Castellón

I had gotten home from El Camino de Santiago, and fewer than 10 hours later my host family and I left for Castellón an 8 hour drive across the country to the Mediterranean Coast. We got to our cute, beach view flat at about 2:30, right in time for lunch, and then we went down to the beach. It was so incredibly beautiful; the beaches, the cute beach towns, everything. During that 8 hour car ride, I could literally feel the weather get warmer and warmer, and see the sun shining brighter and brighter. The weather itself was just so exciting for me; I miss Sacramento weather so much! 

We stayed there for five days, and the weather was so wonderful!! Whenever the sun was high and bright, we went down to the beach, but if it got cloudy or during the evenings, we visited surrounding towns. Everything was so Mediterranean, like things looked they also belonged in Italy or Greece (which is completely different from how things look up North where I live). On every beach there were always small play structures, volleyball nets, and different sporty type structures set up for people to use. I thought that was pretty cool.

We went to this one town, Peñíscola, where we visited a castle where a pope had lived. It was so pretty, right on the water, and at the bottom of the castle there were like these cute little streets with street venders and flats, too, where people actually live.

 

The statue of the pope

The castle from afar

My host family and Me

My host parents

We also went to this other town, Oropesa, which was basically a tourist family vacation town, but in the fullest sense of those words possible. It was very excessive and extravagant, although the beaches were beautiful. Now I understand why the Spanish beaches are so famous, especially in Europe, because they really do go all out in touristy places.

There were artistic pieces like this all over the park

We visited the actual city of Castellón, but we went on a Sunday, so everything was closed. We had also gotten a bit lost, and we found ourselves in a kind of bad part of the city. Castellón is also a port city and has a fishing industry, so it had a weird smell, too… Although I will say the inner part of the city was nice, clean, and smelt normal.

On the last day we went to Valencia (a huge city in Spain, it´s up there with Barcelona and Madrid) to go to the famous Science museum. I was iffy about how fun this would be because I am not really a fan of the sciences, but it was so interesting, interactive, and I really liked it! My favorite part was definitely the section on different superheroes! The city of Valencia is just gorgeous (from what I saw), but I wished we could have stayed longer to see more of the city but it was getting late and we had an 8 hour drive ahead of us.

There were a lot of different building with different things and each building had a different architectural form. This is just one of them.

All in all, it was such an amazing vacation with my host family, and it was perfect because I was able to see a part of Spain that is distinct from where I live in the north. It was also a very well needed vacation soaking up the sun and relaxing. I had so much fun and am so grateful to my host family for taking me!!

Hasta Luego!