Valencia

From Thursday until yesterday, I was in Valencia, Spain's third largest city and the capital of the autonomous community (the Spanish equivalent of states) of the same name. Valencia is on Spain's eastern coast, on the Mediterranean Sea, but is oddly not a beach-centered city. In my opinion, Valencia is very under-rated, as many tour guides go off information that is a few decades old. In the last 15 years, Valencia has been undergoing extended reformation and modernization and is now one of the most modern cities in Spain.

Like Barcelona, in Valencia people speak Catalan (a language lending itself to both Spanish and French that is spoken on much of Spain's east coast), however nearly everyone in the city of Valencia speaks Castillian Spanish as well. If you go out in the countryside though, many more people only speak Catalan. I don't know Catalan, though I can usually figure out what words mean if I see them, so it was definitely a good thing everyone speaks Spanish there!

The first place we went to in Valencia was the Mercat Central, Valencia's historic central market where you can buy almost any type of food:

Inside are booths where you can buy all types of groceries, like melocotones:



Next, after navigating some narrow medieval streets, we wandered into the Plaza Redonda, a small circular plaza made up of small stores, hidden in a jungle of medieval alleyways:

Continuing our walk through the medieval neighborhood, Barri del Carme, we came to the Plaza de la Reina, one of Valencia's major plazas. Overlooking the plaza is the Seu, Valencia's cathedral that supposedly is the resting place of the Holy Grail. (That, along with several other churches that claim to have it.)

A caballo standing infront of the Seu, shaded from the heat by its own personal umbrella:

Next, we stopped for some helado since it was so hot outside. Here's a picture of my brother with the dish he got:



Another set of famous landmarks of Valencia are the Torres de Quart, vestiges of medieval walls that once surrounded the city. They're a bit of a hike from everything else in the Barri del Carme, unfortunately:



A few blocks from the Torres de Quart are the Plaza de Toros (left) and the Estacio del Nord (right). Both buildings are well known, the Plaza de Toros for being one of the nicest in Spain, and the train station for being an example of art deco architecture:

Valencia has much more to offer than typical Spanish landmarks and medieval streets, however. In the former Túria river bed, lies an enormous park around the city. In the park are trees, fountains, cafés, and the famous Parc Gulliver and the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències.

If you've ever read "Gulliver's Travels", you might remember that when Gulliver arrives at the land of Lilliput, he is awakened by the miniature Lilliputians climbing over him and tying ropes to him. Although the book was written in Great Britain, apparently the people of Valencia were so inspired by it that they decided to build a park (really an enormous playground) in its honor:



In the park is a giant figure of Gulliver that you can climb up, walk over, and slide down. This is one of my favorite places to visit in Valencia, because you can play all over it:

My brother sliding down one of Gulliver's coattails:

Next, we continued through the park until we got to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, home of some of the best renowned museums in all of Europe. The museum park includes an art museum, science museum, IMAX theater, aquarium, and botanical garden currently. Designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava, the buildings are beautiful examples of Postmodern architecture. The buildings almost look like strange animals...

In fact, the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències is so new that they are still in the process of building some of it, including what I believe is supposed to be a natural history musem, by the looks of the signs nearby:

Our first stop was L'Oceanogràfic, which is Europe's largest aquarium:



As part of the exhibit on the aquatic life of the Canary Islands and Bermuda, they have a really cool underwater tunnel you can walk through:



However, many of the animals are in outdoor exhibits, like in the lake below:



We saw a cute sea lion couple as well:



And a bunch of signs warning about climate change:



The next day, we went to the nearby Museu de les Cièncias Príncep Felip, Valencia's science museum:







Inside, like so many museums in the United States, was a péndulo:



There was also an air and space section, which focused largely on the ESA, or European Space Administration...Europe's equivalent of NASA:



However the exhibit still highlighted the United States' contribution to space exploration, in the form of a billboard quoting Neil Armstrong landing on the moon (in Spanish, Catalan, and English):



There was also a really good exhibit on climate change and global warming, that had some strange thing that if you pushed, would make a puff of smoke come out:



In addition to its modern museums, Valencia also has some great shopping at stores like El Corte Inglés:



In which, we found an interesting book that I don't think you could find in the United States...it was a little reminiscent of "Where's Waldo", but slightly less politically correct. What would you think if you ran into it at a bookstore?

On Sunday we drove to the Alhambra in Granada, and then to Gibraltar. More to come soon!