A snowy day in Javalambre (Teruel)

Hoooooola amigos!

So, how you been? How's everything? Being the first week of April 2020 and with the Coronavirus pandemic at its max all over the world you're supposedly at home. We are at home too. These days are being kinda stifling, right now we have been confined for 24 days straight with short periods of 'outside time' only to go to the supermarket, throw the garbage and small things like that. Some assignments have been postponed and also a wedding which we were looking forward to photograph, all this means that we are worried about our economic situation but the most important thing is to have good health, which we fortunately have, and also our friends and family. We are lucky. Hope your family and friends are the best they can possibly be considering the situation.

Days are long and we are trying to fight the boredom in any way we can. To the TV shows list we are watching we have added many more. For example, right now we are watching 'Money Heist' (La casa de Papel in Spanish) 4th season, that seems to be quite good so far. Even though we loved the 1st and 2nd the 3rd wasn't so good, let's see how 4th goes on.
TV shows aside, Carla is drawing more than ever, in fact she's finishing a draw every two days (you can see her illustrations in her Instagram: @grisaceos) and David is trying to exercise as much as our apartment allows him using the 'Cardio' app (available in Android's Play Store) and the 'Darebee' website recommended by Dani, Arantxa's fiance, who will get married in less than a year and we can't wait to be there and photograph them.
David is also playing online games with his Altea friends or optimizing our website so it loads faster and more user friendly.
We are also doing some online courses, organizing pictures, editing some assignments, trying new recipes, taking pictures at home -in fact we are doing a special and funny photo series that we'll show you guys soon- and trying to take the most out of these slow times where we have the responsibility to contribute in anyway we can, such as staying at home which is easier to do with Internet and all the entertainment available now a days.

Yes, Fallas have been postponed (David loves Fallas), we couldn't enjoy spring's first days, assignments have been postponed too and we really want to be outside but now is not the time.

Since that's the situation we are also updating more often our blog, as you can see. In fact we are starting to write a huge wedding guide to get married in Spain, contacting some suppliers who share our same idea when it comes to weddings. This post is going to be huge so while we are waiting for their response and also we keep structuring the information we are writing about different stuff. This post for example. After a non related introduction we are going to finally talk about the real reason for this blog post: a snowy day in Javalambre!

Specifically it was January 24th, 2020. As a couple we have never seen the snow together, and we've been dating for almost 5 years. To be honest before we met we had seen it very few times. Since days were cold and snow was announced near Valencia we started to monitor a weather website to find the perfect day.

Let us show you guys some pictures first and we keep telling you about this day after this batch or there would be nothing but text haha

Well, as we were saying we really wanted to see the snow. Thank god we did it before the quarantine started! Actually there's no much snow left in March but it's also true that is being quite cold so it might be some snow left. Anyways we traveled there in January so... we saw it!

From Valencia to Javalambre there's around an hour an 45 minutes trip by car. Highway almost all the time limited to 120km/h even though sometimes you need to slow down to 100km/h and there are some radar guns.
A year ago David purchased a Android app called 'Radardroid' since he had to daily travel around the Valencian Community for 8 months doing an assignment for the Valencian Community Tourism Agency photographing the whole region.
Radardroid warns you about radar guns to avoid stupid tickets like going at 120km/h when the road slowed down to 100km/h and you didn't notice the sign. Specially when coming back home, considering that is a downhill you can easily drive at 125-130km/h without realizing.
The use of this kind of apps it's legal in Spain. Is not like a radar gun detector, which we obviously don't use. This app uses a official data base to know where the fixed radar guns are placed.

In case we couldn't find anything open we bought something to eat in the supermarket before leaving Valencia. When we arrived we found out it wasn't really necessary but we couldn't risk to be hungry and don't have anywhere to eat. Since there was an open cafeteria we had a warm coffee when we got to the town so we can charge our batteries and walk around the small town.
To be honest there wasn't much to see in it. Some stoned street, a park and an abandoned red old bus which was really beautiful. But the most important thing was that there was A LOT of snow. Yaaaaaaay!

At this point we started to go uphill and the views were getting much much better.

A few more pictures and we finish it off:

As you can see this second batch of pictures is much prettier. Truth be told, the sky was looking better too. It was cloudy when we got there but some minutes later it was all clear, even though the fog came back again later we took the most out of those minutes.

The colorful benches completely covered in snow were a strong point, they were so beautiful... Also, since we like coffee very much, we had one 'café con leche' (coffee latte) at the hill's cafeteria with all the amazing views in front of us.

Carla wanted to have some 'postureo' pictures, which means posing to brag in her social media with no jacket, like she wasn't cold as fuck, and then in the swings and the classic Puebla de Valverde train station all so colorful surrounded with the white snow standing out even more.

And... we are finished! Coming back home because it's getting dark and we have to drive back for almost 2 hours.

PS: Maybe someone is interested in this. The camera we used to take the pictures is a Fujifilm X-T20 with a 15-45 3.5-5.6 lens. It's a basic kit lens but in good lighting condition is more than enough. The camera is really small and comfortable. As you can see it has a very nice image quality are you can push the ISO up to 1600/3200 with almost no noise.
Being used to our bigger professional cameras that are much heavier and bigger it's a pleasure to carry this Fuji camera in our trips and unexpected moments.

So, how about you? Have you been in the snow this winter? Any canceled plans because of the Coronavirus pandemic? Tell us something, we are bored haha!