Spring break hits Valencia

By Lauren Talley

Created:
04/13/09 6:49pm

Last updated:
04/13/09 6:49pm

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Valencia, Spain — Spring Break por fin!

I only have about one month left in Spain and Thursday marked the beginning of Semana Santa, or the Spain’s version of spring break. The country is filled with processions and celebrations for the days surrounding Easter, but I won’t be around for most of it. But before my upcoming adventures, I spent a weekend in Paris and in France I realized just how far I’ve come since my days as a vegetarian.

On my first night in Paris I ate beef-carrot stew and I ate a good amount because I was hungry and well, it turns out there’s still a part of me that is in fact vegetarian. So instead of sampling French cuisine like an amateur epicurean, I experienced it sporadically, if at all.

But food aside – even though I did eat a crepe, strawberry and caramel-salted butter macaroons and French onion soup – my weekend stint in Paris was worth it.

I spent much-needed time with a good friend from home, Emilie, saw the Eiffel Tower (much smaller than I thought, though when compared to the the skyscrapers of New York, duh) and walked around the Louvre. We ate ice cream on St. Louis Island, gazed in awe at Notre Dame Cathedral and drank espresso in a café in the River Seine. We went to a creperie in Montmartre, the sight of one of my favorite movies, Amelie, and spent Sunday afternoon buying produce at the Market at the Bastille for Emilie’s host mom.

Paris is the City of Love and the City of Lights and easily a city I could fall in love with more if I spoke French. It’s a beautiful language and if I wasn’t currently working so hard at my Spanish fluency, I’d start French lessons immediately.

But for now I’ll put French and Spanish on hold for Czech because in a couple hours I board a plane to Prague where the Charles Bridge and a chapel decorated with human bones awaits – yes, you read that correctly, a chapel decorated with human bones.

And if that isn’t reason enough to go, now I can finally see the city described so beautifully in Milan Kundera’s book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

OK, so maybe the bone-chapel trumps everything else.

Nashledanou! Au revoir! Adios! Goodbye!

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About Spanish Encounters in Valencia

Journalism junior and former State News copy editor Lauren Talley is studying Spanish at the University of Virginia at Valencia for the spring 2009 semester.

This is her account of life in Spain’s third largest city.

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