We arrived in Valencia after a very pleasant train trip
along the coast. We noted lots of
marinas dotting the coastline. We must
explore these with Songster in a year
or so. We also passed fields of orange
trees all loaded with bright ripe oranges.
This motif carried through when we reached the city. The train station was decorated in oranges
and the streets lined with orange trees.
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| The orange motif on the Train station |
We arrived early afternoon so had time to explore a
bit. We walked through the Turia Gardens,
a beautiful park skirting the city. It
is a wonderful public space with bridges from the 16th Century and
modern futuristic ones. It is one of the
largest urban parks in Spain and spans the city along nine kilometres of green
space.
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| Modern bridge at the Turia Gardens |
We stumbled upon some amazing markets and bought some
cheeses which sadly turned out to be quite disappointing. The blue cheese Bob bought was so strong he
couldn’t eat it (I wonder how anyone can eat the stuff at anytime). The goat cheese that I chose was practically
tasteless. We managed to choose two extremes
of cheese. Nevertheless the marketplace
was wonderful to walk around.
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| View of the prawns at the markets |
The next day was New Years Eve. We walked around the streets admiring the
squares and churches and enjoying the atmosphere of the city. We checked out the Quart Towers, built in the
15th Century as part of the old city walls. It had wonderful views of the city.
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| Quart Towers: The
holes are from the Napoleon’s bombardments during the French siege of the city
in 1808. |
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| The cathedral |
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| Valencia skyline - spot the churches |
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| Valencia street scape |
We wanted to spend the day riding bikes through the Turia
Gardens as we noticed throughout the city there were bike stations where you could
rent bikes by simply swiping a pre-purchased card. Sadly the tickets were for one week
continuous access and not economical for just an afternoon. Instead we made our way via the trams to the
waterfront and were horrified at the soullessness of the place. The area had been redeveloped for the 2007
America’s Cup and to our minds the architects failed totally. Mind you, the architects won awards (from
other architects) for this development.
Shows how ‘out of touch’ we are. The
Juan Carlos 1 Royal Marina was totally empty and the acres of land along the waterfront
were just treeless concrete, rundown buildings, a few overpriced restaurants which
were totally uninviting.
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| Juan Carlos I marina |
We managed to stay up to midnight
to see the New Year in with the rest of the Valencians, all having a good time and
were well behaved.
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| New Years Eve crowd |
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