La Tomatina!!!

La Tomatina was one of the most fun parts of our trip! Josh told me a little about La Tomatina when he first started researching for the trip and I was torn. Sure, it would be cool to go to the biggest food fight in the WORLD, but how much fun would it really be? Do I really want to spend an hour in crowded streets throwing tomatoes at strangers? Why WOULDN'T I want to spend an hour in crowded streets throwing tomatoes at strangers? We kept putting off the decision and when we finally decided to just go, tickets were sold out! Of course, as soon as we found out the tickets were sold out, we HAD to find a way to go. I guess that's the way things work...

We quickly found out there was a way to go, if you were willing to pay a premium. You could still go with a tour company. They would provide transportation from Valencia to Bunol, where the festival takes place, include showers, transportation to Requena for the water and wine festival, lodging, maybe a meal or something...and charge around €200. It may be worth it to consider going that route if you're traveling solo, but €400 was WAY more than we were willing to pay! We e-mailed one of the companies offering the tours and told them we already had arrangements for lodging and transportation, but we would like to purchase tickets from them if possible. They sold them to us for the face value of €10, plus a convenience fee of €1. I was SO excited at this point! We were going to the biggest food fight in the world!

We got a rental car from Valencia and found our own hotel room in Requena where we went to the water and wine festival, paid for gas and grabbed a sandwich after La Tomatina AND bought our tickets to La Tomatina and we spent €120. MUCH better than €400 and we had more flexibility! It took more planning, of course, but it was totally worth it!

We didn't get any good pictures with our GoPro, but here's a short video. Josh left La Tomatina with a black eye...the video explains it all. Apparently, wearing a GoPro gives everyone a target. :-)

Friday Favorites!!!

I'm way behind on posting, so here are my favorites for the past few weeks!

1) Spain! - We had a great time in Spain! I have several more posts I need to get up here, and I plan on working on those this weekend.

2) Off Friday - This is my off Friday and I'm SO glad! There's a lot I want to get done over the weekend, so this will definitely help! It's also been a pretty rough week at work, so I'm glad it was only 4 days.

3) Football! - I'm glad football is back. My Wolfpack hasn't had a strong season so far, but we're still 2-0. I'm hoping we can get our stuff together before conference play starts!

4) Jamberry - I'm still loving Jamberry! I hit my first goal, which was to obtain my first Fast Start, now I'm working on my next! This is my latest Jamicure! I've had it on for 4 days now and it still looks brand new! My polish would have done some serious chipping by day 4!

Sugar & Spice with Diamond Dust Sparkle :-)

5) Home Improvements - We've decided to make some improvements on the house! These are things I've been wanted to do basically since we moved in, so I'm really excited to share more once we start to make progress!

6) Brew Day - We brewed our Punkinlaw (our pumpkin ale) last Saturday. Last year was our first year making it all grain and we really messed it up. This year, we tweaked the spices and used a different yeast. I think we finally have it exactly where we want it! I almost wish we would have brewed another half batch or so to bottle. 

7) Game Night - We had friends over after our football game on Saturday for games. We played Pandemic and Ticket to Ride. They were both a lot of fun and they're now on our list of games to buy! Hopefully it won't be so long before our next game night! They're so much fun and they don't cost a lot of money, so I really don't know why we don't do them more often.

8) Fitness - I'm on a fitness kick again. Haha. I basically had to force myself to start running again. We have a 10K in less than 3 weeks, so we should have actually started training much sooner. We ran 2.5 miles Wednesday night and I wasn't completely exhausted when we finished, so I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the 10K by the time it gets here. I don't know that I'll beat last year's time though :-/. I'll keep pushing and see what I can do though!

I've also started 100 Pushups! It's a 6 week training program. At the end of the 6 weeks, I should be able to do 100 good form pushups consecutively. I really like it so far! I just completed week 1 this morning. It's challenging, but It's been very doable so far. I downloaded the 100 Pushup app and it makes it really easy. I can set reminders for myself, it breaks the whole program down into weeks, then days. It tells me how many pushups to do each set and automatically times my resting periods between sets. I often overlook my arms when I workout, so I'm excited to be doing this challenge! Only 5 weeks to go!

9) Bailey - Y'all know I love my dog! I really missed her while we were in Spain. While I was not ready to leave Spain and return to the real world, I was very glad to see my girl when we got home. 

That's it for now! Hopefully I'll have more Spain posts and house updates soon!