Gary Wong Gary Wong

Spain, November 28-December 8, 2024

I’d already had a goal fall marathon booked with Chicago in October but if you know me, I like to have a backup in case training goes sideways. After seeing fast times being run in Valencia in the recent past and the number of available bibs already down to 2000 in early February (this for a race in December!), I decided to book this one as my the fall backup with the possibility of it being a BQ attempt if Chicago went well enough.

#runvlctrip24

I’d already had a goal fall marathon booked with Chicago in October but if you know me, I like to have a backup in case training goes sideways. After seeing fast times being run in Valencia in the recent past and the number of available bibs already down to 2000 in early February (this for a race in December!), I decided to book this one as my the fall backup with the possibility of it being a BQ attempt if Chicago went well enough.

Well, fall marathon 2024 training went, uh, I’ll save that for the Chicago trip report (dropping some day, I swear). Training for this one? I’ll save that for later on in this one.

At this point, I only knew I was going to Valencia and probably to other cities in Spain but I had no idea which ones and for how long. I initially booked a one-way ticket to Valencia on cash thinking I would book my return flight on points from somewhere in Spain. Once I convinced my buddy Marjorie to join me as she’d never been to Valencia before, the trip flushed itself out with stops in Barcelona and Madrid before returning home.

Delta One Lounge

At this point, I’ve written plenty about the Delta One Lounge at JFK but this was actually my first-ever visit and I truly took advantage of it, spending the morning working here and enjoying a leisurely afternoon here before having to scoot over to Terminal 1 to catch my flight on Air France. I’d seen and heard plenty about this still-new lounge from travel writers and content creators but actually seeing it and being there was something to behold.

Working out of this lounge on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving was pretty nifty and low-stress as it never got busy. Getting there before my first meeting, I was able to snag a phone booth at the far end and was never really disturbed the entire time I was working in there. With a made-to-order omelette and a mimosa in between calls, I was also fed and lubricated for my first airport meal of the day.

When the work (half) day ended, I made my way to the brasserie, the dine-in a la carte dining experience that truly sets this lounge apart from its Delta Sky Club sibling and other airline lounges at JFK. My lunch there was easily the best meal I’d ever had at an airport lounge to date with plenty of cocktails to accompany it. The service? Also excellent. As a business class lounge, offering this level of dining is absolutely crucial if Delta wants to compete in the premium space they claim they live in.

Air France Business

Much like the Delta One Lounge at JFK, this wasn’t my first time flying business class on Air France, having just done so going to Paris a few months back. This time, however, I did not fly on their spiffy new A350-900 nor did I get their new hard product on a refurbed 777-300 ER. Nope, I got the older seat which, honestly, was just fine with me. It’s not incredibly dated and it’s still incredibly comfortable, both as a seat and as a bed. Really, the only drawback was being on a 777 rather than in an A350 with its higher humidity, a difference you certainly feel on super-long flights but is still noticeable on a relatively short eastbound TATL flight.

The one thing that doesn’t change regardless of the plane or seat type on this route? The soft product. They have one of the best business class amenity kit bags with some decent amenities inside. The food, even catered out of JFK is pretty good with plenty of solid wines and champagne on offer (this is Air France, after all). And, of course, there’s the service which, while not overly warm or overtly friendly, is professional and nice enough.

Valencia

I’d not been to Spain before so having Valencia be the first city I’d ever been to in the country was… a choice. In retrospect, this would have been a better place to visit in the middle of a trip between two larger cities and I definitely wouldn’t have spent the most days of the three cities here. That’s no knock on the city itself - it’s just that I wish I had more time in the other cities.

That minor complaint aside, this was an absolutely relaxing city to visit with just about everything we did within walking distance of where we stayed. That was crucial as the metro system was knocked out of commission by the massive flooding a month earlier. In fact, there was better than even odds that the marathon wouldn’t actually happen as the optics and reality of tourists descending upon the region and diverting first responders to work the race while still digging people (sadly, mostly bodies) out from underneath would be grim. Fortunately (said from the perspective of someone running the marathon) and unfortunately (said from the perspective of someone who acknowledges just how tragic this was), enough time would pass between the flooding and the marathon that the situation was no longer emergent as it was no longer about saving lives but rather recovering bodies.

So, yeah, a lot of walking in this one and, remarkably, just the one rideshare from the airport to our Airbnb. Outside of the light rail and buses to/from the marathon expo and the bus ride to the train station on our way out of town, we were entirely on foot in this city. Which, I gotta say, is kinda nice, being able to walk from one edge of the city center to the other edge in less than 30 minutes.

Anyway, I’m here for a marathon so you know what that means. Carbs!

You know what Valencia is known for? Paella!

I regret to inform you, dear readers, that I only managed to have paella twice while in town and those two places could not be more different. At Pelayo Gastro Trinquet, it was the whole deal with a large pan brought to our table and us getting to scrape every last crunchy bit off the bottom. Whereas, at Paellas Velarte, I had to Whatsapp message them to place our order and specify our pickup time at a place where we could see them scoop our takeaway orders out of a VERY large paella pan before handing them to us, sending us on our way. I think the flavor of the latter was better, albeit a tad oversalted but being able to linger over the pan at the former was the better experience, all-in.

For some reason, I thought Agua de Valencia was not alcoholic so when I went solo to Café de Las Horas and was told (maybe warned) that the smallest serving was meant for two, I thought nothing of it. And, honestly, I really didn’t feel that potent mixture of gin, vodka, and Cava coursing through me as I downed glass after glass over the next hour or so. I’ll chalk it up to an incredibly high tolerance for alcohol or maybe it was just the jet lag overpowering the booziness. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For cocktails not of Valencian origin or specialty, we visited two cocktail bars, both of which I enjoyed immensely for totally different reasons. Hawaika is a an indoor tiki bar but the decor was done up tiki-style in overdrive - it absolutely, positively oozed and screamed tiki and I was here for it. They also had a tremendous assortment of glassware that befit just about every drink on their extensive menu. The other, Maison Lupin, is a themed bar, based on the adventures of Arsène Lupin, a high-class fictional French thief of literary and, more recently, Netflix series fame. As such, the classic (or riffs on) cocktails all came in “glasses” (more like blunt objects with glasses inserted) depicting the series’ lore. Like I said, both wildly different from the other but both a good time.

Maratón Valencia

I’m writing this before the trip report that covers the Chicago Marathon two months earlier but I mentioned how I eschewed going for a BQ in London back in April with an eye toward Chicago six months later. I won’t leave you all in suspense and make it clear I did not hit a BQ in Chicago. I’ll save my thoughts on how the fall marathon training block hit a wall after Paris for that trip report but I can get into a little bit of how the post-Chicago block went.

It didn’t. I did maintenance runs for sure after Chicago and even clocked a really decent sub-3:40 in NYC a few weeks later. With another four weeks between NYC and Valencia, I was sure I could do a sub-3:30 like I did in Chicago and maybe even eke out a 2024 PB.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Despite the course being as flat and fast as advertised, that wouldn’t be enough to counter my declining fitness and, almost more importantly, temperatures that hit the 60s (feeling way warmer in the sun) by the time I finished. I knew early on that I wasn’t gonna go sub-3:30 and I knew, by the 30K mark, that I wasn’t gonna get under 3:40 either. All I had left was to marshal whatever fitness I had left to finish under 3:45 which I barely did, clearing it by 12 seconds. Whew.

Barcelona

The day after the marathon, Marjorie and I made our way out of town and onto a train in Barcelona. If Valencia was sleepy, then Barcelona was positively bustling by comparison. That said, it may have been a larger city (second in Spain, sixth in the EU by population) but you wouldn’t know it by walking though* its Gothic Quarter. I spent hours throughout my three days in Barcelona just wandering Barri Gòtic (Catalan translation), taking in the sights, the architecture, and, of course, the tapas.

* walking up and down for quite a bit of it, really

I went to three tapas places in the Barrio Gótico (Spanish translation) over the course of my first two nights in town. The first, El Xampanyet, was easily the most popular, with its being hyped up all over social media. When I got there less than five minutes before opening, there was already a lengthy line and I figured I’d be waiting quite a while. Turned out, there was a very narrow corner in the cozy, rustic establishment where the bar curved inward that no one was at and, since I was a solo diner (for at least the first 10 minutes or so), they let me have it. By the time Marjorie joined me, there was just enough space to my right for her to squeeze in. We (okay, mostly me) had five dishes and, all in, we were done in less than 40 minutes.

The next night, I started at La Plata which was decidedly less busy and had an even more no-frills, rustic atmosphere. Like El Xampanyet, the service was speedy and I was done with my three plates and a drink in less than 20 minutes. It’s a good thing I didn’t fill up as it was less than 15 minutes later when I found myself at El Chigre 1769 to round out my tapas bang-bang. Whereas the first two were in more traditional settings, this place’s vibe felt a bit more modern with furnishings and decor not stuck in the previous century. The difference also showed up in the food as there was more attention paid to plating and style, in general. I don’t say any of this to praise them or to knock the other two but merely just to make a distinction in their approaches.

All three places were wonderful, really, and I would happily return to all three.

But enough about the tapas, let’s talk about that other major institution of Barcelona - Antoni Gaudí.

The city is home to a number of major works by the Spanish architect and designer. And what better way to start than with his famously unfinished masterpiece, Sagrada Família. Construction began in 1882 and it’s still under construction with an “expected” finish date in the 2030s - if that happens, I guess the baton for longest unfinished construction gets passed to the MTA for the Second Avenue Subway, amirite!? I kid, mostly. I think, anyway.

Jokes aside, this is just a magnificent site, from the exterior to the interior. There’s something imposing about the structure looking at it from the outside but then you enter into this incredibly grandiose space, with its majestically high ceilings, the rainbow of colors created by the sunlight hitting the windows, and then the depths of the visible crypt where Gaudí rests.

Rounding out my tour of Gaudí’s Barcelona were visits to Park Güell and Casa Batlló. Both incorporate his style but in vastly different scales. Walking through the park where he has the freedom of space really gives you the sense of his fluid architecture style to the point where it’s almost a surreal landscape. Meanwhile, the house feels incredibly Gaudí’ but in a condensed, densely-packed punch. Just an incredible couple of hours exploring both.

BTW, I purchased the tickets for the pre-opening time slot for Casa Batiló which gave me (and the other few who purchased these tickets) a more calm experience to venture throughout. I can’t recommend that highly enough.

Madrid

After cramming so much into three days in Barcelona, especially coming off of running a marathon in another city, I didn’t really do much in the way of visiting sites while in Madrid, opting to mostly walk (or take the metro) around the city. But, boy did I do a lot of walking around. For the capital city of a not-small European country, it’s astonishingly small in the sense it was very quick to get around, either on foot or via a metro that ran pretty frequently in the city center. It’s an incredibly walkable city, made all the more so with the vast amount of pedestrianization (again, I can best attest to the city center; ymmv outside of it). The only real difficulty came near the festive holiday fixtures like massive Christmas trees that folks crowded around to see each night. Thankfully, by the second night in town, I had gotten adept at being able to avoid crowds by taking the side streets when available.

While I didn’t visit any museums or palaces on this visit to Madrid, I did do my fair share of visiting bars and restaurants. You’re shocked, I know. I stopped in at La Osita my first afternoon in town - it’s ostensibly the public house extension for Oso Brew Co. I enjoyed the beers so much there that I looked up where the brewery was and, though it was a schlep to the outskirts of the city, it was well worth a Saturday afternoon visit for some beers they didn’t have in La Osita.

The one common suggestion I got from friends who’d been to Madrid was “get the churros with chocolate”. That might have been the one thing I was told that overlapped across multiple people. Fried dough? Chocolate? I’m sold. My research came up with quite a few places and I went to three but if I had to pick the best of the three, I think I would have to go with Chocolates Valor. For sure, their churros were different from the others (not saying that’s better or worse) but it’s their chocolate that stood out from the other two. All three places were fine but Valor gets the nod.

Madrid being the capital city and all, there were plenty of Michelin-starred restaurants to choose from and, in the end, I went to two of them. My standout meal in Madrid (all of Spain, really) was at the two-starred Smoked Room Madrid, for so, so, so many reasons. Let’s start with service - from start to finish, I felt welcomed and well taken care of by everyone, from both front and back of the house. Then there was the style - I was seated at the counter facing the kitchen which already afforded me with a view of the action but there was also an angled mirror above the kitchen which, through its reflection, gave me a birds-eye point of view. The decor was dark with spotlights which, obviously, with smoked in its name is befitting of the restaurant’s theme.

Of course, there’s obviously the food. I am not exaggerating when I say that this was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. All of the dishes were spectacular - in flavor, in presentation, and, in some cases, in its narrative as quite a few had a story behind it and to tell. For a three-hour meal, it was quite enjoyable and it didn’t feel like I was subject to the tyranny of the tasting menu. That goes back to what I mentioned earlier with respect to the attentive and lively service. In fact, when the meal was over with them knowing I was staying in the hotel above the restaurant, they led me to the corner of the kitchen for the service elevator that would get me directly back into the hotel without having to go upstairs and out to re-enter the building. At this level, every little bit contributes to its status and no little bit is too small.

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