Road Trip – Cruising to Valencia for a Slow Walkabout 🚙
OK, all you grey nomads out there let’s rip into this blog trip with a 7 am rise, shine and drive to Valencia.
To entertain ourselves while driving long distances we don’t often listen to music on the radio. What usually happens is that Fabian picks up on the names of towns and villages, tourist or historical and monument signs along the highway and googles and reads me the history.
Very interesting and does the time fly till the next rest stop. Yes, we are always excited to stop somewhere and get eats. However, too often we are disappointed. What we think will be nice is sometimes yuck and worse, expensive yuck.
We were due to collect our caravan just north of Barcelona and re-start our caravan travels. Our destination after a bit of a look around Barcelona was to be northern Italy. 🇮🇹 And then down the Italian coast to the island of Sicily.
So why the change in plans? A call from our friend in Portugal telling us that she needs to go to Germany for an operation and could we come straight away and House Sit her two doggies, Milo and Lucy while she is away. Caravan back into storage and it’s “Hit the Road Jack” and which song does this remind you of eh!
The next morning bright and early we were headed for Valencia on our way to Burgau in the Algarves region of Portugal.
Advertisement – Trusted House Sitters
This is our second visit to the Algarve region of Portugal. The first was February 2019. We joined Trusted House Sitters a number of years ago and have travelled extensively since. At the moment we are travelling around Europe. Trusted House Sitters give us the opportunity to help people that love their pets DEARLY and want them to stay at home while they travel for whatever reason. With this assignment, we are looking after Lucy (a great Dane) and Milo (a Stafford terrier), while the owner travels to Germany for medical treatment.
Cruising Pictures
Thought it would be a nice change to show some photos of our motorway drive down to Valencia.
Arrival 🏩
A hotel in the old town handy to all the best places to see was a treat for us since we didn’t have to think about towing a caravan behind us. We contacted the hotel and confirmed that car parking was available close by. Well, we got a great hotel and confirmed with them that there was parking reasonably close by and reasonably priced. Got a little mixed up with all the one-way streets and started driving down the out ramp instead of IN. Frightened the life out of a nice lady coming out with little ones. Luckily I hadn’t managed to get too far and reversed back up and the nice lady, after the shock give us a smile, pointed me to the correct place of entry, and all the kids waving and laughing and thought ‘SILLY OLD GIT”
After finally managing to get down the correct ramp we found a park and start the walk up to the Hotel. Walked around in circles a couple of times but to be fair there was a massive church with a cobbled path running around it taking us in the said circle, then off to the side there it was our Hotel. http://hotel-san-lorenzo-boutique.valencia-hotels.net/en/ Priced at around 60 euros a night with tax.
Gone Walkabout in Valencia 🚶🏻♂️
https://www.visitvalencia.com/en
Just across the road from our hotel is the Palace of the Borgias, once the centre of power for Spain. General Franco is supposed to have stayed here during his visits to Valencia. A short walk away is the Lively square, home of the Turia Fountain, lined with iconic historic buildings & outdoor cafes. The historic buildings include Valencia Cathedral and Basílica de la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats. Isn’t history a great subject, I loved it at school. What amazed me during our meandering around Valencia was the number of churches and cathedrals. The power the church had in the past centuries was quite mind-blowing. One of the last buildings we passed and loved was the Valencia University, beautiful building with the most amazing decorated library. The weather that day was a little dull, but we weren’t, so pictures not great, sorry.
Grub Time 👍
After quite a few hours of walking it was time for lunch. We found this beautiful little square with a couple of outdoor restaurants. So what is Valencia famous for?? Yes, you guessed it 🍊🍊 Oranges eh! Lunch was tapas: calamari and anchovy with an aoli dip and something which seemed like a chicken pastry thingy, washed down with vino of course. 🥂
OK👌 Walkabout Backwards
Who usually feels like a little lie down after lunch 😴😴, ME. So we head back to the hotel and here’s some pictures to keep you amused on the way. Just streetscapes with no captions.
Wine and Dine Time 🍷🍽
So after a little rest and shower, it was back out again and looking for a nice restaurant to eat. This time we walked to the old city gate and then followed my instincts to the restaurant district. Got lost of course, but that’s what happens when you are meandering yes?
What did we eat?
Well after an hour or so and getting so hungry we decided to sit in the next restaurant we got to. And just around the next corner there it was. So what did we order, well we are very predictable so I went for a local favorite, “Cod on Spuds with a mayonnaise sauce” and Fabian got a “Risotto”. I really enjoyed my meal but Fabian was disappointed with dry gluggy rice maybe a paella would have been a better choice.
A Bloodly Hell Moment 😱
What would you do if you saw someone come into the restaurant ranting and raving and waving a knife?? I hadn’t ever thought about what I would do. It’s confusing. You don’t expect it so it seems not so much unreal as not real. You don’t trust that what you are seeing and hearing is actually happening. Well after the shock initially we wanted to run out but we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. I think everyone was thinking the same so we all sat still and watched except for whoever had called the police The guy then just sat down and dropped the knife on the floor, he looked very distraught. Within minutes the police arrived in force and arrested the man and took him away. All very frightening but also so sad.
We calmed down on the way back to the hotel, but what a night. Phew! Never imagined this would be our experience meandering in Spain? But it happened. Made me think how vulnerable we all are and how crazy some people can be and what drives them to act in cruel or violent ways. It makes you wonder what made this person so desperate?
On Reflection 🤔
Both Fabian and I have a religious background from which we base our present Spiritual beliefs. Forgiveness is right up there at the top of those beliefs. But many would say that if this person killed or hurt someone close to you, then how can you forgive? This is what most would say, right? I’m sure you have read stories of how people have been murdered, raped and the family has openly said, sometimes after the grieving period and of reflection, that they forgive the assailant. Why would they do that? Why would they forgive such an evil person? From what I have learned it is simple. It’s because if they don’t, they live with the anguish of unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness is the domain of the ego, the part of us we have built up to protect us, but this is where all our negative beliefs hide. We have two minds. right-mindedness and wrong-mindedness (Duality). Every idea begins in the mind of the thinker. Wrong mindedness is built up by the developing ego based on an individual’s core beliefs and these core beliefs our implanted in our memory banks by our family our caregivers and our peers and our social institutions and influences. Think about a “Jihadist” what are his core beliefs? What about a Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, and Judaism. So many different beliefs.
What makes your religion the one that everyone should follow? And like the extremist Jihadist if you don’t believe what I believe, in my religion (in this case Islam) I must destroy you or kill you (the unbeliever)? It’s a crazy world we live in.
And it’s not just religion, what about politics, conservatism, communism, socialism, liberalism, democrats and republicans. What about race, Whites, Blacks and Asians. All these differences also make up our core beliefs. from these core beliefs, we unconsciously form judgments and project those judgments onto other people. We then perceive them according to those judgments which have been mistakenly internalised based on limited opportunities and experiences of you being different to me, my personal idea of me and my special collective us. How many wars have been fought over religion, race or political belief? Over the (mis)perception of your us being different from my us.
Can i Change ? 😇
So it is possible to change the way we think (when we don’t know how we think?). Yes. To do this we started by recognising when we were thinking with the different parts of our mind. The ego or made-up mind or with our right-higher-spirit mind. But what is that mind? It is the part of our mind connected to and part of a higher power, OK here comes the GOD word., with God. We are happy with the God word, it doesn’t frighten us because we believe in a loving God, or a God as love. Not a God to be fearful of. God gave us a free will to be whatever we wanted to be and to think accordingly. So why would I choose to be what God isn’t? The opposite of God? But how can there be an opposite to something all-encompassing?
Personally we started to turn our worldly core beliefs upside down. We read lots about spirituality and educated ourselves with all (OK lots of) the new age teachers. Expanding our awareness of what’s real and unreal, truth and knowledge against untruths and illusions. We usually finish our thoughts here with some recommendations so here are some of the books we read to start moving in a different direction, being more conscious and waking up.
“A Course in Miracles” and “A Manual for Holy Relationships” are two of the books we read, study and contemplate. We have been reading the Course in Miracles for a long time now and it always has something meaningful to say to us. A Manual for Holy Relationships is a new book of teachings based on the Course. They are pretty abstract and I have to admit that I for one, often find them difficult to absorb. But then I ask myself which part of me is finding it hard to understand.
That nearly always makes me smile, coz it is always the part that doesn’t want me to understand. The part of me that does want to know this stuff already does. So really, I am just reminding myself of what I already know but have lost sight of. Anyway, if you are determined to look at a different way of thinking, being in the world, and creating truth instead of illusion, then I believe reading these, you will find a lot more peace in this world while waking up.
