Stranded in Spain!
Last Summer, 17 x Y10 GCSE Spanish students Mrs Mathews and Miss Humphries flew to Valencia. Once we had unpacked we took the metro right into the city centre where we did a bit of exploring and were lucky enough to watch a bullfighter practise with one of his team at the bullring. We had a nice dinner at the hotel after shopping and visiting the rooftop pool- we thought the starter was the main course as the portion was so big!
Historic Valencia was traditionally pretty; we tasted horchata, a typical drink made from chufas and Mrs M gave us a guided tour of the Cathedral where we saw St Vincent’s arm, two paintings by Goya, beautiful carvings and silver and gold work and the Holy Grail! We climbed the Micalet Bell Tower- 207 steps- and it was very hard in the heat but we reached the top and the views were wonderful. Then a walk around old Valencia to see the Plaza Redonda- an old circular market place and the narrowest house in Europe which was four storeys high and only the width of a door! We planned to buy our lunch at the market and have a big picnic but we were all very hot so decided to go to a restaurant particularly after having a look around the market: it was massive and they had a strange variety of food such as duck’s feet, eels, skinned rabbits, sheeps heads, bull tongues and much more.
After lunch in an air-conditioned (lovely!)restaurant we went to the MUVIM Museum of enlightenment and modernity. It was a very strange and weird experience being taken on a tour by a mysterious cloaked figure! That evening we had time to shop, go in the hotel pool and had dinner next to the hotel in a restaurant of our choice, where we had to order and pay without the teachers helping us!
On Saturday we went to modern Valencia, the City of Arts and Sciences,saw a robotic dinosaur and visited the Oceanografic. We walked round all the modern buildings and structures before going inside the Hemisferic cinema to watch a 3D film on Arabia. We had lunch independently again; some of us tried the Menu of the Day!
On Sunday we packed our bags and checked out. We then went to the port and stood on the Formula 1 Valencia race track! We watched a Fiat 500 club convey of about 200 customised cars, we went into the Americas Cup exhibition and visited the Holy Week museum. There were lots of life-sized figures of the penitents and the floats used in the Easter processions which was really interesting.
We had lunch in a restaurant by the beach and after going to the market where we bought dead cheap souvenirs and presents, we went on the beach for about an hour. We took the bus back to the hotel to change, get our luggage and get the metro to Valencia airport. We checked in and were told there was a delay (2 1/2 hours) We were eating in Burger King when the departures board said that our flight was then cancelled altogether due to a lack of air traffic controllers! We were all worried about how we would get home and waited whilst the teachers spent a few hours queuing up to get us home on another flight. Eventually Mrs M got us on a flight which would take us home on Monday night but it was from Alicante to Luton! There was nothing from Valencia until the Wednesday evening! The airline paid for taxis and a night in another hotel. It was all very hectic and we arrived at the hotel very late on Sunday night.
The next day was really hot so Mrs M took us to the cinema as it was air-conditioned to see ‘Shrek 4’ in Spanish and then we went shopping. Mrs M had arranged for a five taxi convoy to drive us the two hours to Alicante. We got there and checked in without any flight cancellations but with a two hour delay. We arrived at Luton by 2.30am! Home by 3.30am for most of us and despite that Mrs M and Miss H went into school for 8am!
It was a great trip and we really enjoyed using our Spanish in real-life, especially with an unexpected extra day! We saw so many cool new things, spoke loads of Spanish and we can certainly know our way around the Metro and Bus system in Valencia now!
Muchas gracias Mrs Mathews and Miss Humphries, we all had an amazing time! We would love to go again and recommend it to Year 10 in 2011!
Eve Marriner and Alice Sherritt