Valencia is Spain's 3rd biggest city with 809K people. This is the oldest district. You can see the buildings are crammed together like most cities in Europe and their aren't many skyscrapers.
Sunday 6/19
VALENCIA
Today I got up and left the house around 4 am to catch my bus to Valencia. I got such an early ride b/c I wanted to spend the whole day there and I could either arrive at 7 or 1230. Also, I ended up going alone because none of my friends really wanted to go and the ones who did either didn’t have the money or slept instead. Oh well, they missed out I think.
When I got to Valencia at 7 everything was still closed and it took me a whole 30 minutes to find a map from a hotel and get my bearings. The plan was simple: see as much as possible before I had to leave at 9:45 pm. I think I accomplished just that! I just started walking and with the help of my map found one monument after another. I visited a plethra of churches; went to mass in the cathedral; climbed the tallest tower in Valencia; perused the market; went to the Ayuntamiento (town hall); saw the town square with its shanty town of various human rights protests; saw exhibitions in museums of art, comics, photographs, art again, the Iceman; gushed over the National Ceramics Museum (haha); climbed two sets of huge guard towers that protected Valencia; and finally went to Valencia’s famous City of Arts and Sciences to see the aquarium and Museum of Sciences. Needless to say my legs were killing me by the end of the day and I managed to sleep both ways on the less-than-comfortable bus.
My route for the day. I started at the top at the star. I walked the arrowed line and went inside at the Xs. I got on the bus that traveled the dotted line. You can see how many dozens of monuments there are. I'm proud I at least put a dent in them (I forgot to X the Lonja and Iglesia de San Juan in the middle).
City of Arts and Sciences. All the maps and signs were in Valencian a very different dialect of Spanish, so that made stuff a bit tougher. Luckily most signs were also in the Castilian that I know. The museums usually had signs in English and at the iMax I got to wear a headset tat spoke English to me.
It was kinda strange to be flying solo for the whole trip and have no one to share it with, but it was good in some respects because I could take time when I wanted to soak in the views and information, but then hustle off to whatever came next. If I had other people with me I would be worrying about whether they cared about anything I wanted to see and my sporadic pace prolly would have driven them nuts. There were only two setbacks. First, one of the sandwiches my mamá packed for me was only cheese on a baguette (I try to eat dinner at home as much as possible because I’m not too fond of her sandwiches, but extremely fond of her cooking). Second, I was planning on going to the Museum of Sciences after the Aquarium, but had to wait until I saw the last dolphin show of the day. When I got to the Science place I found out it closed fifteen minutes ago, two hours earlier than the time I found online. Luckily, I was able to convince the ticket office for the City of Arts and Sciences to switch my ticket to include the last imax movie that day, “Sea Monsters,” at the Hemispheric (a special building solely for the imax movies). The biggest obstacle came at the end of the day when I was trying to find a bus to get to the bus station (since by now I was across the city). I had 45 minutes to make it back before my bus left! I contemplated just starting to jog, but luckily the first bus stop I walked to had service to the station. Then the bus didn’t come forever and when it did come I was stressing as I watched the minutes minutes tick by as we stopped at lights and bus stops one after another. At the pace we were going I didn’t think I’d make it. Then this nun got on behind me and I thought, maybe I should start praying! I also tried to use my telepathy skills to get her to pray for me, haha. Needless to say our pace quickened and before I knew it I was at the bus station with a whole 8 minutes to spare!
Valencia was a beautiful city with a charming old neighborhood cramped full of monuments, plazas, churches, and old buildings. Literally, on every street was a magnificent building that would take your breath away. This was contrasted with the pristine elegance of the modern City of Arts and Sciences, with it’s giant and spacious architectural marvels, to give the city a nice two-pronged tourist attraction.
Apparently they like graffiti in Valencia too.
They also like littering. You can't tell the extent of it, but this place is absolutely trashed all around. I hope it's because they had some big event here and this doesn't happen every Sat. night. There were city workers picking it up at least.
Torres de Serranos were massive.
Random paintings on walls.
The cathedral had the hand of some Saint. It doubled as a church and museum of sorts with displays in the huge inlets around the sides and back.
The chapel attached to the Cathedral where I went to mass had tons of stone reliefs on the front wall. I was definitely the youngest there. I think the average age was like 75.
Cathedral from the back.
La Plaza de Reinas. You can see some of the market booths, but they are kinda closed because of the brief rain
I paid 2E to go up to the top of the cathedrals's bell tower way above the city and it was totally worth it! The bell tolled while I was up there. You might think I would get better at taking pictures of myself, but then you'd be wrong.
Plaza de la Virgin on the other side of the Cathedral.
The very long very steep steps. People nearly keeled over after they got to the top.
The market booths. They were spread out through a lot of the streets.
National Museum of Ceramics! Have you ever heard of something so exciting?
A really cool ceramic monstrance.
ceramics in their natural habitat
A tight stagecoach. I wouldn't mind riding around in that today!
outside of the Lonja de la Seda (silk market for traders)
Like the great halls of Gimli's mountain ancestors
The Central Market was very beautiful as well, although it wasn't open.
Iglesia de San Juan. It's impossible to capture the beauty.
Iglesia de San Juan (left) and Central Market (right)
La Plaza de Ayuntamiento. Uh oh, the camera caught me eating my delicious cheese and bread sandwich!
Ayuntamiento behind the fountain
The shanty town with all the demonstrators. Many looked like they were camped out permanently. Some sold art with indiscrete messages or whatnot for a living, some just lived.
This art exhibition I ran into was quite amusing. This picture particularly made no sense.
On top of the Torres de Cuarto
I got tired of smiling at the camera.
Otzi ("Iceman") is the oldest humanoid wet mummy ever discovered. This was at some museum.
This was in an art museum in a section thad had all kinds of abstract weird "sculptures"/arrangements.
This strip of green ran like a river through the city splitting it in two. It was crossed by numerous bridges and down below you could see people jogging, biking, soccering, etc. I thought it was a cool idea.
The back of the Torre de Serranos. Let's hope the invaders don't reach this part.
A beluga whale. I accidentally used flash, which was a no-no.
Short finned mako shark. Look out, they can swim at 55 km/hr (whatever that means)!
sting ray
feeding the penguins. They def. just gulped those fish whole. the gluttons!
A feeding frenzy of sea lions ( and one sea elephant in front). Later I saw some fighting so that was cool.
A flip-flop fish made entirely of flip-flops found on the beach. flippie floppies last 10,000 years before disappearing naturally. The Aquarium had lots of environmental messages.
There was a wetlands part. with flamingos and turtles and stuff.
trainers surfing on the dolphins.
You can see the trainers in balls above the dolphins after they just busted out of the water and through them into the air.
Half the show (the more boring half) was guys diving into the water. This one jump from the highest part was the climax though. The dolphins would always imitate the jumpers stunts and after this one, all six would jump at once.
I think there are six out there.
Aquarium (Oceanofrafico) entrance.
You can see the Agro (holds music and sporting events) in front (then Museum of Arts and Sciences, Hemispheric (low hump), Palau de les Artes (big hump), and the Umbracle (on the left)
Hemispheric where I saw the iMax. It also has a planetarium and laserium and is built in the shape of an eye. The Palau de les artes is behind that.
Museum de las Ciencias
Palau de artes is crazy looking!
looking backwards. It's also surrounded by water, which adds to the pristine grandeur.
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