València vital statistics:

• Population: 780,834 (city proper); 1,570,000 (urban area)
• Latitude & longitude: 39˚ 28′ 00″ N, 0˚ 22′ 30″ W
• January average temperature: High 16.5˚C (61.7˚F), low 7.1˚C (44.8˚F)
• July average temperature: High 29.7˚C (85.5˚F), low 21.5˚C (70.7˚F)
• Time zone: GMT+2 (6 hours ahead of U.S. EDT)
• Language: Spanish, Catalan
• Currency: Euro
• Exchange rate: US$1=€0.84
• Average rent of one-bedroom apartment in city center: $654.94

València first impression: This is why I quit my job. To be in a place like this.

Getting to València from Colombo wasn’t easy. One bus ride, three flights (one red-eye), and three trains, to be precise. But it started off well. I didn’t expect much from the airport lounge in Colombo, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

With a full belly and four stiff drinks, and enough time (about 2 hours) to relax and enjoy the lounge this time, I was ready for my flights: A short evening hop from Colombo to Malé in the Maldives Islands, then a red-eye from Malé to Istanbul, then an early morning flight from Istanbul to Barcelona. The plane, a huge Airbus, was practically empty on the first leg of the flight, and I hoped I would be able to move over to the center aisle, with four empty seats that I could raise the armrests on and turn into a bed. Alas, the plane filled up very quickly in the Maldives. Apparently, way more people travel there than to Sri Lanka. Having just been to Sri Lanka, I can understand why.

I got a few winks in during the flight and then transferred in Istanbul. As a rule, I don’t take photos in airports, since they all look more or less the same no matter where you are in the world. But I regret not snapping of photo of me in the international transfers line in Istanbul airport. It was truly a mini-UN in there. Everybody from everywhere flies through that airport.

Bleary and weary, I survived my flight from there to Barcelona and hopped a local train from the airport to the main train station, Sants. My first thought on arrival: This is so easy!

For one thing, in Spain, you can pay for everything with credit cards, just like in the U.S.! And they have ticket machines for things like rail tickets, so you rarely have to wait in line. Amazing!

On arrival at Sants, I went to another machine, selected English as my language, input my locator numbers for the train tickets I’d reserved ahead of time online (take that, Sri Lanka!), and out it spat my four Spanish train tickets that I’ll need for my Spanish destinations: València, Málaga, and Salamanca. So easy! Then I found an ATM and withdrew some Euros. Easy! (Although, to be fair, it was equally easy to use ATMs in Taiwan and Sri Lanka.)

Even the language was easy. I haven’t studied or attempted to speak Spanish in 20 years, and I’ve forgotten almost everything I knew (which, let’s be real here, was never much to begin with — the level of rigor in U.S. high school French and Spanish classes is not high). But Spanish is written in the forgiving, familiar Latin alphabet. Rick Steves talks about this in one of his books — an American with no foreign language skill at all can still get a lot of information out of Romance languages. Take my train ticket:

I’m departing Barcelona and arriving in Valencia, so “salida” (even if I didn’t recognize it from “exit” signs in the U.S.) is “depart” and “llegada” is “arrive.” Moving to the right, my seat is in coche (coach) 7, plaza (place) 4A. So car 7, seat 4A. Moving down and left, I see a message that includes the words “acceso,” “tren,” “2 minutos,” and “antes.” So, “access…train 2 minutes…” “Antes” must be like “ante” in poker, so “before.” So it’s telling me I need to get on the train no fewer than two minutes before departure. ¡No hay problema!

This reminds me of the classic, hilariously spot-on essay “Why Chinese is So Damn Hard.” The author tells a story about what happened when he picked up a Spanish-language newspaper and began reading a random article, just to see if he could make heads or tails out of it. To his horror, he could understand more of the Spanish article, having never studied the language, than he could out of a Chinese-language article on the same topic, after having studied Chinese for three years. Now, I can read a typical Chinese newspaper article without too much trouble, but it took me probably five years of study to get there. Spanish is easy! Spain is easy!

Traveling by train is easy, too (thanks again to the wonderful website www.seat61.com for tips). Look at this train! It looks just like Amtrak! Everyone has a seat. No one is standing up or hanging out the doorway. Imagine that!

Just in case you forgot, here’s what it looked like inside the last train I rode:

I had a couple of hours to kill in Barcelona, so I thought I’d leave my big bag at the left luggage office of the train station and do a little exploring. But, it was sprinkling outside, and having walked a block either side of the station, the neighborhood didn’t look particularly interesting, and I wasn’t feeling particularly frolicsome anyway after 20-some hours of travel, so I stayed in the station and had a bit of lunch.

On arrival in València, I bought a València metro card (I had researched it beforehand), walked a short distance to the nearest subway station, and zipped over to the Benimaclet neighborhood of València, where I’d be staying in an Airbnb room. Once again, thank you internet. If a hotel room is a budget-buster, there’s always someone renting out a cheap room in his/her house that you can stay in, if you don’t mind sharing a bathroom. (I prefer having a private room with private bathroom, but València is one of my pricier destinations, so I’ll make due.)

Benimaclet is a bit removed from València’s old city center, but it’s well-served by public transportation and it’s kind of a cool, funky little neighborhood next to a couple of universities. It also struck me during my time here that Benimaclet is an urban neighborhood where people of all ages live. Unlike Washington D.C. and many other U.S. cities, you’ve got kids, adults, and the elderly all living here. I lived in a cool neighborhood in D.C. (Logan Circle), but pretty much nobody younger than 20 or older than 40 lives there. The young and the old are in the suburbs (or, for the latter, Florida, if they can afford it).

I met up with my Airbnb host, got my keys, settled into my room, and slept for 12 hours. I had a very long day of travel, after all.

On my first full day in València, Saturday 5 May, I did what I usually do on my first day in a new place: I walked everywhere. (For the first few hours, I flinched every time I saw a taxi. But no, here in Spain, passengers flag down taxis, and not the other way around. So nice!) Well, first I went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of water (to stay hydrated while walking) and a fresh supply of shaving cream (see the Barcelona train station selfie above; you can see there was a need).

Re-provisioned, I decided to walk to the old city, where most of the interesting sights are. It was a picture-perfect spring day, chilly in the morning and warm (in the 70s˚F) and mostly sunny in the afternoon. That’s the way the weather was pretty much every day while I was here. En route to the old city, I walked through a park. I was feeling a little bit sleepy (as is usual for me around noon), so I used my man-purse as a pillow and took a nap. (If I could have done the same thing at work, I might never have quit my job.)

So already, this was shaping up to be a very good day. After a short while, I resumed walking. I knew basically where I wanted to go thanks to YouTube “vlogs” or video blogs that I’d watched about València earlier. Again, thank you internet! For destinations like València that are a bit off the beaten tourist track (Rick Steves’ Spain book doesn’t even mention València), YouTube is a great resource. Lots of travelers put together sometimes-corny, sometimes-slick videos of their trips, and if you watch a few of these, you quickly get a sense of what the top attractions are. I crossed a bridge over the Jardin del Turia — more on this park later — and entered València’s old city center.

I walked in and thought to myself, “This is why I’m traveling. I want to be here.” I was just so happy to be in such a beautiful place.

At the first of the sights, Plaza de la Virgen, I thought to myself “I have to eat outside. Here. Now. I don’t care if it’s only 1pm and too early for the Spanish to eat lunch. I’m going to live like a tourist today.” And so I did.

Spanish may be an easy language to read, but speaking, for me anyway, is another matter. Trying to order food was so painful! See, I picture the foreign languages area of my brain as a walk-in closet. I open the door looking for a foreign word, and the first thing I see, neatly organized in the front part of all the shelves, is all my Chinese vocabulary. If I try to grab anything quickly out of that closet, inevitably, a Chinese word comes out of my mouth. To get the Spanish out, I have to reach back in there, past the Chinese, until I’m up to my shoulder, feeling around the dark, dusty back portions of the shelves. Sometimes my hand falls on to something useful (“dónde”… that means “where!” That is a very useful word! I’m glad I kept that), other times it grasps something less so (“garçon”… no, that’s French. How do you say “man” in Spanish?), and most of the time, all that’s there is dust. And for the first time during my travels, here in Spain, I can pass for a native. So I feel like an imbecile when waiters or cashiers start speaking to me in rapid-fire Spanish and I have no idea what they’re saying. “Hablo muy poco español.” Have I ever gotten a lot of mileage out of that expression!

Anyway, with the above tapas (people get so excited about Spanish tapas, but the Spanish just call any small dish a tapa, even if it’s tater tots; there are tapas and then there are just tapas), plus the nutella crepes and glass of wine I had next, I inadvertently blew my entire daily meal budget ($30). And if I’m being honest with myself, the food was just okay. But the ambience — oh my God! It was just blissful, sitting out here on a perfect spring afternoon and watching the people go by. I didn’t even mind the table nearby filled with 12 drunken, rowdy Brits. València may not be on American tourists’ radar, but, kind of like how Chinese tourists are on to Kaohsiung, the British, French, and Germans are here in València in force.

After my meal, I strolled around the old city for an hour or so and soaked in the sights.

And that’s only about halfway through my first day in València! I have to run now (1pm on 9 May) to catch my train to Málaga. Stay tuned for part two!