a view of the beach from our deck chairs and of some of the building near our house.

That afternoon we headed down the beach to the America’s Cup Village to watch Team New Zealand race Desafío Español (the Spanish Team) in the Semi Finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup. The cup village was amazing. It housed all the challengers and the defender and had numerous displays, activities and super yachts. We watched the race on a grassed area in front of a big screen with hundreds of other people. This gave it an amazing atmosphere. These are pictures of the village and the grass area we watched the first few races.

After the race we found what would become our local, the Estrella Damm (Red) bar – Estrella Damm is the major beer sponsor of this year’s regatta. From here we watched the boats come in each day. This is where we met Roger (an ‘expat’ Kiwi living in Canada) and Henry and his wife (from Napier) who had come over specifically to watch the racing. We proceeded to meet at the Red bar over the course of the week. This is a picture of Jo, Laura, Dan, Mark and I at Red Bar and the view of Team New Zealand coming in after a days racing.

That night we ventured out to try some of the local specialities. I tried a seafood Paella. Paella is a risotto type dish cooked up and served in a large frying pan. The seafood variety contained prawns, calamari, langoustines and fish. It was delicious.

This pattern repeated most days. We actually didn’t really do any sightseeing to speak of. Though that wasn’t really the point of the trip. After watching a few races on the grass in front of the big screen we relocated to another big screen the other side of the village. This was under cover and had an English commentary. This move was happily accepted by all as sitting in the sun during the hottest part of the day for the previous few days was starting to take its toll. These are pictures of the undercover big screen.

We did get out on the water and watch some racing one day. We were on a medium sized (ie ~80 passengers) catamaran. This was a good day and it was good to be back out in a boat on the water. This was a great day apart from the result, as we lost the race. Mark blamed this on himself as every time he has been out on the water Team New Zealand had lost. Below is the view from our boat. You can see Team New Zealand and Luna Rosa prior to racing.

One highlight was a little tapas bar that we found while wandering around the streets one night. We had an idea it was going to be good as it was packed with locals in the middle of the week. With no English menu in sight we relied on translations of a very helpful barman/waiter. It was delicious and we were glad we had ventured off the beaten track to find it.

Over the course of the week, Ollie, Chris and Gill and Alan and Andrew arrived to stay at the house. One by one we introduced them to Red bar and our magnificent beach. This culminated on our final day there. That night we had more tapas, including a dish of small battered fish that looked very much like pilchards. Some of the guys refused to eat these, claiming they were practically bait.

Overall it was a fantastic trip where we both came home with good tans (to the envy to Di’s work mates).

We owe an enormous thanks to Jo (Dan’s girlfriend), a fluent speaker of Portuguese, who managed to get by communicating with the locals in a sort of hybrid Portuguese/Spanish. Cheers Jo.

We arrived back to 3 ½ days work and then we were off on the Eurostar to Paris (Paris blog entry to follow)…