We’ve landed in Valencia! It almost feels like coming home. Except the sun was shining and the temperature got up to 20°C today. We rode the superb new subway into the city centre from the airport. All was just as we had planned and hoped.
Karen and I spent two winters in the City of Oranges, in 2011 and 2012. We have a rough knowledge of the geography of the city, and of its many attractions. But this isn’t really home, which is of course part of the point of coming here.
This year, we’re starting in Valencia, but only staying six weeks. Then we drive south to Granada for a couple of days – to see Alhambra. We’ll continue on to Cadiz for a few more days, then end up in Lisbon, Portugal for the last five weeks of our 2016 winter away.
Getting here today and yesterday (and the day before, Canadian time) was interesting. Air travel is still a pain, obviously, but we did have a far a better experience this time, in most respects, than we have often had, for a few different reasons.
 |
| View from apartment - not the most attractive streetscape, perhaps, but taken from one of our balconies in 18°C weather... |
In the past, our approach was to fly to London or Paris – usually an overnight flight – then, on the same day, catch a cheap shuttle south to Valencia, or wherever we were going. We’d be up for over 30 hours, and neither of us sleeps on planes. So we’d be exhausted by the time we arrived. This time, we flew to London and stayed overnight at a hotel before flying on to Spain this morning. I’d definitely recommend the two-day itinerary, far less exhausting.
The experience in Toronto Pearson Terminal 3 was great. There were no queues to speak of – either at the Air Transat bag drop-off counter (we had checked in online) or, most surprisingly, at security, usually a time-eating nightmare. The place seemed almost deserted. It may have been a slow time of day: we went through about 3:30 p.m., on a Thursday.
The airport has also introduced some welcome improvements to the process, mostly around managing queues and delivering the bins in which to stash your stuff for the scanning machines. Several people can be arranging their stuff in bins at the same time now, whereas in the past, only one or two at most could. We saw a similar, probably even better new set-up at Gatwick the next morning.
There was a long wait for take-off. The flight boarded only a little late, but ended up leaving almost two hours late. The first excuse, astonishingly, was that the captain had been “held up” and hadn’t arrived at the airport yet. We were told this only after all the passengers were settled on the plane. There were further delays for de-icing – it had snowed steadily all day – plus I suspect, because we lost our place in the take-off queue after the late push-back from the gate.
Air Transat has had some bad press in the past and has annoyed passengers, including us, with its lackadaisical attitude to service. But it has improved enormously – to the point that it even won an award recently for best “leisure airline”. Our experience the last few years has been almost invariably good. Cabin staff are always friendly and efficient – a big complaint in the past. The food, while still not great, is better than it was. This flight wasn’t close to being full, so we both ended up with empty seats beside us (we sit on opposite sides of an aisle).
I was annoyed, though, that, after going to the trouble of downloading the Android mobile app for accessing Air Transat’s fancy new wireless entertainment system, it didn’t work on my device. The app crashed every time I pressed Play to start a movie or TV show. The upside: the system didn’t have anything I wanted to watch anyway.
We arrived at Gatwick less than an hour late, presumably because of favourable winds. The most astonishing part was the speed with which we got out of the airport. In the past, we’ve queued for as long as 90 minutes just to get through passport control at Gatwick, and then still had to wait for our bags. This time, the wait was about five minutes for passport control, and not much more than 15 to collect our bags.
To top it off, my last-year’s Le French Mobile SIM card worked fine in our new phone. I was able to contact the cab company recommended by our hotel, the Holiday Inn Gatwick – Worth ($87.37 through Hotwire). The hotel has negotiated a pretty reasonable price for its guests - £11.50 for the ten-minute drive. The cab picked us up less than ten minutes later, and the hotel staff were able to get us into a room well before nomal check-in time. (It was only 8:30 a.m.)
We napped for an hour and a half or so, went for a brief, damp walk around the hotel grounds – it’s quite secluded, in former farm lands (there’s a spa attached) – and then had a pub lunch in the hotel restaurant. The afternoon was spent reading, having hot baths (what a treat – a comfortable bathtub!), emailing, etc. By late afternoon, we were sleepy, so turned on the TV and managed to push through until almost 8.
We were back at the airport before five the next morning, dropped our checked bags – pretty painless again with EasyJet’s automated system – and had time for a greasy English breakfast at a chain restaurant called Wetherspoons. We’re always amazed at the Gatwick departure lounge: it’s a small, garish shopping mall, with shops selling designer clothing, expensive scents and cosmetics, and electronics – you can buy a $600 iPad from a vending machine! And people were shopping at 6 in the morning.
The flight left a half hour late but arrived only ten minutes behind schedule. Valencia is a really nice, small airport. We were out with our bags within 20 minutes. The Metro (subway system) is right there. We were downtown in less than half an hour, found the apartment (a few minutes on foot from the Metro stop), and there hit our first real downer of the trip. The building’s elevator wasn’t working. One of our prerequisites in an apartment is an elevator. In this one, an attico on the fourth floor, it was absolutely essential.
The cleaning lady, a tiny little thing, came down and helped us carry our bags up to an unused apartment on the second floor, then we went the rest of the way up unencumbered. It’s still really hard on Karen’s knees and hips.
The apartment was almost exactly as pictured and expected, a modern open space, with lots of light and two juliet balconies. All the windows on the street sides have light-tight shutters. Other than the elevator, it's perfect.
Ines, our landlady, a Valenciana architect, who designed the renovation of this early-1900s building and then bought the attico unit, came rushing over 20 minutes later. She was very apologetic about the elevator. She’d already been on the phone trying to arrange repairs, but of course it was Saturday. A repair person has been promised for Monday, but it’s not clear if he’ll be able to fix it right away.
Ines was adamant that she would bring our bags the rest of the way up, and she did, shooing me away when I tried to help. We spent an hour or so with her learning about the apartment and the city (most of which we already knew). She’s a real sweetie, and speaks excellent English.
We shopped at a Mercadona about two blocks away, unpacked, cooked and ate a dinner and were in bed a little after 9. Another Saturday night in Valencia. Oh, but we’re high livers!
