#10 – Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Boston anymore…

There’s no 1:30 closing time here, that’s for damn sure.

7AM Standard

My official arrival for a month in Valencia, Spain and it’s safe to say they live a drastically different lifestyle than what I’m used to in Boston.

A normal Saturday afternoon in Boston would’ve gone something like this (and boy, do I miss these):

• Some morning / afternoon football (of either the American or international variety)
• Takeout dinner around 7 or 8
• Pop top
• Put on nicest underwear to assume position on couch
• Beers with the boys watching some sort of sporting event until 10:30ish
• Get dressed in ~45 seconds and head to a bar
• Play a game of “how much can I drink before a 1:30AM last call?”
• Maybe order some late night pizza and/or Chinese
• Bedtime by 3 at the VERY latest

Not Valencia. They play by their own rules here.

My first Spanish Saturday went something like this:

• Beach until about 8PM
• Dinner Part I
• Home for a patented “night nap”
• Shower and get ready for an 11 o’clock Dinner Part II
• Dinner Part II was at Marina Bay Beach Club, where you feel like you’re in a movie, but you also feel like the world is in slow motion.
• A three hour dinner and all of a sudden it’s 2AM
• Outdoor beach bar at Marina Bay for a “pregame” of sorts to “kill time” until the real club got going
• 4AM arrival at L’Umbracle
• Dance
• Unsuccessfully chase some Dutch girls
• Unsuccessfully chase some Irish girls
• Dance
• Unsuccessfully chase some Danish girls
• Dance
• 7AM. Sunrise
• Lonely cab right home with just enough daylight and just enough time to ask yourself every imaginable question of why you just stayed out long enough for breakfast joints to have re-opened.

I’m not entirely sure if I love it or hate it. In one breath it’s amazing, in the next it’s preposterous and probably shaved a few years off my life expectancy. This month was one for the books, but I think if I stayed much longer it might have killed me.