Author: Tim

Happy Easter Sunday! We had a lovely 125km ride from Valencia towards Barcelona, and tonight we are camping along the beach. This Holy Week is getting very expensive; our spot of gravel at a beach side campground is 31€! Normally it’s 20€, and we are used to paying just 15€ or less… Quite ridiculous and makes me want to consider wild camping, even if it’s frowned upon… But the next cheapest indoor lodging I could find was over 50€, so not a lot of options. I think we’ll have to stretch our budget a bit from here until Croatia.

When we checked into the campground, the friendly host showed us to our space and asked us about our trip and where we are from. Hearing we are from America, the conversation of course turned to Donald Trump; he said we should have taken him with us to maybe help him change his mind about the world. It has been frustrating, to say the least, to have to apologise for being American everywhere we go. We haven’t met a single European who has anything kind to say about American politics. It’s quite an embarrassment, but as the camp host said, it’s not just the Americans; Hungary has the same problem, and I added that yes, Turkey, and perhaps France are having similar issues.

He then commented that, oh, of course you rode 125km today, you are American, you can do anything. In reality, we’d been passed today by a Frenchman on tour doing over 200km per day plus dozens of racers doing much more on their Sunday rides. Overall it’s disappointing, though understandable, the preconceptions that others have of us, simply based on where we were born. I think it’s an important lesson that the reality is always more complicated than what you first perceive.

We saw a lot of people out picnicking and enjoying their Easter, and we stopped at a busy port city for lunch, where I had the best shrimp I’ve ever had, sorry New Orleans, you are no longer #1. Gambás de Denia (a nearby town on the Mediterranean) tasted like little lobster tails, wow!!

Tomorrow we will ride as far as we can towards Sitges and find a (hopefully) more affordable campground or cheap hotel.

We spent another rest day in Valencia, taking in some of the things that were closed, including a big bag of pastries from the Central market, which we inhaled too quickly, the cathedral, the botanical gardens to see the resident kitties, horchata at Mercat de Cólon, and a nice dinner on Carrer del Comte d’Altea.

Yesterday I bought a 2.5 liter bike bag at Decathlon. It’s meant to go on your handlebars, but I wanted it on my front tube to replace my current bag, which is falling apart. The velcro straps were in the wrong place for that, so I got out my sewing kit and sewed on some new ones. I’m starting to feel like a tailor or something. It’s fun but time consuming…

Tomorrow we are headed towards Barcelona. Things are getting very expensive from here until we hit Italy, so we decided not to stay in Barcelona itself. Instead we will spend three nights in Sitges for half the price and take the train up to see the city. Three days of riding and two nights of camping until we reach Sitges…

Last night, we walked down to the Malvarossa area of Valencia to observe the Holy Thursday processions. The garments worn remind some Americans of the KKK, but they are not at all related. The rhythmic beating of the drums and quiet marching down the streets made for quite a sight.

We also got our hairs cut…

Today, we explored Valencia, mostly the Old Town area, but also some parks nearby. Of course, we saw the bull ring, train station with its stunning tilework, and had a horchata and fartons (which we inhaled before I took the photo).

I enjoyed some of the graffiti art in the area; some of it is quite elaborate.

It’s nice to take some time off the bikes, which are resting next to a wonderful city view for the day. I may have also found my next touring bike, what do you think?

For lunch, I found a pretty good arroz abanda (traditional seafood rice), and Steve had arroz al forno (oven baked rice with pork and sausage). Made some simple sandwiches and Valencia oranges for dinner, and probably off to bed early. We need to catch up on sleep!

I forgot my sunscreen today, so I got a little too much red in the face. As we were walking home, a Spaniard took one look at me and exclaimed, “Ole!” Okay, that’s enough embarrassment; I promise to keep re-applying all day from now on.

I forgot to mention that we’ve now entered a very popular cycling area. We are seeing lots of other cyclists on the road, mostly racing types and mountainbikes, but a few cycle tourists as well. It seems as popular for cycling as San Diego or San Francisco.

It’s kind of nice that the school kids and people on the side of the road pay us no attention, versus in the countryside where we got loads of stares.

That said, we still get plenty of looks, comments, and questions about the mirrors attached to our glasses and our solar panels. I’ve learned how to answer those questions in Spanish by now!

Short, very flat ride to Valencia today. Got here an hour early with a tailwind, so waiting for our AirBNB to be ready. Looking forward to a shower, decent lunch, laundry, and haircut today, and then Holy Thursday.

We left our cave apartment at 9am to chilly but quickly warming temperatures, riding through wineries and fields of olive trees. It was a gently rolling ride, mostly downhill, along a valley with stunning views of terraced farmland and quaint little towns.

We finally made our way back to the coast, and in Gandia, I stopped at a Decathlon shop to pick up a collapsible cup. I got tired of drinking wine out of the bottle lol. Sometimes it’s hard to fill our water bottles in shallow sinks, so a cup is very useful.

I researched a paella place on wikipaella and found one on the water front. The reviews said service was slow but the rice dishes were good, so we chilled for a few hours and ordered the paella Valenciana, which is traditionally made with chicken and rabbit, from my understanding. I have to say it was hands down the best paella I’ve ever had. The crispy bits of rice on the bottom of the pan were amazing, and the flavor and texture of the rice was perfect. Yum!

We are camping tonight at a very small campground right on the beach. There’s another cycle tourist from the UK next to us who started his European tour back in November and still has a few months or longer until he returns home. We are now having a relaxing evening walking along the beach, chatting with our neighbor, and thinking about dinner, maybe just a salad. The paella was filling!

I have to say, that we have now adjusted to the Spanish food schedule. Lunch between 2-4 seems natural now, and dinner before 8 or 9 just seems weird. We are also enjoying the toastadas con tomate for breakfast along with some pastries, in lieu of our fried eggs we were used to in the US. We are looking forward to seeing what other customs we adopt to along this trip.

Today was a relatively short 60km, but a lot of it was uphill. We mostly passed through nondescript but interesting towns and cities, including one small town that appeared to be a ghost town, La Colonia de Santa Eulalia. We ended in the hip and bustling town of Villena, with a striking castle, gastro pubs, at least three bike shops, and lots of bike lanes and cyclists.

When we rode with the group of Spanish touring cyclists a few days ago, one of the people we met was César. He spoke just a little English, better than my limited Spanish for sure, but we were lucky to have his friend with us to help translate. He asked us to show him our planned route to Valencia because he lives in the area and could make some suggestions.

When he saw that our route went through the town of Villena, he immediately offered for us to stay at his place, there, since he will be gone cycle touring all week. We were taken aback at this offer from someone we’d known for only a few hours, but this kind of generosity is something we’ve become enamored with in the cycle touring community, and is why we became a part of the WarmShowers network, to give back as hosts in San Diego, and is why we will always offer help and space to other travellers whenever we can. Why should it be any other way, though?

Today we reached Villena and had a wonderful lunch, the menu del día at a gastropub, and then took a short siesta in the park (Spain is starting to take ahold of us, I think…), and then visited a local bike shop to get me a new jersey (mine has holes!), Steve some new gloves, and some other miscellaneous supplies. We then met up with Cesar’s mother-in-law, who showed us up 1500 steps (not really, but it seemed like it, carrying our bikes!) to his place, a cave apartment with upstairs bedroom overlooking the castle! It’s super adorable, and we can’t thank him and his wife enough for their hospitality.

I know some of you like to see our food porn. So here are some of our favorite local dishes that we’ve sampled the past few days. This area of Spain is known for its rice dishes, though we have yet to try a true paella. I understand there’s a website where you can find true paellas, and we mean to find one of these places and have one. Perhaps tomorrow when we pass through Gandia.

Veal roulade in Villena. Amazing!

Lobster paella, the waitress said the lobster was flown in live from northern Spain. It was good, but I’m holding out on my opinion until we try a place from wikipaella.

Nougat ice cream (a local specialty due to the almond production here) and caramel cake. Heavenly!

This rich meatball dish is a local specialty of Villena, and may be reason enough to visit. Muy rico!

We started the day along the coast, going through many different beach side communities. Some reminded us of beach towns in San Diego like Pacific Beach, quaint restaurants and shops with small cute houses, and laid back residents and vacationers that smiled and said Hola as we passed. Others reminded us of over-developed retirement communities in Florida, multi-story high rises and snooty folks that turned up their noses when we said “Buenos días” with uber touristy restaurants and guys hawking “Rey-ban” look-alike sunglasses. We eventually tired of fighting for space on the shared cycling/walking paths and headed inland towards Elche.

I’ve been practicing my Spanish as much as I can. I’m pretty confident ordering food and drinks at restaurants now, and today I successfully had two conversations with Spanish-speakers about our trip, explaining where we started, where we are going, our solar panels, etc. One was a life guard near one of the many beaches we passed, and the other was another patron in a restaurant, who said he’s also been involved with several bike tours through Europe and was excited for us.

We made a quick stop in Elche to have some ice cream and admire the famous palm trees. The main park is beautifully landscaped with palms and other trees.

One of the river beds was recently painted by a group of graffiti artists with some interesting work.

Steve and I have been collecting stickers on our bikes as we travel. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

We had a lot of fun riding with the cycle touring group, 300 other cyclists, and are very thankful they were able to “unofficially” squeeze us into their auditorium spaces for two nights, which reminded us somewhat of our time camping with AIDS/LifeCycle. We made some friends, saw some amazing views, good food along the way, and overall had a great time.

We were not the only “pirates”, tagging along on the ride. One cyclist had his young child in a trailer behind his bike, proudly sporting a hand drawn Jolly Roger.

We decided we’d like to be in Valencia for Holy Thursday to see some of the Holy Week celebrations, and in order to get there in time, we had to take off from the group today. So we combined their route for the next several days to make our way up closer to Valencia.

The first part of the ride was beautiful through farmland and fields of wild flowers. The Murcia area is known for their vegetables, so we saw lots and lots of different kinds of lettuce.

When we got to the coast, we were in for a bit of a shock. We’ve gotten so used to our quiet farming villages the past few days, we’ve forgotten what the touristy areas are like. Lots of traffic, vacationers speaking different languages, high rise condos on the beach, and souvenir shops, everywhere. But we also saw a lot more cyclists, and many people in cars and on the roads were cheering us on, especially when we climbed a tough hill before Cartegena. On the road were still names and other markings painted of cyclists that fans had painted, from whenever the last road cycling race was. I think “P.M” in the photo indicates the line where the mountain climbing points are scored in a cycling race.

My new solar panel has been working well. It has a built in 5,000mAh battery, which is kind of nice because I don’t have to worry about plugging something into it all the time, but it’s about twice as big and heavy as my old one. Today I was able to charge from 0-100% the built-in battery with mostly sunny skies while riding.

Happy Palm Sunday! Tomorrow we ride to Elche, a city known for its palm tree farms, where most of the palm fronds for Palm Sunday in Spain are grown.

It was a short essay day of riding, but we got a lot accomplished!

I found a Decathlon athletic store (like REI) just 1km off our route, and they had a decent-looking solar charger on clearance for €37, so I picked that up as well as some camp stove fuel, finally have found that! And Steve had some McD’s. You can take the boy out of the USA, but you can’t take the USA out of the boy lol!

Made it to Murcia and met our WarmShowers host, a bicycle mechanic who runs a shop in Murcia, who was very generous with his time as today is the start of the bicycle touring ride he is involved with. He sourced two new chains for our bikes, which were ready for replacement and installed them.

We showered at his place, had a delicious lunch at his favorite restaurant nearby (a fusion of Vietnamese and Spanish food, a bánh mi bocadillo, picked up some soap, shipped my broken solar panel back home for repair, and had time for a coffee from Pepe de los jamónes.

I spent an hour sewing a clasp onto my new solar panel to attach it to my backpack (I put it on upside down, but it still works lol), and then we headed out to the bicycle touring party, where we setup our sleeping mat and bag in an auditorium with all the other participants. Will be fun riding and meeting up with the other tourists and attending the party tonight!!

We started off the day on a gradual climb through the dramatic scenery we described yesterday, towards a natural park, and then descending quickly through farmland and fields of wild flowers.

​Their patterns, colors, and varieties are determined by some mystical formula, defined, but not explained, by an ancient combination of environment and evolution. Seeing this rich tapestry fly by with a stark backdrop of hills and mountains, I can understand why some choose to believe in a Creator to explain this beautiful landscape, which appears as if made by genius strokes on a vast canvas. However, I find it more wondrous and spiritual to consider that these incomprehensibly complex patterns, as well as our own appreciation of the beauty of these patterns, has come into existence completely on its own over billions of years, rather than at the whim of some other being.

Today has been an introspective day, and I think this trip overall is in some ways, for me to discover and expand upon my own spirituality. I thought a lot about the individual and unique nature of our own experiences of this universe. Each of our perceptions of reality is necessarily flawed and individual because it is centered only on what our senses can perceive. Missing are the experiences of other people and creatures, such as the insects we squash on the road, or the ants that we shower with bounty whenever we have a picnic. Even more, are the forces and actions of this universe that are unavailable to our senses: radio waves, quantum effects, and an infinite number of others.

On a more practical more, we had a wonderful tapas lunch in Lorca, and an easy day of cycling 100km but mostly downhill. Our camping is very basic off the side of a highway 2km outside of Totana, Spain.

Also, my solar charger stopped working today! I called the manufacturer, and they will send me a new one once I return the broken one, so I’ll need to find other charging options for the next few weeks.