The travelog continues in Spain's 3rd largest city: Valencia. I've been to #1 and #2 (Madrid and Barcelona, respectively) and I think Valencia might be my favorite. We arrived by train in the afternoon and walked to the historic district to drop our bags off at our little pension (and to recover from the sweaty walk). We had a few evening hours available for us to do some exploring so we walked to the Torres de Quart.
The medieval city walls are no more, but these guard towers and gate are still here! These ones are still all shrapneled up from when Napoleon invaded. We climbed the towers for the excellent views.
It's hard to convey, but these towers are just so freaking big. Tall, formidable, they absolutely dwarf everything around them. Even just the gate is as tall as most of the buildings.
Our next stop was the Museu de Prehistoria de Valencia. There were artifacts from the neolithic period all the way down to the modern era.
My favorite thing was this little bronze age toy: guy on a horse. Totally awesome.
All the signage was in Valencian and Spanish, so we did the best we could with interpreting the exhibits.
What a delightful museum! Free admission + air-conditioning are a sure fire way to earn a five star review from me! We carried on exploring the city and found our way to the Torres de Serrans.
Another set of monstrous medieval towers, marking the edge of the ancient city.
The Ciutat Vella (the old town) is just really fun and pretty. It's full of stately buildings and beautiful plazas. The Placa de la Verge is one of the prettiest:
Our first evening in Valencia exceeded my expectations. Not only was my jetlag getting better, Valencia has a great vibe. We were there on a weekend, which probably added to the liveliness in the old town; it was bustling but didn't feel over-crowded.
Our first stop in the morning was at the church of St. Nicholas de Bari (yes, the "ho, ho, ho!" St. Nick you're thinking of). Valencia has a lot of inexpensive and free activities, but there are a few pricier admissions that are well worth paying and this is one of them. From the outside the church doesn't look like much, but the interior is exceptional.
It was called "the Sistine Chapel of Valencia" by the guy who did restoration work on the actual Sistine Chapel.
This gothic church is covered apse to nave in baroque frescoes. If you decide to visit (and you should) be prepared for a crick in your neck from all the looking up!
Valencia's steady ocean breezes helps one stay less hot as long as you're outdoors and in the shade, but these old churches are very, very stuffy and warm. Beautiful, but muggy; I recommend visiting in the winter.
The included audio guide was excellent and the English language narrator sounded weirdly like Eric Idle. It definitely isn't, that would be insane, but it sounded like him.
A rather unusual and very cool thing that I've never seen in a church before, St. Nick's has a light show! It was really very cool, but I only too one photo. I was too busy being mesmerized.
Lee says everywhere should do light shows. If they're all this good, then I agree! Our next stop was La Llotja de la Seda: The Silk Exchange.
This is one of the few still existing examples of secular gothic architecture. The silk merchants of Valencia were clearly extremely wealthy because they built quite the palace to serve as the medieval equivalent to the NYC stock exchange.
beautiful stonework pillars and a courtyard filled with orange trees, it's quite a place!
By this point, it was getting to be lunch time. Mercado Central is right next door, so we walked around all the market stalls and found some tasty lunch foods.
Also dessert. I thought these were some of the tastiest treats we had all trip!
After lunch we had a quest to complete; a quest over a year in the making. We'd braved the taunting of rude French knights at Doune Castle, we'd faced down the vicious rabbit at the cave of Caerbannog, here in Valencia it would finally pay off.
The Cathedral of Valencia is a 13th treasure and home to one of the most beautiful church domes in existence.
The Cathedral is also home to an early Goya painting. The audio guide says it's the first painting of his that had some sort of demon or monster in it. Cool!
The church was stiflingly hot. Beautiful, but hot.
Just off the nave there is a museum of artifacts and art pieces. Miracle of miracles, the museum is AIR-CONDITIONED! My favorite was obviously their collection of gigantic books of choral music. Why are the books gigantic, you may ask? Because the choir got one copy to share. The print needed to be big enough for everyone to read at a distance.
Downstairs one can see some archeological remnants of ancient Valencia:
There were clearly some people buried here...
None of these lovely sights were the end point of our quest. No, our quest only completed when we entered the former chapter house. It has been converted to a special separate chapel to house a special relic. Therein is housed the HOLY GRAIL.
Or, at the very least, a cup of the correct age and style for one to have used in a pass over feast in Jerusalem circa 33 A.D. It has been appropriately bedazzled and surrounded by gold and glass (presumably bullet proof. The glass that is, not the gold).
I think our quest ended much more happily than King Arthur's for the Chapel of the Holy Chalice is also air-conditioned. Hallelujah!
It was now approaching siesta time. We were staying right off la Placa de l'Ajuntament, right by city hall. The placa is very lovely, city hall is gorgeous.
After a bit of a rest, we set off for the evening. First we needed to get a little snack from the nuns. At some monasteries in Spain, cloistered nuns will sell candies and baked goods. We found one such a place in Valencia and bought some chocolate truffles from them.
Treats in hand, we walked to the museum of fine art. You may have thought we were all arted out by this point, but no! The art museum is air-conditioned, you see. I can look at art endlessly if it means I'm not sweating my brains out! The collection was actually excellent! A few big name favorites--El Greco, Botticelli, Reubens, Goya, Velasquez--as well as homegrown hero Joaquin Sorolla.
The train station in Valencia is named for Sorolla, and truly what a master of the craft! I particularly like this piece:
Sorolla is perhaps the Valencian artist with the best name recognition worldwide, but the museum also showcased several other Valencian artists. Of those, Antonio Munoz Degrain was Lee's favorite. He gives big Monet vibes:
Yes, the art museum was quite lovely! But eventually one's eyes glaze over, even if it's the perfect temperature and the art sets fire to the rain.
We braved the outdoors again to visit the nearby Jardins del Real and to get some dinner at the Migros (our preferred supermercado).
And we found some cool birds!
That wrapped our Saturday, but we have one full day left in Valencia, and we really have to fill the whole day. No siesta for me!
We had to get all packed up for check out, stash our bags, and then we tried out Valenbisi, the local bike sharing scheme. It actually worked pretty great! for 4 euro you can get a one day pass to use the Valenbisi bikes all day, the first 30 minutes of every ride is free. If you're doing it right, you shouldn't have to pay a cent more than your initial 4 euro investment.
We rode bikes to church, then to the Jardins de Monforte. The gardens are free to the public and just a lovely place to stroll.
My favorite were the little turtles swimming in the koi pond.
We took a really pleasant bike ride through the Turia garden, which is a long windy garden than runs for miles through a dry riverbed. The Turia river flooded it's banks one too many times, and after a particularly catastrophic flood in the 50's the whole river was diverted. It's footprint is now a gigantic park half circling the city.
If one walks (or bikes) to the end of the river, one will find one of the coolest places in the galaxy. The main event of the day, the futurist masterpiece: The City of Arts and Sciences. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela, the first building finished in 1998, the most recent addition completed in 2009.
We went inside all the buildings we could, but really even just from the outside they are remarkable structures.
The first building along our bike ride is the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia. I wish we could have attended a performance in this incredible opera house, but they were sort of on hiatus for the month of August. As I understand it, the opera house is meant to look like a sea creature of some kind? Let me know if you see it, I don't really.
L'Umbracle is a huge outdoor terrace space with crazy sculptures and native plants.
Next along the way is L'Hemispheric which is home to one of those planetarium curved screen theatres. It's meant to look like a big ole eyeball, this one actually makes sense to me, and was the first building finished
Yes, we did go to a little movie, it was about what weirdos animals are. The music was a wee bit too soothing, both us started nodding off. Educational, air-conditioning, comfy chairs...five stars.
If any portion of this is looking weirdly familiar, that's probably because you're a film buff! It partially inspired the set design for Guardians of the Galaxy, but Tomorrowland, Andor, and Doctor Who all filmed on location here!
The science museum is housed in another extra-ordinary building that is meant to look like a whale skeleton:
It has a crazy architectural acoustic feature!
Very kid friendly, very interactive, lots of cool exhibits, I was in need of a siesta. Lee explored and scouted all the exhibits while I sat and rested for a minute, then he took me around to see the highlights.
Next the beautiful L'Agora, which is a big events space, and the harp-like Assut de L'Or Bridge. There weren't any events happening that day, but that doesn't change how cool this building is.
Last stop on our journey through the world of tomorrow: L'Oceanografic!
Welcome to Europe's largest aquarium! Home to many cool fishes and birds. There's a mix of indoor and outdoor exhibits, a rather large number of sharks, and a dolphin show.
I think we did manage to see pretty much the whole aquarium before hitting the energy wall. Unfortunately, after hitting the wall we had to bike all the way back to our hotel to get our bags.
Fortunately, we had time to stop off for a little departure day treat: horchata, and churros con chocolata.
Then began the sweatiest part of our travels. Fully laden with all our bags, we got on bikes to go catch an overnight ferry. We did have to stop and switch bikes to ensure we didn't go over our 30 minutes. We thought we'd be pretty close to the ferry terminal. How wrong we were! We managed to get close to the wrong ferry terminal and the correct one was fully inaccessible to foot traffic. Miracle of miracles, there were taxis waiting at the terminal we'd managed to reach. We grabbed a cab to take us the final leg. I cannot expressed just how soaked through with sweat we were at this point. Just drenched. Absolutely drenched.
But, drenched and tired, we made it to the ferry. We made it to our little cabin, we got to take nice chilly showers, and we got a good (if short) night of sleep.
Our time in Valencia was over, but what a city! I hope to come back someday, but there is more to come!
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