Hola from Madrid. Today’s post is a joint effort. We’re sitting in our airport hotel room, getting ready to bid adieu to the European leg of our adventures and taking advantage of the high speed wifi yet again. I’m the designated typist for the kids in order to speed things up. All typos are my own. Or, to spin it another way, bet you’ve never seen a 7 year old with such great spelling.
Jean:
Valencia wasn’t on our radar. After Gwen’s departure from Barcelona, we had another unplanned ‘wildcard week’. We considered all sorts of destinations, constrained only by time and, of course, budget. We wanted somewhere warm and easy and where we could all stretch our legs a bit. We thought about Malta, Portugal, the Canary Islands, southern Spain. But truth be told, we were all a little weary after Morocco and knew that we had a lot of movement coming up. We remembered how our Alders’ friends, Becky and Eliot, had raved about Valencia, so we threw the dice and bought some train tickets – only 3.5 hours south from Barcelona. And we loved it.
Valencia is a smaller, cleaner version of Barcelona. The architecture is gorgeous and everyone is out running, biking, shopping, eating. There are craft breweries, Starbucks and hip pockets of artisanal eateries bumping up against old iberico ham sellers and the central market.
Valencia is a big city – Spain’s third largest after Madrid and Barcelona – and yet it felt very manageable. We spent eight nights there – our second longest stop yet after Aix. After ironing out an initial accommodation wrinkle (read: smoky, hideous Airbnb), we settled in a wonderful ‘aparthotel’ just outside of the Old Town in a little area called Ruzafa. We had bikes at our disposal and spent the next week biking everywhere and catching up on a lot of school work.
The main artery of Valencia is a gorgeous park called Jardines del Turia – a nine kilometre swath of greenspace bookended by Europe’s largest Aquarium and Science Centre on one end and an incredible research and breeding zoo (Bioparc) on the other. In between are bike paths, running paths, playgrounds, soccer fields, skate parks, sculptures, more playgrounds…you get the picture.
There’s Gulliver’s Park – an amazing, enormous, bizarre structure made to look like Gulliver tied to the ground. The children swarming all over him look like Lilliputians. It’s brilliant and, quite possibly, the most dangerous public playground I’ve ever seen. Of course, we all loved it and we went back almost every day.
We explored the Old Town, with its labyrinthine streets and placas and cervecerias. The city was founded by Romans and you can definitely see the Roman influence around every corner.
I’ll miss Valencia. Even after only 8 days, the city was really growing on me. We slept well, ate well, and got lots of exercise and fresh air – what’s not to love? I’ll miss the view from our terrace – the human theatre of life unfolding everyday that will always remind me of Spain.
In some version or another, every place we stayed at in Spain played out before us a bit like our view in Valencia….makes you realize how insular and independent life in North American can be. I loved watching people chatting on their decks, smoking, hanging up laundry, yelling at their neighbours, hanging out, drinking coffee. Adios, Spain. Thanks for everything.
Lucy:
In Valencia, everybody was very nice. We saw a soccer game and it was a tie, but it was very smoky because a girl right in front of us was smoking. We saw a park called Gulliver Park and it was shaped like a person. We went there lots of times.
We went to the Bioparc and it was very cool because it had flamingos, monkeys, and gigantic hippos. We could see them underwater and one of the hippos had a fish trying to eat its back. We also saw a crocodile and big elephants. We also saw somebody feed the birds and we had it pretty much all to ourselves. Somebody said about the Bioparc that the animals aren’t in a cage but you are. That’s what it felt like. We got there by riding bikes. We got to rent bikes from our hotel.
We also went to the Science Centre. When we got to the top floor, me and Tom did a concentration war where you put your head on this thing and there’s a ball inside and whoever concentrates the best will have the ball go to the other person’s circle. We also saw a slinky thing but it was just a mirror reflection so you thought it was a slinky but it wasn’t. We also saw baby chicks hatch out of their eggs.
Tom:
I liked the biking and the Gulliver playground. It was cool because it was shaped like a human. I mostly liked the slides.
The oranges in Valencia are delicious. The buildings are smaller than Vancouver and there are bike paths everywhere. Everyday, we went biking and one day, me, my dad and Henry went to a movie. It was called “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”. Valencia was my favourite place in Spain and I will go back one day when I have kids.
Henry:
Valencia was cool. I really liked the riverbed that was turned into a park and also the science centre. The park had runners and dogs and bike paths, soccer fields and tennis courts and big, big trees and tiny rivers. They had workout places every kilometre or so with lots of equipment for anyone to use. We’d stop and fool around on it every once in a while.
I also liked the Bioparc because it had so many of the African animals that I’m looking forward to seeing and it looked like the animals were treated really well. I also like that it wasn’t busy.
I really liked how many bike paths they had. The beach was nice and the sand was really soft and fluffy and it had a big spiderweb that we climbed. At the beach, there were huge sandcastles like Hogwarts and the artists were asking for money.
I really liked the place that we stayed at, but it was a bit cold in the apartment. I had my own room with a TV and there was a nice, large deck with lots of chairs and tables.
I really, really liked the oranges. They were all over – in trees while we rode our bikes. I ate lots of them.
We went to a Valencia v. Granada soccer game and it was very cool. We got some really good seats and the crowd was huge. It ended as a tie, sadly, but I’m really glad we went.
Mike:
Safe to say that Valencia was a huge hit for all the reasons above. A beautiful, outdoorsy, very liveable city. We loved it. A few highlights for me…
- Taking in Valencia’s beautiful city plan and architecture. Valencia was settled by the Romans who left their mark in places including a cathedral rumoured to have once held the Holy Grail (must have been before Indy lost it). Perhaps more impressive is the city’s museum of arts and sciences that looks like a whale. I didn’t realize how much I appreciate nice architecture until recently.
- Biking. And, in particular, biking the length of the park with just Henry at night. We talked the whole trip and it reminded me of how much I love 1:1 time and biking all in the same evening.
Watching a European soccer game complete with fans singing, emotional outbursts at the ref, and lots of smoking. Apparently you can smoke like a chimney yet it’s not ok to have a drop of alcohol at large sporting events in Spain. A little odd to me. Plus the Valencia team is sponsored by Batman. Yes, their symbol mirrors the Dark Knight’s. To make the night even better we had real bats at dusk come join us on the field. How cool is that?
- Who doesn’t love a zoo where the animals are clearly well taken care of?
- Hanging out in beautiful weather, awesome parks (yes, Gulliver was super fun), the beaches, and, oh, the oranges … all are awesome.
Valencia feels like a city that we’d love to adopt and come back more than once. We could have easily spent more time here and enjoyed every minute.