Valencia is a lively city, oozing with people whatever the time might be. In summer, the sun works overtime with its intense heat and light almost until 10 pm, so sons and daughters of the night start showing their faces after 11 pm when the nightlife truly begins. There’s another reason for that; the late dinner times the Spaniards are accustomed to. Most dinners start at 10 and go on until midnight and it’s easier to drink on a full stomach.

The area near the cathedral is one of the popular places, full of pubs and discos. The closing hours differ so more experienced pub goers, hop from one pub to another using their time in the most convenient way.
My first experience was with a bunch of friendly locals. Carol, my lovely couchsurfing contact took us to dinner, to a local Italian restaurant and we had a decent dinner for a very good price. We were ready for the rest of the night and we went to an Irish pub (The Finnegan’s) to meet our German contacts. A little note: Not many people speak English in an Irish pub but still most of the names of drinks are universal! Pointing to bottles or beer taps also works if you can’t remember essential words like “cerveza”. Keep in mind that a caňa is a small beer, tanque is bigger and pinta is a pint. Whatever the size is they all have reasonable prices. There are a lot of gin drinkers in Valencia and no matter what you order, drinks are often accompanied by peanuts or olives.

Next, our new German friends Alex and Thomas took us to a local bar where we got to know about the Valencian way of drinking beer of which we were told took many years to master.

The beer resident jug should finish in one go and the secret is to keep your throat open at all times and let the beer flow down. If your mouth gets full, take a break because we don’t want to drown in the process. In such cases, spitting out always helps.

As the jug went from one hand to another and the beer found its place either inside our stomachs or the ground, it was time to change places.

The next destination was a disco and that’s where we felt like grandfathers and grandmothers, being at least 10 years older than any other person there. Valencia is indeed full of youngsters.

To be continued. …