Spain!

Monday 24/08/09

 

I fly to Valencia in the morning, woo!!

Check into the hotel. I am part of the Fanatics tour of La Tomatina, the world’s largest food festival apparently. The food involved however is over-ripe tomatoes, and the only thing anyone plans on doing with them is to

 hurl them with maximum velocity at the nearest targets.

 

The Fanatics are a bunch of Aussies based in the UK who organise tours and festivals around Europe. Bunch of drunk bogans yes, but for a song they organised a sweet hotel in Valencia, transport to and from La Tomatina (the festival is held in Bunyol, 40 mins drive from Valencia). They also provided me personally with stupid amounts of hilarity.

 

This was to be the beginning of what shall be known as “The Tucker Max Period”. For those unfamiliar with the work of said American fellow, pur

chase his seminal text I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and laugh lots. Shallow, ignorant and sexist, yet utterly, ridiculously funny.

 

So…upon checking in and having a sneaky beer, my roommate for the next 3 days arrives.

 

Thus Ryan Villani is introduced to my life. Together we would become ‘Los Mercados’ and dominate Valencia.

 

First night – I teach ryan the ‘reap and sow’ technique, with what will prove to be great effect. This leads to a discussion as to the merits of ‘batting forward’ or ‘letting the ball come on to the bat’. He opts for the former, I the latter. We shall see who is to be victorious.

 

(please decipher code for yourself)

 

We wander for a bit, dinner at a little tapas bar, then back to the group for paella and beers We then head to a pub – finnegans, the typical Irish pub in Valencia – and have 5 beers in ½ an hour.

We wander the streets searching for another dodgy nightclub, getting lost, strolling through the streets with beers and chatting with families with babies (I think they looked at us a bit

 funny).

 

Eventually we find Bec, have loads more more beers, I pash a dwarf girl and we stumble home. Day one of the drinking adventures is over, yet it is only the beginning…