The Mediterranean

 


"We made it! We finally made it! I claim this beach for alcoholic slackers everywhere!"

So... We finally made it out of Madrid, to Valencia. It was dirtier than Madrid and seemingly inhabited only by tourists. Our hostel had a drag queen (with a great boob job) checking in ahead of us. But it had a beach, damn it!

We were on the beach a little too much. I got sunstroke. It wasn't too bad, though. The day of drinking on the beach was worth a few hours of fever, chills, and delirium. But the aftermath of my shoulders peeling was too much. Peeling isn't the right word. It's basically like I molted. I have peeled off about 90% of the skin from my hips to my shoulders. The tops of my knees peeled, too, but not as bad. I couldn't wear a backpack for a few days. I hope this teaches us all a lesson about sun care and drinking.

But seriously. I'd been out in the sun for hours at a time before over the past week. I thought I was fine. And it was a windy day, so you didn't feel it as much. Even Max got burned. He peeled, too, but not as dramatically. Danielle was wise enough to avoid most of the sun and only got the back of her legs burned.

The next day we went to The Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, which was amazing. The pictures do not do it justice. It's funny because I saw an exhibit of Santiago Calatrava's at the Metropolitan when I was staying in New York right before my flight to Spain. I was blown away by the exhibit at the time. We didn't go into any of the museums that are housed within the various buildings because they were expensive and seemed a bit touristy. But walking around the buildings alone was worth the trip. They're still building part of it, too.

Max loved Valencia, but I think it was mostly because of the beach. Well, the beach and the unbelievably attractive topless young women running (literally) around on the beach. The entire city seemed dedicated to tourist places and shopping. At least in Madrid there are a lot more bars. There was a big park built in the old riverbed that was nice, though. Along with a lot of art and trees on the streets. I'm not saying that it was bad, I just can't pictures living there, despite the beaches.

One street had a park in the middle of a big road, with a lane on either side. There's a name for it in Spanish that escapes me at the moment. We ran across it at a place where there was a statue with fountain in the middle, shaded by 4 huge cypress trees. Then we started walking along it, past all of these statues done in some sort of vaguely classical style. A lot of them were broken in similar ways: detached parts of faces, detached heads, heads with missing sections. It was strange and at first I didn't think it was very intersting, but as we went walking past more and more statues, it developed a sort of surreal rhythm, and by the end, it was almost like walking around in a Dali painting.

Madrid doesn't have anything like that, but it does have a statue of Lucifer in Parque Retiro. We took Danielle to see that, but we unfortunately did not get a picture. I'll take one the next time we go. It's an odd sight, right around the corner from parents taking their children to see the people dressed in imitation Disney costumes. They look like they were designed by someone who was given a vague description and a bad drawing of Disney characters and made by children.

Man, that must be the worst child sweatshop job ever. Chained to a table and forced to make ripoff Disney merchandise. Assuming you don't die from beatings or startvation or whatever, you live in mortal terror of Disney characters for the rest of your life and have catatonic flashbacks every time you see a cartoon on TV.

But I digress...

My point was that there's this grandiose statue of Lucifer as falling angel in a Catholic country, built in the park that was the private playground of a Catholic king, that families now take their kids to every Sunday. But then, I see people walk their kids past a dozen prostitutes without blinking, so maybe it's not surprising.

Speaking of prostitutes, Max, Danielle, and I decided to go into Casa de Campo, the huge park that we're 5 minutes away from. We went just after dark and I was paranoid about running into a "platoon of hookers" as Max had described them. We'd already seen one standing with her breasts hanging out of her top walking along a road next to Parque Oeste, the huge-but-not-as-huge-as-Casa-de-Campo park on the other side of our neighborhood. When we got to a small, but very busy side road that ran alongside Casa de Campo, there were three kids, about five years old, playing by the side of the road near a restaraunt. And not 30 feet from them are a line of hookers showing their legs and god knows whate else to the cars passing by. We went up into the park where we didn't see any hookers, though there might have been some ninja hookers hiding in the bushes and trees. You know, ninja hookers. Ninjas that have fallen on hard times.

But again I digress...

On the way back, we saw more hookers, since it was getting to be prime whoring time. There were hookers wearing miniskirts and squatting with their legs open on the side of a traffic circle. At least one of them was also smoking. That is the sign of a true pro. I assume they were squatting to show off "the goods." I had a sneaking suspicion that they might be transvestites and that might be the whole reason they were squatting, but fortunately I was not able to verify this.

That reminds me of the other transvestite hooker we saw that night. Wearing heels, she was as tall as me, but built like a linebacker. I was mildly frightened because she was walking close to us and if she'd even fallen on me, she would have cracked a few ribs. She must hook just for the fun of hooking, because she could have mugged anyone she wanted.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed these rambling prostitute-ful tales. Expect more, because, as you may have noticed, there are a lot of putas in Madrid. Also, another important piece of information I discovered, digestive biscuits are really graham crackers.