Valencia - Port Aventura - Barcelona

It's been a couple of days! Currently in Barcelona, we just got back from a very touristy walk down La Ramblas. After sitting down at a tourist trap that had patatas bravas described as french fries we escaped and managed to find a cute place to have a delicious tapas dinner and sangria off the main track. But my god it's been a stinking hot day, we barely made it off the metro in solid state. Literally stinking by the way, walking down La Ramblas was like a tapas of smells, eww! 

After returning the car today we went to the beach, again very touristy. Although it was a bit crowded and noisy to relax, we were amused by the constant calls of "MOJIITOOOO, mojito, CERVESA, COLD DRINK CERVESSSAAA" from the many purveyors of drinks. At one point we were wondering why one of the mojito men dropped his stash, ripped his shirt off and bolted in a random direction, and then we noticed that there was a police man patrolling the area. It was amazing how quickly the mojito men dispersed and blended into the beach goers! Their shoes were a dead give away though. In 5mins they were back but with a much more discrete "mojitoooo" call. In conclusion, our beaches are better. And maybe I'm a spoiled Australian but I strongly believe that the beach should be relaxing, and the water should be condom free. 

Looking back a couple of days, dinner on the beach in Valencia at La Pepica was delicious! The beach was beautiful and on the walk down we managed to see some of the F1 track.

After Valencia we headed off to the amazing Port Aventura theme park. It was an incredible couple of days, I can't talk it up enough. We spent the first day at the Costa Caribe aquatic park which had a heap of water slides similar to Adventure World in Perth, with the exception of two massive slides, one of which is the tallest free fall water slide in Europe. You can just see it in the background of the picture below (which was taken the second day after a few roller coaster rides, thus the hair). It was incredibly high, and very fun! We did it twice, definitely worth the wait in line. Just a tip if you're going, you need to wear clothes to be allowed into the water park. We actually got turned away at the gates by an attendant with a disgusted look on her face when we first tried to get in with just our bathers on! 

That first night we went into the Port Aventura main park to watch a bizarre fire themed show and also go on the massive drop ride. I consider myself to be pretty brave on rides; I never get motion sick and I never get scared... in Perth, at the Royal Show. This was something else, and it took a bit of convincing to get me to go on it. Definitely worth it though, it was the most intense ride in my opinion! The acceleration was a massive shock.

We spent the whole second day at the park doing the many crazy rides and watching the sometimes bizarre / sometimes awesome shows. It was my first time on a proper roller coaster, and Port Aventura definitely has a great selection of them. The first one we went on (the Furious Baco) was a launch roller coaster, which started off by accelerating forward faster than I've ever felt anything accelerate. The Shambalha is the tallest roller coaster in Europe, another ride that I needed a lot of time to prepare for. The climb to the top was terrifying, and the fall over the edge was so steep that you couldn't see the track below you. The climb was the scariest part but after that it was really fun, not scary at all!

We saw a few shows, but my favourite by far was the Bubble show. This guy is a hero! This was a whole new take on bubbles. He was making bubbles with different gasses, one which was flammable (he would set the bubble on fire), and he had this whole big pond that he was making gigantic bubbles in with what looked like a stiff skipping rope. Amazing!

If you're every planning to go to Port Aventura (and I think you should), the one thing you must must do is get the express pass, which lets you go to the front of the line (or wait in a much much shorter line with other express pass holders) of all the main rides, once for each ride. You can then pay a little bit extra to have front-row access to the three biggest roller coasters. Both of these options seriously made our time there awesome, and possible. Otherwise it would have been an exercise of waiting in lines, and it would have taken away the fun of the ride itself.

 

Tomorrow we're off to do some site seeing in Barcelona, we're counting on you Sagrada Familiar!