But our days were not entirely filled with slothfullness, great food, beaches, books, movies, and fun. Only about 94.7%. The other whatever% was filled with expeditions, the best of which was undoubtably Xativa Castillo. We drove an hour inland, where it was much warmer, and more architecturally pleasing, due to less tourism, and found of Xativa, a town wrapped around a jagged bluff which rose high above, and upon which perched a bizarre creation that seemed from a distance, to be a mix of a European castle, and the great wall of China. It was, we realized when we entered, a truly staggering fortification, with serious architectural power. The history, in brief is that it was built by the Valencians, occupied by the Romans (notably Emperor Hannibal) and then used as the Valencians main stronghold against the Castillians in the early 18th-century battle for royalist control, which was ultimately won by the Castillians. The French later battered the whole castle to pieces with cannons for reasons that may or may not have to do with the fact that they love smashing things. Read the book "An Index of all the Beautiful Things in Churches Smashed by Frenchmen" By Alice Thibeau for further evidence. But most importantly, the beautiful Xativa Castle is made more stunning by the fact that it has been left largely unrepared, left instead to, for the most part, meld fluidly with the craggy rock cliff upon which it is perched. So we walked up long paths carved directly out of the mountian, along ramparts with dozens of arrow-slits facing both out and in (apparently they were prepared to fight a losing battle even when the enemy were inside), and high towers that looked out over endless miles of Valencian countryside, mostly orange groves and olive groves and little chapels on hills and terracotta rooves, with the occasional (not quite occasional enough) factory or car dealership or apartment complex marring the otherwise lovely vistas. The castle also had a wide staircase leading up to the perch of three massive cannons, a whole swath of Italian-style geometric cyprus and olive gardens where we lounged on the ramparts, dungeons (which were not nearly as dank and horrible as those in Edinburgh, due to the fact that the Spaniards, unlike the Scots, are human beings), and various crimson and gold flags flying gloriously from the ramparts. We wandered through a museum of weapons, met a cute feral kitten named Chicken (named by Casey), did a quazi-photoshoot on the cliffs with the sun forming dramatic silhouettes, and worked up a sweat in the driving sunshine that did not feel remotely like January. It was hard not to draw parallels to Edinburgh Castle, which though famous across the world, was only on par with the remote and unheard of Xativa, if that. It is a good idea, we have concluded to go to an corner of Spain simply because the Decemberists wrote a song about it.

We ended up, after hours of exploration of the Castle, on a terrace beneath the ramparts surrounded by creeping vines and overlooking miles of countryside. There we ordered what had become our standard: two cocacolas, one cocalight. This luxury we enjoyed regularly almost every day, sometimes throwing in a coffee or two, but mostly sticking to a diet of coke. Reasons included that it was hot, that we liked to people watch, that mommy never normally allows us soda (YES!), and that in Spain they inevitably serve Coke in wonderfully chilled glass bottles, impossible to find back home. So yes, it became a tradition, and was rarely as lovely as the one we enjoyed sitting on the terrace of Castle Xativa, a place that, like all of Valencia, surprised us delightfully.