Les Ponts de Mai

France has this wonderful thing where if a bank holiday falls on a Thursday, you'll often get given the Friday off to make a "pont", or a bridge. 

So I decided to jump on a plane away from the rain in Paris and head straight to Valencia, Spain to spend the long weekend with one of my best friends, Jade.

Beautiful Champs Elysées

Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2. In the rain.

I arrived in Valencia, jumped into a taxi straight to Jade's, and decided I'd practice my Spanish on the taxi driver. We had a great conversation in Spanish, well, I say Spanish, he spoke Spanish and I spoke some kind of new dialect of Spanish and French mixed together. I'd be sat there thinking yes, I can do this and all of a sudden he'd say something and I'd reply "oooh, d'accord."

The next day we headed to the beach, Playa Malvarrosa.

After a few bitter mojitos we packed up our bags and set off into Valencia city for some retail therapy. Valencia is truly beautiful, and I noticed a lot of buildings seemed to have been inspired by the ones here in Paris.

After stopping off at a cashpoint, with a built in webcam that really did excite me more than it should have, we picked up some cupcakes and headed home to relax a little before fiesta time.

Do I wish to know the balance of my account? That will be a no.

I really, really want one of these now.

A vending machine filled with pizzas, hotdogs and kebabs. Um, no.

A quick snapchat to all my friends, just to let them know it was fiesta time and me and my €4 bottle of Vodka were ready for a night out.

Only we weren't. Because in Spain, you don't leave until 1am. Whilst the past 10 months in Paris have shown me that Europeans like to do things a little later, there's still a part of me that seems to consider leaving for a club at 11pm super late and getting home at half 2 a wild night.

We jumped in a taxi to the club, which cost us only a couple of euros each (I don't think I'll ever get over how cheap taxis are in Spain) and headed for Deseo 54, Valencia's gay club. 

The next day we headed to the beach again, and then wandered through the park to the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a kind of cultural arts and sciences building. I'd forgotten all about the whole "Hola Guapa!" thing that Spanish men like to call out to you so much, so it probably wasn't the best idea wearing a summer dress through such a busy park.

We headed back home and got ready to go out for dinner. As we went to leave, Jade's door literally would not open. After lots of pulling and sticking forks through it, we admitted defeat and ended up calling the emergency services. Funnily enough, I've already had to call them here in Paris, after, um, the same thing happened to me.

About 15 minutes later some policemen came to rescue us, realised they couldn't, and called for the fire brigade, who we had originally asked for. The door swung open and a group of Spanish middle aged firemen and policemen just stood there, speechless, eyeing up us damsels in distress.

Bullring.

The Cathedral

Can't escape my beloved Paris.

The next day, after a lazy morning watching Made in Chelsea (some things never change) I jumped on a metro to the airport, where I sat next to two nuns, making a nice change from the usual smackheads I have to sit next to on line 9 here in Paris.

Getting the plane home went rather smoothly, apart from queuing up and almost boarding a plane home to Gatwick, I had just enough time to sit down, relax and take a pretentious airport Instagram, complete with a Starbucks coffee (under the name of Sofia, naturally).

In other news, the dissertation is complete and handed in, which can only mean one thing... HELLO SUMMER!

Hasta pronto,

Sophie