Photos : Valencia City Valencia Street Art
Beaches, Ice Cream and Budgie Smugglers
Another long weekend and another chance to travel. This time it was to Valencia for 3 days of hot sun, ice cream and paella. The latter apparently originated in this region therefore it was mandatory we sampled the local cuisine. Luckily for us the weather forecast proved to be mildly incorrect and morning fog was not forthcoming and the max temperature of 20-22C a little shy of the 27-29 degrees that graced Valencia for each day. The city is clean and architecturally different from other Spanish ones. There’s more of a Moorish theme that’s evident almost everywhere including the old silk exchange building.
At the east and west of the city are the city gates. The main market has the usual suspects in relation to the foods including the wonderful and appetising pig faces. If you’ve not seen them before it’s the pigs head with all the hair removed and the meat from the inside essentially leaving you with a the skin of the pigs face. The market isn’t huge but it is definitely worth a visit.
Not seeing a proper beach for a while we took the opportunity to spend a Sunday at the beach and many sights not to behold. There’s a time and a place for everything. The problem in Valencia is the beach attracts people who haven’t grasped this concept. Many a specimen of over indulgent lifestyle can be seen prancing around the area with nowhere near enough clothing. If your eyes weren’t sore from the salt air or the sand it was from the mythical beasts we can refer to as “porpasarus ingratius”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great beach and place to come.
As with anywhere in the western world, the kids are generally the ones who make public transport a challenge. Today it was about 15-20 of them on the tram who had incessant babble about all manner of things unimportant to the evolution of mankind. The tram was packed with families and many young children yet one ofthe 15-20 brain surgeons in training decided to light a joint inside thus allowing all of us to try hotboxing.
City Of Science And Arts
We took a bus to the “City Of Arts and Science”. This complex was designed to celebrate the arrival of the 21st century by Santiago Calatrava (don’t worry I’d never heard of him either and won’t even remember his name after I finish typing).
To really see some of the best pics check out http://www.spanish-living.com/regional/Valencia_city-of-arts-and-science.php
The complex has a marine park called the “Oceanografic”, a science museum, theatre and promenade. Some of the night shots, none that we took, show a completely different perspective including the Calatrava resembling a huge eyeball floating above a pool of water.
When Exports Should Never Have Left Their Home
Around the square, where the pic on the left was taken, there’s an assortment of restaurants and eateries. As this is a popular tourist trap it comes with tourists and with tourists comes Brits Abroad. We were unfortunate enough to have 5 drunk and highly obnoxious Brits. They were insensitive to the Spanish, the families with children plsu were doing their best to disprove Darwin’s theory. They bought any item being sold by the hawkers which were not only expensive or kitchy/cheesey but also annoying. They bought the hats, roses (that they then tried to on sell to the other patrons) and the worst was a megaphone/bullhorn. It was the latter purchase that was the final straw for all and sundry. With bellies full of beer, wine and champagne their own private Iadaho became ours (not our choice obviously). Pressing the newly acquired purchase to their pathetic insufferable stupid looking heads, a babble of culturally repugnant diatribe spewed forth.
All the patrons tried their best to turn a blind eye and ignore the amoebas but it became harder the longer they stayed as they became louder and, although we didn’t think it possible, more stupid. At one point they proceeded to test their Spanish via said megaphone then sing UK national anthem. The best was when the main jackass was trying to socialise with a table of 16 Spanish men and he offered the megaphone to the table. One gentlemen accepted his offer and pointed the megaphone in the Brit’s face and announcing, in Spanish, that the owner of the megaphone was a part of the human anatomy not someone whose parents would be proud (that’s the clean version of what he actually said). The 16 strong contingent laughed as did the booze hound, although the latter was even more clueless than before. Finally the troupe of dancing imbeciles left and the entire patronage in unison sighed with relief.
Would You Like Salt With Your Food?
We had booked a nice restaurant for Saturday night and even managed to score a semi private table in the corner away from most of the smokers. The menu wasn’t extensive but had good food, and salt. Did I mention the salt? It had salt heaped on salt before serving with a slight sprinkling of salt. Why am I telling you this? No reason other than to say the food had waaaaay too much salt! I wouldn’t recommend this restaurant (hence why no name listed here) but there are good restaurants here and we found one for our last dinner down a small back street.
Not only is Valencia the home of paella but it has ice cream everywhere. It would be rude not to have a cone or 20 and I think in the 3 days here I managed to have about 10 double cones. Some of the more unusual flavours were popcorn, pumpkin and chocolate, crème caramel, cheesecake and doughnut.
We’ll See You At The Hotel
The hotel is newly refurbished so the rooms clean and well new. There are certain times in this life, that you want some solace. One such time is when using the bathroom. At this hotel you need to share your room with a very close friend or someone you can trust. Why? The bathroom might have a sliding door however it’s glass, see through glass that is. The entire wall along the bath is also glass, albeit semi frosted, so from the bed your room mate can see your body outline in the shower whilst they watch TV!