Valencia, Spain: Skipping a Side Trip

How do you decide to skip a side trip on vacation?

While staying in Barcelona I was planning to take a trip to Valencia for a day. Known for it’s architecture, beaches and paella, I’ve heard it’s a fun place to see. I also wanted to try out ridesharing in Spain (this was early in my trip before I became a huge fan of Blablacar). And finally, the headquarters of a company I wanted to interview is there, so I had several good reasons to take this trip.

Making it even more enticing, a woman I met on HomeForHome offered to host me for the night. She makes regular trips to  San Francisco but we hadn’t connected on a logical house swap. So I had free lodging!

All these things made me pretty certain I’d take the trip down to Valencia. But I couldn’t find anyone driving there or back on my schedule. So the rideshare was out. I looked into trains. Spain has a pretty good train network, but it’s not cheap if you buy tickets at the last minute.  And then I learned that it was the big Mercè festival in Barcelona that week. Fire running, human towers, huge puppet parades. I decided to save the money and stick around for the festival.

I usually enjoy moving from place to place every few days. But that can be an exhausting (and expensive) way to travel. I already had a lot of destinations planned for Spain, so the week was dedicated to jet lag recovery, festival enjoyment, and feeling justified in spending money on food that I saved by skipping Valencia.

Of course, in the spirit of always wanting more travel experiences, I feel a bit of missed travel regret when I hear people talk about Valencia. But overall, now that my Spain trip is over, I feel like I saw enough of the country that it was a good decision. Next time, I definitely need to visit Valencia.