July 15.
One of the great things about spending that summer in Spain was being able to see my best friend more often than I would normally, being based in the US and all. My best friend had notified me early on that she'd be in Sevilla during the third weekend in July, my second week in Castellón. The family I was staying with had a wedding and were going to be off of work, so I asked if I could go to Sevilla to spend some time with my best friend, whose husband was also going to be in town since some friends of his were going to be in Sevilla, and since it was the same country that my best friend is in, they met up there. They had a long-distance relationship, her being in Bilbao and him being in Paris, so any opportunity they got to be in the same country for whatever reason they took. And I really wanted to meet him, so I was so glad to be able to make this trip. That and the fact that I hadn't been in Sevilla in over eight years, since my family left in 2009 and I was last there in 2008. Win-win.
The family dropped me off at the train station in Valencia where I could spend the night before getting on the next AVE to Sevilla first thing in the morning. It was my first time in Valencia and it was only for a few hours, but it worked out. I stayed at a really nice Airbnb that was a bit of a hike from the train station, but worth it, because I got to see a little bit of Valencia that way. Not a whole lot, and I'm sure one day I'll go back, but so far so good.
The Airbnb was basically a kind of guest house/hostel situation, but it was nice, and the hostess was glad to have another Spanish speaker, but once she left I got invited to dinner with two of the other renters for the night, two guys from Germany and Austria who were taking a van trip across Spain for a few weeks for funsies. What made it really interesting was the fact that it was the same night of the coup in Turkey, and the guy from Austria was of Turkish descent, so he had a legitimate freak-out, and we also discussed current events in my home country. I always feel like I'm tooting my own horn or thinking too highly of myself when I talk about my conversation skills with Europeans, but the fact of the matter is, Europeans really enjoy talking to Americans who know their stuff. After the madness in the news died down a bit, I went to bed, since I had an early train to catch and wanted sleep.
