Losing My Voice in Valencia
Celebrating birthdays, fighting for my life, all without the ability to speak
Hola!
I am reporting to you live from my sick day off of work considering I still have no working vocal chords. I know, your first question is how exactly did I lose my voice and I can narrow down the answer for you pretty easily.
Toni 2 Piano Bar at two in the morning, specifically when the piano man was serenading us with “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. By the end of the night, my voice was a goner.
The title of this piece is a little misleading, as I technically lost my voice while we were still in Madrid, but trust me, it stayed gone all throughout the weekend.
My roommates and I went to Valencia for a few days to celebrate our roommate, Manal’s, birthday. Besides only getting maybe three hours of sleep after a night of piano karaoke, the unfortunate circumstances only keep coming our way.
We missed our train.
Well, Amana, Nadia and I did as we were on an earlier train than the rest of the girls and thanks to the lovely Metro Line 10 getting delayed for 15 minutes, and the 20 minutes it took to navigate the maze of a train station and the extra 10 minutes it took to get through this random security check, the train was gone.
I don’t even want to talk about how much it cost to book the next one. But, regardless, we made it there.
Our Airbnb wasn’t ready quite yet, so the girls and I had some time to wander around the town, see the amazing city hall and even walk through a Unesco World Heritage site. Valencia is home to La Lonja de la Seda, which made them a part of the well-known Silk Exchange. It was so interesting to set foot in such historic rooms and a very pretty orange grove.
Another thing about Valencia, it is lined street by street with orange trees. The amount we saw was uncountable. I kept having the urge to get up and pick one to snack on, but according to a very well-trusted source (a Valencian Uber driver) we shouldn't eat them.
After that brief intermission of good things, I bring you back to the horrors of our trip.
Our Airbnb was absolutely awful. Not only were we sitting outside of the wrong apartment building for 30 minutes, but the host said they were “still cleaning” so we couldn’t come check in at 4 P.M. as intended. Once we walked five flights upstairs to get to the place, it only got worse. The stench of smoke and sewage hit us immediately and the chill in the air did not help anything.
The six of us couldn’t even bear to stay for one night. We moved to a hotel immediately.
But, the problems did not end there.
The hotel claimed that the two rooms we booked could only hold two people in each of them. Why a hotel has to police the number of bodies we fit into a bed is beyond me, but regardless, they made sure to milk more money out of us!
And even though the man at the front desk promised we would have breakfast included, you’ll never guess who walked down to get breakfast the next morning only to be denied. Yes, very good guess, it was me.
There were obvious highlights to the trip (even if it does not seem like it from what I’ve told you so far) and that includes our first dinner. Valencia is the birthplace of paella, a rice dish known for its seafood toppings. It was many of our first times trying the dish—my first time trying it in Spain at least—and we were very satisfied with the gigantic pot of paella that barely fit on our table. All within the rice we found full-bodied shrimp, lobster tails, mussels, calamari, crab legs and various fish meat pieces cooked within.
And trust, even though there were six of us eating the dish, we still came home with boxes and boxes of leftovers.
The next day also went well as we got to try a nice cafe with hazelnut lattes and delicious bagels. Then, made our way to the largest market in the city, the Mercat de Central. Here, we sampled fresh fruit smoothies, warm spinach empanadas and saw lots of stands with all kinds of options for tapas and groceries alike.
From there, we walked to the Fine Arts Museum of Valencia which featured works of local Valencian artists and famous creatives like Goya, El Greco and more. The building was housed with various sculptures, lots of frames representing the Renaissance era and depicting Madonna, and even old column pieces with Arabic script found on them.
We walked around a neighborhood called El Carme, known for its street art scene and there were some truly beautiful murals. We made a pit stop at a postcard store with beautiful designs, prints and buttons. But, the best part of this stop was meeting the sweet shop owner and his two dogs, Lollipop and Cloud.
From there, we went to one of the largest tourist attractions in Valencia aside from the beach; The City of Arts and Sciences.
Here, there were many modern and dynamic buildings all placed together to create a mini-city of sorts, including a science museum, an aquarium, a culture center and a movie theater. The architect of this city was born in Valencia, but made other great works you may have heard of like the Olympic facility in Athens, Greece and the transportation hub for the World Trade Center in New York.
It was so beautiful to walk around and made me feel like I was in Tomorrowland or a character in ‘Meet the Robinsons.’
We sat by the water and enjoyed the sun as it was significantly warmer in Valencia than it has been in rainy, cold Madrid for weeks. But, the sun didn’t stay out for as long as we needed it to.
We all booked a sunset cruise that, after missing two buses to make sure we got to the port on time, had us walking for forty minutes in the rain just to find out the boat was canceled.
Once dried off though, we made it work by finding a very aesthetic ramen restaurant for Manal’s birthday dinner with great food and even better wall decor that had Somayya putting her digital camera to work.
While we were having dinner, we had a secret plan in the works for Tanja to sneak to the market to grab a birthday cake to surprise Manal with later.
Sure enough, when it came time to deliver the cake to her hotel room, getting her to open the door took forever. We were trying not to laugh as she kept asking who is it and I just kept knocking harder. We eventually did get to sing her ‘Happy Birthday’ in Spanish, it just took sore knuckles to get there.
Overall, there were a lot of pros and cons to this weekend, but I’m glad I got to see Valencia and eat some of the best food I’ve had in Spain so far.
Now, I just need my voice to come back before I have to start wrangling those kids at work again.
Thanks for reading! Adios for now!