After arriving to that fantastic sunset in Valencia we had a couple of days to clean the boat and prepare for the next part of our holiday. This involved me travelling to Munich to celebrate Al’s birthday (more on that in a later blog) and Nigel’s friends Paul and Dave arriving for some “serious sailing”. We took the opportunity for a bit of rest too watching all the comings and goings of Valencia marina, and there are indeed many of them!
I also shopped online and had our first (probably not our last) delivery to the boat, once we had helped the driver negotiate the gate system we loaded everything on board.
This was actually a great idea and something that we’ll no doubt do again, it saves carrying the heavy items (bottles of wine, beer, water etc.) and in the case of Valencia marina we were quite a way from the nearest supermarket. We also went out on the bikes for a couple of bike rides, the cycle lane goes all the way round the marina and it is superb. We felt really safe cycling and even beyond the marina complex when I did explore it was all via cycle path, absolutely brilliant.
All too soon our rest and prep days were over, I was heading to the airport for my weekend in Munich and Nigel was left with a day of relaxation (or maybe more cleaning and preparing!)
For the next part of the blog we need to split in two – I think I’ll make a separate account of the celebrations at Oktoberfest, as for now I’ll continue with the adventures of Gemini J.
Obviously I was not there so I don’t really know exactly what went on when Nigel, Paul and Dave were aboard, and there is certainly a small element of “what goes on aboard in Valencia stays in Valencia” I think. However, I do know that the boys had a fabulous time. They found a brilliant steak restaurant with terrible service, they got to know the cook at the little bar on the edge of our pontoon (so much so she rushed up to hug them on day 3 when I was back). They also went sailing, and enjoyed great winds off Valencia, having decided to stay in the marina thanks to the amazing mooring where we had the boat. Paul and Dave went off exploring the city one day too – and seemed to love it as much as we do. Dave took to sailing like a duck to water, and the three amigos (also known as the SOGS sad old gits) hope to repeat their adventures soon.
Now, I was a little vague about my arrival time on Sunday afternoon, and actually the trip from the airport to the marina on the metro took way less time than I had anticipated, so I arrived back early. I tried to phone Skipper Nigel but as most of you know, he hates phones and needless to say his phone wasn’t on. This meant I made my way to marina office, took a shower, left my bags with them and went off for a wander along the breakwater. I quickly saw Gemini J out at sea, full sails, so I watched them come in……
They were very, very suprised to see me on the breakwater, and it was fun watching them come into the marina, I then headed across the water on the water taxi and joined them.
The afternoon was brilliant fun, full of sarcasm and laughter and the odd beer or two. We booked into an Argentinian steakhouse, strangely named Gordon 10 (by this time I had come to realise how much those boys love steak). It turned out to warrant the google rating of 4.6 and we enjoyed amazing argentinian steaks and red wine before walking round the corner for Paul’s first mojito !!
The next day we decided to do something a bit different, Paul, Dave and I went over to the other side of the marina by water taxi then had a fabulous walk around the marina complex and breakwater and looked out over the beach.
We found a good looking restaurant for the evening and eventually headed back to Gemini J. During the afternoon, we enjoyed a few trips out on the dinghy before getting ready to go out for a birthday celebration meal for the boys.
It couldn’t have been more amazing, we enjoyed Dave’s first paella, whilst Paul plumped for steak (and again, another wonderful steak).
The desserts were amazing too, with gold on mine! We were treated to a wonderful bottle of wine too and it was a brilliant evening, many thanks go to Paul and Dave for taking us out.
For the last day of the trip we decided to do something completely different and for the first time in my life I went on a jetski!! It was stunning and something I hadn’t anticipated being such fun.
The videos from my camera will have to follow but for now here are the ones which were taken by our guide, who turned out to be none other than Kike Soriano, the Spanish flyboard champion !! He was certainly pretty speedy on a jetski!
No sooner than we had finished jetskiing, we were off for a final lunch, we chose the beach club and enjoyed a really good menu del dia before we had to say goodbye to “the boys” hoping that they will be back very soon. Tune in next time for Oktoberfest 2019.
The Adventures of Gemini J 