Viviendo en Valencia

Barcelona is the Spanish city you probably hear the most about but I’ll make the case here why you should go to Valencia instead.

First of all, Valencia is such a better value…

I spent about three weeks in Barcelona and Valencia seems to have everything that Barcelona does at about half to a third of the cost. In Barcelona, a very simple flatshare in a kind of cool neighborhood costs 31 Euros a night, and a shitty hostel costs $22 a night whereas in Valencia I found that not awful private room flatshares via AirBNB cost $10-$15.

In general, the wifi in Barcelona is quite mediocre, the speed and reliability are so wanting that it negatively affected my productivity during the time I spent there. Disappointingly, there’s just a single real digital nomad-friendly cafe in Barcelona. In contrast, the wifi in Valencia is muy buen! At cafes, restaurants, hostels, and Airbnb apartments I consistently found the +20MB up/down connection that I need to do work.

If you want to go shopping at a Prada store, Barcelona’s the city for you but Valencia is overall a whole lot better value for nomadic seducers.

The Women

Young Spanish women are quite sexy; as sexy as the American Latinas of my native Denver and the Slavic barbie dolls of Eastern Europe. And they are certainly sexier than hobbit-like Panamanian or Costa Rican women. On the totem pole of scintillating women, they are outranked only by Colombianas from my vantage point.

• They don’t seem to age well; most Espanolas over 30 are pretty chunky, and they don’t seem to maintain their dangerous curves and slimness like Colombianas often do. So much for the Mediterranean diet!
• I’ve met a handful of sexy black Spanish women here actually. If your Starship Enterprise, like mine, is occasionally drawn irresistibly to explore black holes, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed here. The Spanish negritas are feminine, skinny, and curvaceous, unlike the total trainwrecks that American black women are.
• Young Spanish women certainly don’t speak English as well as their German, Bulgarian, or Romanian counterparts. But more of them can have a basic conversation in English than the almost total lack of English you’ll face in Latin America. If you want to game Latinas but don’t speak any Spanish, Spain is a better bet than say Colombia.

If you're tempted by Latin locales and lifestyle you'll enjoy this storytime vlog (filmed in Barcelona)...

And if your Spanish is less than fluent, my Pickup Lines in Spanish spreadsheet contains over 100 pick-up lines, jokes, anecdotes, rapport-building questions, and charming expressions en Espanol along with corresponding English translations.

Where to meet women in Valencia…

Nightlife

Valencia has the kinds of clubs that my native Denver, Colorado pretends to have. Check out these mammoth open-air discos…

Spanish girls (unfortunately!) don’t like to bump’n grind on the dancefloor with total strangers as Latinas do in South America. They prefer to dance like retards as most Europeans do, so if you want to bring your dancefloor game, go to the salsa clubs, not the mainstream discos. There are a couple of pretty good Latin dance clubs there:

• Asucar
• Akuarela Playa
• Agora Salsa

The pickup line that seems to be working for me here is:

Approach, tap elbow
With a cheeky/cocky smile: "Hola puedo bailar por unos minutos" Hi, I can dance for a few minutes
Pull towards the dancefloor

Speaking of dancefloor game...

Akuarela Playa - Europe’s best beach club

A stone’s throw from the beach's sand you’ll find this true open-air disco. This is the kind of club that my native Denver, Colorado pretends to have. I went on a Sunday night when they do salsa and bachata dancing.

• On Sunday there were three dancefloors open and as expected a lot of good-looking chicas.
• At a white party, one of the smallest women I’ve ever seen in my life approached me and asked me to dance. She was under 4 feet tall, I felt a little awkward bachata grinding with a woman the size of a 6-year-old girl.
• They do serve non-alcoholic beer for the non-retards. I’ll be back!

L’Umbracle - After a year of living in Europe, this is — hands down — the best disco I’ve been to!

• I went on a Friday night for a language exchange in this very swank venue. The language exchange was, like many language exchanges, a whole lot more recreational than educational, but I met some very cool people at it.
• Upstairs is La Terrazza, an open-air disco under the soaring modern architecture. Sometime after midnight, the nightclub below the Terrazza opened, it consists of a Latin dance room and an electronica room.
• Here I encountered the hottest girls I’ve seen since clubbing in Medellin and Kyiv; although it is a very public venue — there were some scruffy-looking backpacker dudes, chubbies, and crusty old ladies all dressed up to compete with the sexy young girls.
• They do serve non-alcoholic beer for the non-retards.
• I recommend RSVPing through https://www.facebook.com/valencia.language/ for free entry.

Indiana

This is a club that every self-respecting seducer who comes through Valencia should visit. It’s such a good club I’m browsing AirBNB right now looking for a flat within stumbling distance of it.

• It has a great layout with at least four different rooms, a terrace for smoking, plenty of couches for lounging, and a smoking area just to the left of the entrance.
• I went on a Sunday evening for a 5 EUR Latin dance class around 8:30 PM and it was packed! As much as I like to arrive late to things I’m finding that if I show up late to these group dance classes it’s a little difficult to get into the rotation of guys and girls dancing, but I weaseled my way in and got my hands on what I was there for. Everyone was doing a basic Bachata dancing move which consisted of a hand twirl, a spin, and then the girl humps you for a minute. God bless the frisky bastard who invented Bachata!
• An open Latin dance night followed the class, consistent with my experience elsewhere Latin dance nights attract smaller sets; you meet lots of girls out just with an amiga or even alone, sola. You don’t have to worry much about managing big mixed sets.
• The 5 EUR entry included two free drinks supposedly; the grumpy bartender served me my non-alcoholic beer with a scowl. I’ll be back!

Caribbean

I went on a Wednesday night, which is their Erasmus student night. Erasmus is a European student exchange program where young Europeans tour around the continent getting intoxicated. They were playing a mashup of salsa, bachata, and more poppy Latin music. It was pretty busy and there were some cute college girls but there were also a lot of dudes, the proportion was not great. One star deducted for no non-alcoholic beer. I feel so awkward drinking water in a nightclub. There was no patio or chill area of the bar which creates this weird situation with a lot of people hanging around the entrance of the bar, smoking, and sitting on the uncomfortable cement barrister.

Carrer de Polo y Peyrolón

Luck would have it that I rented a room just a block from this fairly lively district of town. There are a couple of (I wouldn’t call them clubs) cool lounges that are worth poking your head into.

 Plaza de la Reina

That's me, there in the lower left, doing some daygame at the resplendent Plaza de la Reina

Possibly the best place to daygame in the city. I’m not sure if I’ve encountered as high a frequency of opportunity anywhere else in the city. Lots of pretty girls lackadaisically sightseeing in the plaza; about 50% of the girls you approach will be tourists. Check out this book review that I filmed there in The Queen's Plaza...

The Culture

Spain is a major contrast to Eastern Europe, the stereotype is true; Latinos are just way more friendly. I think of a diminutive ancient Catalan woman that approached me in a grocery store, tapped my elbow, and rambled for a couple of minutes about the items she was getting there, she then chatted up the cashier and several other customers in the store. Or the first day I arrived in Valencia I was wandering through the winding streets of the old town (likely with a puzzled look on my face), and an elderly Spanish couple stopped me and gave me directions to just where I needed to go.

The Noche de San Juan is this ridiculous, boozy all-night beach party, there are like 5000 young people hanging out at Valencia’s beach this night. You’re supposed to jump over seven bonfires and seven waves and then you make a wish, but mostly, people just drink a lot and dance awkwardly in the sand. I usually don’t peacock but this seemed like a great occasion to dress completely inappropriately, I wore my white suit jacket, a fancy button-down shirt, and a red tie. I was no boozing during the party so instead, I got a bit fucked up on my Biohacker party cocktail of Nicotine solution, black tea, and a higher dose of Phenibut.

Spanish customer service es muy mal

You’ll quickly become accustomed to egregiously bad and lazy service. It’s quite a contrast to eastern Europe, where there’s a cute young girl who stands at the entrance of every restaurant or cafe and beckons passersby; these girls have just slightly more responsibility than a cardboard cutout of a cute girl would have; they don’t seat you and give you a menu, they just gesture towards an open table, they can’t bring you water or appetizers, they can’t bring you your check, and they certainly don’t seem to be able to answer any questions about the restaurant or menu. In Spain, the cute girl is replaced by a just slightly more competent male waiter, who is eager to hustle you into their restaurant, yet they consistently have really bad attitudes and forget your orders. Since I’ve lived in Spain I’ve begun eating in more just to avoid the bad experience.

I recall after a walking tour, I and a group of about 20 other thirsty tourists were looking for a bar to relax at, the first place we entered the waiter looked up from playing on his phone at our group of gringos eager to drop some coin. He cavalierly told us he couldn’t serve us and turned us away.

This is one Western European city that doesn't seem to be selling its soul out to jarring multiculturalism.

• Anywhere public you'll see and hear mostly just Spanish people.
• The festivals are Spanish festivals celebrating San Juan, San Jose, Santa Maria, San this, San that… 
• Many businesses close in the mid-afternoon for Siesta.
• Walking through the center at night you won't be harassed by dodgy guys who speak shitty Spanish and English trying to sell you drugs, water, and other things you don't need.
• English is nowhere as ubiquitous as in the rest of Europe.
• All the black people I met were Spanish themselves - not immigrants or refugees. A couple of my roommates were immigrants but they were from South America - Peru and Argentina.

The Food

I was underwhelmed by. Maybe I wasn't going to swanky enough restaurants but I just found southern Spanish food meh.

• Paella is just rice with some vegetables. Patatas bravas just taste like french fries and ketchup to me. I tried tapas a few places and didn't fall in love, nothing else I tried made much of an impression.
  
• I was on a 90-day period of intermittent no boozing, which I did cheat on with a single small glass of Agua de Valencia, which is a fruity drink that I could imagine a 21-year-old girl in a miniskirt getting drunk off and then losing her bedazzled iPhone, but other than that I can't comment on the quality of beer or wine there.
• I was a bit disappointed in the selection of the main grocery stores Consumo and Mercadona, which you'll find on nearly every block. There were a couple of items like probiotic yogurt and blueberries that I had gotten used to eating elsewhere that I had trouble finding. The main staples of my diet: coconuts, avocados, tuna, and salad were noticeably overpriced compared to Eastern or Central Europe. I was happy to find a swanky, overpriced organic grocery store just off Blasco Ibañez where I could drop some euros for the kinds of foodstuffs my snobbish, foodie palette demands.

Neighborhoods

In two months I stayed in seven different Airbnb apartments in different neighborhoods around town. Some of the neighborhoods are quite boring and I ended up staying in my flat for days on end. The city center El Carmen neighborhood is very picturesque and good for day gaming tourists oohing and awwing at the architecture but I discovered that the area just south of the university and just north or south of Blasco Ibañez is the place to be! It's about a…
5-minute walk to my favorite cafe.
Quick tram ride to the beach.
10-minute cab ride to Umbracle.
10-minute cab ride to the bars and pubs in el Carmen.
There's at least one major disco on Blasco Ibañez and the barrio is swarming with young people during the weekends.
And there are abundant bars and restaurants for your day twos.

I rarely stepped outside of my flat there without spying a sexy young lady strolling down the avenue who caught my crossed eye and I stayed there during the summertime - I can imagine it being a real daygame shangri-la during the school season! And it's quite affordable; I rented private rooms in flats for 15–20 EUR nightly - what else can you ask for!

Getting Around Town 

Transportation is a bit of a challenge. There's no convenient metro system like Berlin or some other cities I've spent time in. The bus and tram system in the city takes about as much time to get places as walking does, which I'm not going to complain a whole lot about since walking places is a simple pleasure that I enjoy. For longer-distance trips, I used the MyTaxi app, which works pretty good to get a relatively friendly taxi at your curb within about 10 minutes but it's kind of a rip off; costing at least 9–10 EURs for even a short trip home from the club. There's another app called Taxis Valencia, which doesn't rip you off but it seemed to take a little longer to get you a taxi. There's no Uber or good-value ride-sharing service here.

The Beach

After all those cold months of shivering in Eastern Europe, this strip of warm white sand beneath my toes was glorious to experience. Maravilloso beach has a couple of little tiki-style bars along it that are great for getting a smoothie and chatting up some strangers.

The Cafes

I found three digital nomad-friendly spots to hang out, eat and drink; Mayan Coffee and Zumm Ensalada. Mayan has real coffee that meets my high standards for the dark nectar, Zumm's coffee is not as good, which its healthy salads, wicked fast wifi, and standing desk bar make up for! In the cool neighborhood south of the university I found Bastard Coffee (great name!) which typifies what people call a great space, it's a very sunny (yet excellently air-conditioned) cafe, although the chairs are uncomfortable.

The Weather

Was truly heavenly at least during the early summer when I was there. The temps hovered between 60–80 degrees Fahrenheit (15–26 Celsius). I think it rained once in the two months I spent there. The locals tell me that the weather doesn't change much throughout the year.

The "Networking"

Here's one dimension in which Barcelona is the better city, there's a true abundance of networking opportunities. For being such a beautiful city full of swanky bars, cafes, and restaurants you would think there would be more going on in Valencia. Although there are a couple of groups worth joining…

• Valencia Language Exchange - Organizes language exchanges several times a week.
  
• Expats in Valencia - This is the place to get your questions about the city answered in English.
  
• Crazy Erasmus Valencia - As far as I can tell is a nightlife promotional page that does quite rowdy parties to make sure the European exchange students are distracted by partying and hungover at least a couple of times a week. Being college nights, their parties are sometimes sausage fests, but worth checking out.
  
• Internations Valencia - Is nowhere near as active as in some cities.
  
• RSD Inner Circle Valencia - Is weak! None of these guys go out and game.

Perhaps it's good that the city is a little weak in the networking department, in cities that have great events going on every day there's a real danger of networking so much that you get no actual work done!
Also for pickup artists "networking" can become a bit of a crutch - a pathway to fake abundance - you line up networking events every night where you are always meeting new people so you can rationalize…
Not going out explicitly to game
Not approaching that cutie in the cafe
Or not doing that final approach in the club before calling it a night

At the end of my Digital Nomad City Report podcast, I name Valencia, Medellin, and Kyiv as my top cities for digital nomads - after having lived in seven different countries.

Sadly, given the events of 2022, I have to scratch Kyiv off that list. You're probably sick of hearing all the bad news about Ukraine recently and very quietly perhaps you're thinking to yourself (if you're single), Bummer! I always thought of going to visit Ukraine and maybe meeting a nice girl there...

Well, in my book Don't Stick Your Dick in a Blender, I have an exhaustive deep-dive chapter on the topic of dating and courting exotic foreign women and the point I drive home at the conclusion of the chapter is that the golden age of dating abroad is ending...

...if you want a great woman as your partner in life, stop procrastinating. Between 2008–2012 when I lived in Denver, Colorado I went out to nightclubs weekly and I met shockingly few women who were even girlfriend-material. In 2017, I was fortunate to meet a marriageable girl in a nightclub in Sofia, Bulgaria. The marriageable girl is a rare bird being pushed to extinction. The longer you wait the harder it’s going to get to find one and the further you are going to have to go. Globalism is doing its damndest to poison every single decent young lady on this planet with toxic industrial chemicals that will make her fat and with toxic liberalism that will make her insufferable.

And, Ukraine is no longer an option as a dating abroad destination. I did some dating in Ukraine and had some fun, but this week I'm especially thankful that I choose to marry and settle in Bulgaria, a (less exciting) country less known and traveled by nomadic seducer dudes. If you're single (and don't want to be), again, STOP PROCRASTINATING. And read at least chapter six of my book, if you're thinking of dating abroad - it will save you from making some not-so-obvious mistakes that waste your time and money!

 I'll leave you with these incisive prose inspired by Valencia's beauty...