The next morning we hit Valencia, expecting oranges, gazpacho, and flamenco dancers. Instead, we got dusty streets and lots of closed stores. Being August, all of the inhabitants were on holiday elsewhere. Here's another gargoyle (1), Alistair. The best thing in the city was the supermercado, where I bought some of the fabulous apricot shampoo Drea had found earlier in Italy.

Searching for lunch, we finally found an open restaurant back by the train station. We explained to the waiter, in Spanish, that we were vegetarians, and was there anything on the menu without meat? He pointed to a picture of some steak with some green beans next to it, and said (of the beans) "That's a vegetable." Next, we tried pointing at the tomato-potato soup the people at the next table were consuming. Meat in that? we asked, and he assured us that we could eat it. However, our potato soup was actually fish-potato soup. Crunchy, too, and reminiscent of the times when, as a child, I would eat fish eyeballs. Well, the broth and potato chunks were enough to sate us for awhile.

The horchata, or "tiger nut milk," was fantastic. At least the first glass was. Our second glasses of the stuff, ordered the next evening in Madrid, were a bit too much of a good thing, and made us want to hork. No more tiger nut milk for us.

Next: Madrid a go-go . . .