The McKenneys: Valencia

The next stop was Valencia. We left Zaragoza in the late morning and the kids snoozed for probably two of the three hour trip to Valencia. There was some really amazing scenery on the way to Valencia, as well as on the way to Zaragoza. The center of the country (outside of Madrid) is flat with views of plateaus and mountain ranges in the distance. The soil is dark red in many places, but you also see shades of white, purple, and speckles of green where there is some vegetation - an incredible site when the sun hits it in the right places. We arrived in the early afternoon and signed up right away for a bus tour. Valencia is essentially divided into two parts - the "old town" and the City of Arts and Sciences. A river once flowed through Valencia. After experiencing some flooding, the waters were diverted and numerous parks were built in the area once occupied by the river. In one of these areas, Valencia built the City of Arts and Sciences - a huge complex consisting of four different buildings - aquarium, planetarium, performance center, and science museum. The buildings are all of modern architecture, similar in style to the famous Opera Hall in Sydney Australia. Each building is really incredible to look at individually, but the view is absolutely spectacular when you have all four in view at the same time. We spent the first day exploring the old town. After dinner, we found that we were stranded in this part of the city due to a New Years Eve race through town. All the streets were blocked off to traffic, so we had to walk back to the hotel, which turned out to be closer than we thought and gave us an opportunity to see some of the sites up close. The next day, we scouted out the City of Arts and Science in the morning and then went back downtown in the afternoon, and took a closer look at some of the sights like The Tower of Los Sarranos and The Towers of Quart (original gateways into the city), the central market (huge indoor market where you can sit on the lap of the Three Kings (see Barcelona)), The Palace of the Marquis of Dos Aguas (really impressive marble and plaster work on this building – see the picture), and the Tower of Miguelete (tower connected to the Valencia Cathedral). We ended the day at the beach building sand castles and discovered a series of paella restaurants along the boardwalk. It was too late to have paella (usually served 1-5pm), so we decided to come back the next day for paella Valencia. The next day was New Years Day, and after brunch, we spent the day at the aquarium and the science museum - the kids had a blast looking at all the exotic underwater creatures like sea dragons (like a sea horse only more elaborate), eels, manta rays, etc. Did you know that there is actually a fish that spends most of its life outside water? It is called an Atlantic Mudskipper - interesting huh? Between museums we went back down to the beach and had our paella, which was fantastic. The key ingredients in Paella Valencia are chicken and rabbit. The following day we found ourselves back at the beach building sandcastles one last time before making our way to our final destination, Barcelona. Once again, the kids slept most of the way. Sandy and I used the opportunity to start documenting our trip to update the blog in a timely manner when we got back to Zurich - little did we know there would be so more things to see (and record for the blog) in Barcelona.

Even JP liked the commentary on the tour bus