The first flight of my life! Football matches, delicious food and more./ Valencia, Spain

I´ve never thought that I would ever fly especially alone! Yes, my first flight from the Czech Republic across Milano to Valencia I managed on my own. A frightened Czech girl without travel experience alone on the way.

Where? So this trip was in the beautiful Spain city - Valencia.

“Distance is just a test to see how far love can travel.”

Why Valencia? The first reason was that my boyfriend´s favourite football team played a match in the small city nearby called Villareal. And the second because it is a beautiful city which is worth to be visited.

I flew from Prague in the Czech Republic and my boyfriend from England. The month of our trip was October. My friend took me to the airport because I don´t live exactly in Prague and I didn´t want to go by bus due to my luggage. Because we were soon at the airport we sat at the café at the airport and talking about flying. Unlike me, my friend has already flown before so she gave me some advice. When was time to say bye to my friend I said thanks for taking me at the airport and then I went to the passport and security check and to the gate. My flight wasn´t direct so I had to transfer to another plane in Milano. I was really frightened about that. But I had luck. In the plane from Prague, I was sitting next to the Czech fan of the same team as my boyfriend is. I asked the fan if he could help me with the transfer. He, his friends and I then sat together in the restaurant at the Milano airport. We had a beer and pizza and it was such a big surprise that these people told me that they know about my small village where I live!

After the transfer in Milano and two hours of flying, I finally met my boyfriend at the airport in Valencia. We were so glad to see each other because of our long distance relationship. We used the underground from the airport to get to the apartment booked by Airbnb. The next day was the match.

It was the football match between the Czech football team "SK Slavia Praha" of which my boyfriend is a fan and the Spanish football team "Villarreal CF".I´m not a big fan of football. Alright, I´m not a football fan at all and this is maybe the reason why I don´t remember the result of the match. Despite that, I visited another football match with my boyfriend for whom football means a lot. The other football match was between "Valencia CF" and "Sevilla FC". Though I don´t understand the football this second match was more attractive from my point of view because of the atmosphere. At this stadium were more fans which is due to the greater capacity of the stadium. (Estadio Mestalla/ Mestalla Stadium has a cap. of 55 000 seats).

It was enough about the football, let´s see what interesting places we saw and visited.

From the football matches to the sea, monuments and delicious food...

It was a great idea to meet in Valencia not only because of the football but mostly due to local many interesting places. Valencia is the third biggest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona and live here more than 800 thousand people. (spanelsko.com/valencie) What I want to mention is that most people didn´t understand English so we even had a problem with ordering pizza.

There is a lot to see. Even we stayed in Valencia for only four days we saw all the places which we wanted to see. In the city centre we visited "Torres de Serranos" (towers with stairs leading to the terrace with view at the city and garden park Turia), as the next we were walking through the "Jardines del Turia" (the most visited park with gardens, bridges, footbridges and others), then we enjoyed the beautiful beach "Malvarrosa" (the nearest beach to the centre). Because it was in October and it wasn´t too hot to try the sea, we were just walking along the beach, watching waves, collected shells and small stones. Simply enjoying precious time together.

And what about food? My wish and the first idea when my boyfriend told me about this trip was that I had to try typical spanish sweet food called "churros" (sweet dough in the form of sticks which are soaked in hot chocolate or with coffee). I love sweet food so I was really pleased that I could try this typical food for this area and this country at all.

The next food which I wanted to try was "pallea" (rice with meat and vegetables, something like risotto but better). You can choose from what kind of meat you want to have pallea prepared with so we chose "Pallea Valenciana" which was vegetables, rabbit and chicken meat, seafood and beans. It was a delicious exotic flavour. Actually, before this main meal, we had small octopuses as a starter, which we enjoyed as well.

I love to try new food, to visit new places and to discover new cultures. This trip to Valencia has done everything.

If you want to see more photos of this trip visit the section "Videos & Photos".