Valencia

Despite being in London for over a year, a girls' trip had never been planned. This has now all changed with trip to Valencia, Spain. The Spainish shores were a certainly appealing idea. It's still cold in London (when is it not?) and the mild Spanish winters are uber uber tempting.

The weekend began by leaving work early on a Friday (yay!) and a ride to Stansted airport (boring).

The rhythmic train movement sent Kt into a hypnotic sleep. Despite being an insomniac, this is the only way she is guaranteed to doze off.

We managed to bump into Leesh who happened to be on the same train and checked in together. Aaaah, landing in Valencia we were greeted with a warm, mild night *sigh* and a friendly taxi driver who didn't understand English. After checking into our hotel, we had to attend our munchies. Lucky for us, the Spaniards eat dinner at a ridiculously late hour and crowds in restaurant at 10pm is nothing out of the ordinary.

The hotel staff managed to book us into a nearby restaurant, La Ruiga. The maitre d', expecting a group of non-Spanish exclaimed "Kaarrt-ee Haaaw???" as we walked in. Twas a cute, cosy place with plates hung up all around the walls. Valencia is known as the birthplace of paella, hence there are no prizes for guessing what we had for dinner.

(L-R, T-B) The plates adorning the walls. Jade with her telephone bread. Paella with seafood - it's huge! Our desserts - Spanish creme caramel (can't remember its real name), a nutty mousse thing (very nice!) and lemon sorbet - in a hollowed-out lemon, of course.

Kt started looking pale from a suspected allergic reaction and off we trotted back to the safety of the hotel and her stash of over the counter drugs.