Folks were clearly tired from the previous day’s travels. Tim got up around 7:30 and went for a slow 3-mile run, but there was no other movement in the apartment until comfortably after 10:30 AM (Benton’s alarm went off at 8:45, but that was his first alarm, which Tim has learned is just part of The Process; the second alarm…inadvertently did not get set).
We all headed out around noon for a stroll into the old city and to get SIMs so Julie and Alana would have working phones. That turned into a stroll that extended to a bike rental place, which turned into a 3-hour bike rental, which turned into a bike ride all the way down the winding green-way that runs through Valencia and terminates at the beach. We parked our bikes there and walked down and into the (warm! 77 degrees Fahrenheit!) water for a bit before reversing course and taking a slightly different route back to return the bikes.
Alana got pretty sunburned on her arm and legs. Benton got a sunburn that is ~½” wide at his hairline (“This is why I should always wear my bucket hat!”), and everyone was pretty pooped. But, we made it out to a nearby restaurant for dinner and then called it a night.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: Lucy’s nightmarish travel saga (as this is being written, she should be en route to Heathrow from JFK…but she was originally scheduled to arrive in Valencia today)
Tim: the monster soap bubbles rig that a fellow was using in Virgin Square (Plaza de la Virgen)—the sheer delight of the kids who were chasing the bubbles; or, perhaps, Julie forgetting to actually pay for the SIM cards that she and Alana had installed, such that the store called her 15 minutes later and Alana and I then backtracked to pay.
