As her time in Valencia was drawing to a close, our Virginian Kealani Nanz was determined to pack in as much as she could. It was trains, planes and automobiles from Seville back to Valencia, and the festivities of San Juan…
Saturday morning and midday in Seville, I spent mostly by the pool. I only went into the city in the late afternoon due to the heat. I had wanted to go to a mass service in the main cathedral, but the Ubers shot up from $12 to $40 in minutes and I missed the service. Still, I was able to meet up with some others outside the church and while we took a moment to appreciate the building, I thought it reminded me of classic Disney castles. The 13 of us got dinner at Eme and I ate a delicious cod dish and tried bites of my friends’ meals. After, we ate helados, and I had three types of chocolate. We Uber’d home for a short last night.
Heading back to Valencia
I got up, finished packing my things and cleaning the house and the rest of them rolled out of bed like zombies. My friend Isabella and I both went to bed early because we knew we needed to be ready for the flights in the morning. Our taxis came and one of the taxis cancelled, which freaked us. It was hard to get another taxi at 8am. At the airport we passed through security easily and sat down to close our eyes before boarding. We were woken up to get on the plane and I slept the whole way again. It wasn’t until after I got off and met up with them, I learned two of our friends had gone back to sleep and missed the flight. I couldn’t believe it at first and I chuckled in disbelief. But they ended up going back to the Airbnb and booking bus tickets back to Valencia.
Smoke gets in your eyes
That night we returned was a big holiday for the Spanish, La Noche de San Juan. My roommates and I were eager to see the celebration on the beach at night. We got off the crowded bus and the air was filled with smoke and the smell of burning wood. It was more crowded than a Fourth of July parade in Washington DC. People of all ages came to celebrate on the beach. We came unprepared with our single beach towel. We handn’t known much of what to except. It was very hard trying to meet up with other people. We decided to just walk around and try to find a fire we could join. After a while our eyes got irritated from the smoke so we decided to leave. We hope that we can come back to a San Juan festival in the future better prepared. I quickly got a video jumping into the sea for memories and we got on the bus back to Ruzafa.
© Kealani Nanz
Learning to cook paella
The next Wednesday went as usual, but with a special paella cooking class at night. I’ve had paella here before, but it was honestly a little underwhelming. During the course our eccentric and comedic teacher shed light on the complexity of making the dish. I was able to appreciate the seemingly simple dish at a much deeper level. We learned all the intricate steps and flavours that go into paella. We also made tortilla española, which everyone loved. The chefs let someone try to flip it and we all nominated our friend Jonny to try it. But the motion is apparently much harder than the professional chefs make it look, and the tortilla is deceptively heavy. So, despite Jonny dropping it, the chefs were able to fix it by adding another egg as glue. The rest of the meal was jamón and crackers as an appetiser, sangria, and a cinnamon cake with ice cream for dessert. At the end they gave us little ‘diplomas’ and I left with a full belly and some and slightly higher confidence as a chef.