An in-depth education on walruses

I have a cell phone! The number is 693272366. Dial 011 to become international. Spain´s country code is 34. All that put together: 011 34 693272366.
I actually got the cell phone the same day I posted the last blog post but later in the day. That day, we saw Ocean´s 13 in in Spanish. Baffling. Anyone (who understood the dialogue) care to explain the need for a fake FBI agent? Or a fake nose on Matt Damon´s character? Or for George Clooney and Brad Pitt to go shopping for matching parkas together?
After the movie, Sam and I looked for a club or a bar. We stumbled into a pretty sketchy area of Valencia. Even though it was only 1:30 a.m., we had trouble finding anything still open. The first place we entered was called ¨Mel´s Bar.¨I opened the door. The lights were dim. The bar was almost empty, and no music was playing. A bartender stood around doing nothing, a lady sat on a stool near the back, and another lady, this one a bit thick, stood in the front. As we opened the door, she stared suggestively at us and danced to the lack of music, waving her hips.
¨What do you want,¨she asked.
¨Nothing. Lo siento.¨
We scrambled back out the door.
The next club we went into: The lights were dim. The bar was almost empty, and no music was playing. A bartender stood around doing nothing, and two men who looked like bouncers but weren´t guarding anything stood up front. Two ladies were at the bar. Neither had a drink.
One of the bouncers raised his eyebrow, as if to ask, ¨Which one do you want?¨
¨You don´t want!¨ I said, my Spanish failing me a bit. "Goodbye!¨I said, my Spanish failing me a bit.
Amazingly, the third ¨bar¨was another identical prostitution house. What´s with Valencia?
Finally, back in our quarter of the city again, we found a salsa bar (which was cool, but no one was dancing) and another regular bar. In these bars, the ¨employees¨were bartenders. We were glad.
Still, we had just as much fun not finding a normal bar as we did when we actually found one. That´s the great thing about traveling with friends, totally independent of authority of almost any kind. The normally fun experiences are great. We´ve loved bar-hopping, going to clubs, seeing the Alhambra, visiting the Prado...But we´ve also loved the smaller things that we´d take for granted back home. Here, even the small things are new. The activities that would be part of daily life, were we back home, are exhilarating to do now that we´re exploring. We were amped to eat breakfast when we went to the giant farmers market that Valencia made out of an old cathedral . Each day is an adventure. Finding the route to the beach or the clubs is a big deal, like we´re hiking through the city and finding a way down the mountain. We celebrate when we find an especially good restaurant because not only are we eating well, but also because we are successful adventurers. Even mistakes are fun. Accidentally stumbling into prostitution houses is part of the exploration. We are completely on our own, exploring totally unknown cities together.
The next day, we woke up late, went to the park, had more candy than we could handle, and chilled. We actually found clubs that night, and they were pretty insane. None of them have cover charges, so we just go in and out as we please.
The next day, we woke up early (11 am) to go to the Valencia Arts and Sciences museum, which is supposed to be the biggest science museum in Europe. We thought it was good, not incredible.
Then we entered the Arctic part of the aquarium, where we saw walruses having sex.
Walruses.
Having sex.
Best museum ever.
In the night, we went to a bullfight with Jack and Ruby, two people we´d met back in Granada, and Ruby´s cousin Abby, who lives in Valencia.
Jack is a character. He´s ridiculously British, about our age, with a fast, dry, typically British wit. When we met before the bullfight, he pulled us along to the season´s ticket section.
¨Yeah, Ruby´s dad is a real bullfighting aficionado, so we have one season´s ticket,¨ he said. ¨But we only have one. Guards will come up to us before the fight and ask to see our tickets. Just wave your hands like you´re baffled and say, ´No habla espanol,´and they´ll go, ´Pfff,´and leave.¨
The event we saw was actually a prelim to the real Tuesday night bullfight. Here, young boys our age who are not yet legit matadors show their stuff against untrained bulls. Then, the bulls that will fight on Tuesday are paraded around.
The fight was interesting. I wasn´t rooting for either side, and yet I was on the edge of my seat.
First, some men in green and pink costumes tease the bull by waving around pink and yellow capes, letting him charge, and moving out of the way. Then, picadores step into the ring, egg the bull on, juke his charge, and stick small spears into his back. Then, the matador enters, teases the bull some more, this time with a red cape, and then, at the end, jukes the bull´s charge and sticks a sword into his spinal chord.
The bullfight felt like a tradition to be respected. Much of the fight was ceremony. A man on a horse came out at the beginning to ¨clear the crowd¨from the ring, even though there was no one in the ring. Everyone who interacted with the bull was in full costume.
The bullfight was thrilling. It had the acrobatics and grace of a dance. It had the primal fighting you´d expect from an action movie. Its competitors stretched their athletic ability in a manner you might see at a sports match.
Against my respect for the tradition and the fight´s ability to rivet me, I felt sorry for the bull. I didn´t root for it to hurt the humans, but I didn´t root for the humans to win, either. I felt horrible when the picadores tricked the bull and stuck him with spears. And, during the first slaughter, the bull died slowly. At the end, he stumbled a bit. Then, like a dog going to sleep, he sat down on its hooves. I imagined him trying to rest from a patently unfair fight. It was a fight he didn´t understand.
Someone came out and pulled his ear. He jerked up. They stuck him again with a sword, and he died. A horse came out and dragged the bull away.
I can´t speak for anyone but myself, but to me it was too brutal to be enthralling.
We went out for drinks with Jack, Ruby, and Abby. Then Sam and John hit the sack, and I went out on the town with Abby and her sketch Valencian friends.
Today, we actually got train tickets (Barcelona) in advance this time. See? we´re getting better at traveling every day.