We arrived in Valencia around 6 am on Sunday morning, dropped our bags at our hotel, and then after a much-needed coffee, we were off. (Valencia photos here.)
Somewhere on the 7-hour train ride, we passed from the land of traditional Spanish and ventured into the land of Catalan. Catalan is similar to Spanish, but can be hard to read and understand, even if you are quite familiar with global Spanish.
After seeing Seville and Lisbon in the last couple weeks, I think our bar for Iberian cities has been set quite high, so we weren't quite as impressed by Valencia as we might have been otherwise. Despite being Spain's 3rd-largest city, we felt like there was a lack of things to see and do. By about 2 pm, we had seen the historic center, the towers that mark the old city walls, the botanical gardens (called "must-see," but definitely hurt by the amazing gardens we'd seen in the last week), and Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), a huge set of cultural attractions with impressive modern architecture. These buildings contain the city's opera house, science museum, aquarium, and more.
However, the advantage of finishing our site-seeing by 2 pm is that Valencia is right on Spain's Mediterranean coast, so that left ample time for the beach!
In the evening, we went to see Barrio Carmen, which is supposedly Valencia's answer to NYC's West Village (maybe Brooklyn or Williamsburg today?), and then we called it a night early so we could catch our 6:40 am train and save our energy for Barcelona. I know this post is a bit short, but Valencia did not provide a great deal to discuss. You can view the photos here, and I am sure I will have a great deal to say about Barcelona in a day or two!
- R
p.s. -- I am a bit behind in posting because my Internet connections (or lack thereof) have made it practically impossible to upload photo albums or edit blog posts. As such, I have been writing posts on my computer as I travel, and I am posting each city with its respective photo album as soon as that proves practicable.
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