Look out Valencia

The bus to Valencia was a great chance to catch up on some sleep. There were still some great scenery and some of the landscape was very similar in appearance to western Victoria, the ground was very rocky and the farm fencing was primarily dry stone walling. If you remember your high school geography you will know that there are 3 types of rock: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic; the plains of western Victoria are volcanic so the scoria rocks there would have been caused by the cooling of lava and so are igneous, the rocks here appeared to be granite and therefore are also igneous but lack the honeycomb type patterns cased by the gasses present in the scoria when it cooled.   The professor of Geology I was to meet in Valencia would have come in handy on that trip.

The instructions on how to get to the Hostel in the email were very easy to follow so checking in and getting rid of my luggage was relatively easy. A quick trip to the tourist office I was then armed with a map so I had a nice walk around the ciudad antigua got some groceries and went back to the Hostel for dinner and to see what I could do for the evening. The Hostel bar was run by an Aussie named Ashley and his very lovely colleague Daphne. Daphne spoke Spanish, frnch and English, Ashley could speak Aussie and some Spanish, his specialty was swearing. I was beginning to see why I was losing my exotic appeal, those bloody Aussies were everywhere. Maybe I should keep to the small towns in which the Aussies don't frequent. The Hostel was very well run, very clean with great facilities and was up with Vertigo in Marseilles as the best so far. I managed to get the shopping done in Spanish Without hesitating so I am clearly improving, the next day in the market was a similar experience.

I found a bar in the ciudad antigua called the Jimmy Glass Bar and they had an act from New York City called the Pete Robbins Quartet. It was a bit of an issue finding it at first as reading a map without glasses in dull street lighting but as I got closer it just became a matter of following my ears. Pete Robbins was not big in stature but he belted out the sounds from his sax like there was no tomorrow. The guitarist, Nickel Plum, was standing in front of Pete in the queue when they were handing out height, his fingers were like lightning on the fretboard, he was playing a very nice hollow body Gibson. The bass player Simón Jermyn, played a 6 string bass which I don't see very often, the fretboard on those things is ultra wide and boy could he play it. The drummer Kevin Brown forced me to actually believe that a drummer can be a musician, he could have done a solo percussion show without a doubt. They all had a chance to demonstrate their talent individually through the various songs and it was another great night of jazz, more upbeat than the Madrid set the previous evening which is not a criticism of either, just a note of difference. They even managed to fit in their own version of Sweet Child of Mine.

Unfortunately when the gig was over it was wet and windy outside and I managed to get myself a bit mixed up in my directions so I stayed out longer than I needed to.