New neighborhood

First days we just walked around near our home getting familiar with new neighborhood. Of course the first mission was to find out where we can buy a food and other important stuff. Near our home are many cafeterías (surprisingly), couple markets, couple china shops, many clothing shops, pharmacies, couple big parks and so on… I expected some kind of cultural shock after coming here, but it never came. Of course it’s difficult to speak with locals but I think we have survived pretty well. And all the time we understand more about Spanish. Locals are usually very sympathetic if we don’t understand something so they try to explain with body language. 

 View from our balcony.

And view from our rooftop where we usually dry our laundry.

From the nearest park, there is many fountains, lot of flowers and few playgrounds.

Park in the Avenida de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Some playground in the Gran Via de Fernando 'El Católico'.

Also papá got to play...

We had almost three weeks free time so we were able to explore the city before my work started. Playa Malvarrosa, the large beach became familiar during first weeks because of perfectly good weather. Beach is easily accessible on tram which also goes past my school, Universidad Politécnica de Valéncia. Also we have visited many times in Carrefour which is big market including also many little shops and in big mall called Nuevo Centro. Here are more than enough good shops to spend money, we have tested that! Even the nearest Hospital’s services we have already tested because in one evening Jasu hit his head to table’s corner. Wound was pretty deep so our housekeeper called a taxi for us and we visited in the hospital where they glued it, fortunately didn’t happen worse.

 

View to promenade.

 

 Some tourist...

So warm water.

Beach plays.

Also there is nice to train with boys. :D

 More beach plays...

Few times we have seen jellyfish. 

Amigos en Carrefour.

There are some fun machines in the Nuevo Centro area.

Jasu is enjoying...

A short distance from home starts old center where are a lot of old buildings, sights, narrow streets and of course shops for tourists. Yet we haven’t been there so much, just a few times because there we can be more when it’s cooler here. Now we just want to enjoy on this good weather in somewhere else. Here isn’t any more like 30 degrees or more everyday but still enough comparing to Finnish weather. And some days it rains so homesickness can’t surprise us! 

 Torres de Serranos in the edge of old center.

 

View from Plaza de Reina, Catedral de Valencia on the right.

Catedral de Valencia from behind.

On monday 26th this month Otto had his fourth birthday. At first he got his presents to the bed and he was so happy! After my short day in work we went to the mall where he got to those fun machines couple times. He also wanted to eat something in the cafetería downstairs our home because there are Paco and Hugo who always play with him. Later we went to home and ate ice cream cake...

 ¡Feliz cumpleaños a Otto!

Solo cinco días antes que primeros invitados llegan!

...y viaje continúa

So we got room from hotel Estudiotel and, of course, we rested for a while because we all were so tired after the trip. Little naps later we went to explore the city of Alicante where we found a lot of nice places, shops, coffeehouses etc. We walked around the city, made some shopping, spent time on playgrounds and of course took a lot of photos. Alicante looked pretty beautiful city! Have to visit there again someday. After well slept night it was time to search some place to get breakfast. It wasn’t very hard mission because here you can find cafeterías everywhere. If you walk for example 100 meters, you can possibly see 3-5 cafeterías and maybe in the same side of the street!

 One nice photo from Alicante.

 Weird trees here. :D

We cleaned our room and left it before 12 o’clock. Next destination was train station and we got help from hotel’s receptionist.  Station was only few blocks away from hotel so we found it easily. We took a queuing ticket and sat to wait because there was like 50 people before us. But fortunately we have our boys! Boys played there and woman next to us at first smiled to boys and then she started to talk; where are we, where are we going etc. After discussing a while it became clear that we don’t have to wait, just go to other desk and buy tickets. I’m not sure but I think that if your train is leaving soon you don’t have to be in queue. We had some time before leaving so we ate bocadillos (sandwiches) at Pans.

 Waiting for train in Alicante train station.

And that train trip was a bit different than in Finland! When you are going to somewhere on train in Finland, only thing you can see from the window is just trees after trees. Our trip from Alicante to Valencia was a bit more exciting because there were a lot of mountains, nice houses with swimming pools, different plantations and so on. Beautiful landscapes to see! Unfortunately I didn’t take photos from those landscapes, maybe next time… Conductor gave us few headphones when train left so we listened some local radio channels during the trip. After one and half hours trip we was in Valencia, and for the first time we saw our new hometown. At information point we met one Finnish girl who was doing her work trainee there so it was easy to ask tips that how to get home. We walked to other train station where was one metro stop and took the metro to Benimaclet. Boys were so happy because in our trip from Raahe to Valencia we travelled on train, airplane, taxi and metro! From Benimaclet to home was max 2 km but it took some time because we didn’t have any strollers and we all were tired.

 Travelling to Valencia.

First views in Valencia.

Our lessors, a couple, were already waiting for us. So they introduced the apartment and discussed about rent paying and that kind of normal stuff. Finally we had the place where we can be and where we don’t have to go away…

This became a little longer (more boring) story what I thought. :D

Nuestra viaje a España

Now it’s a bit different environment to write a post than last time. Four weeks has gone really fast in here Valencia, fortunately we still have a bit over four months left. It took so long time to write a new post because our laptop went broke during our flight so we couldn’t get the internet to our apartment. And we had three weeks to explore this new environment before my work trainee would start and when I would get to the internet. 

Our trip from Finland to here went pretty well considering that this is our first time abroad. Here is a brief explanation of our trip:

I had booked flights to us to Wednesday 17th of August from Tampere to Alicante but in Monday 15th we got to know that we hadn’t any tickets because there was some problems in booking or payments. So in Monday evening we started to search some suitable tickets and we found a flight from Norwegian to same day as we earlier planned to go. It was a little more expensive and we should change the plane once but I think that was a good lesson for me.

On Tuesday morning we handled the last instant things and packed our bags before leaving. In afternoon my father drove us to Vihanti’s train station where our train to Helsinki would leave. It was our boys’ first trip on train so they were very excited. After few hours there was our own taxi driver waiting for us in Tikkurila’s train station. We drove to Järvenpää where we were able to sleep in my sister’s house. I remembered that the flight departure time was 6.15 so we had like three hours to sleep. You can imagine how fresh feeling it was to wake up at 3am! We were in the airport 4.15 and there we noticed that the real departure time was 6.50 so we had a lot of time to explore to life of Helsinki’s airport.

Otto's godmother came to see us before departure.

I don’t know who was the most excited about that flight because it was my and boys’ first one. I have flown twice on small plane and jumped with parachute but that big plane was new experience for me. The first flight from Helsinki to Stockholm took one hour and then we had couple hours to wait there so we ate something and bought some food to the next flight. We all were so tired and boys were in bad mood but it helped a lot when they were able to sleep in second flight to Alicante which took four hours.

 Boys waiting for departure.

¡Por fin, Españaaaa!

It was exciting to come there because suddenly you can’t solve your problems and things in Finnish, you just have to speak English or Spanish. We had so big hungry so firstly we went to the Subway to get some food and secondly we took the taxi, and of course taxi drivers speak only Spanish so it was the first test of our Spanish skills. We asked if he would drive us to some cheap hostel and he asked few times that are we meaning hostel or hotel. Then he explained that hostel would be good for me and Neea but not for children. So he drove us to one hotel in center of Alicante where we got their last room. Continues on next post…

Okay, that wasn’t a brief explanation but now you don’t have to ask that much about our trip. :D Next time I will write something about how our life has gone here and add more photos…

¡Saludos de Valencia donde hace muy buen tiempo todos los días! Toda ciudad es muy bonita, nos gusta mucho. ¡Y sois todos bienvenidos a visitar aquí!