Valencia, Spain

Home of the Paella!

 

After our time in Seville, we took an early morning train back to Madrid, and another train across to Valencia. Valencia is known as where the Paella originated, but not the seafood type of paella that you see, instead the meaty paella.

We got to our accommodation and dropped off our bags and collected a map. We walked around the main historical centre, looking at all the beautiful architecture. Main attractions were the Valencia Cathedral and the Historic Central Market (Plaza del Mercado).  

We found a small street vendor that sold paella, so we had a try. It wasn’t freshly made, but it was pretty nice.

 

Later in the afternoon we ventured to the park/garden area that was once the Turia River. The river runs around the central historic area of Valencia, but it once had water flowing through it, a lot of water. Due to a flood in the 50’s where a lot of people lost their lives, Valencia decided to divert the river and the bare riverbed produced 9km of lush gardens filled with sports areas, fountains, gardens, monuments, museums and cultural centres.

 

The kitchen at our hostel was good, so we bought groceries from the supermarket and made our own dinner. We found some more very cheap carton vino too!

The next day we decided to spend a relaxing day at the Gardens of Turia (Jardines de Turia). We walked along the 9km walkway that runs through the gardens, past fountains, under bridges, stopping at an area that had some orange trees. Gaffa sneakily took an orange off the tree and decided to eat it. We should’ve known, why were there so many oranges on the tress – because they weren’t edible, they were sour!

Lots of beautiful orange trees

Sneaky Orange Peeler

Further down the track we got to a kids playground that is modelled on a gigantic pirate lying on his back. Pretty cool, but there were so many people on there, we didn’t have a long play around on it.

This is a miniature model of the playground

The Pirate's head...

We did find an exercise park though, full of equipment for doing leg presses, arm presses, abdominal workouts, etc. Gaffa was so excited and we spent a while playing around on the equipment.

Gaffa working his...abs!

Next we stopped for lunch and enjoyed the sunshine. After a rest, we continued down the track, past a few monuments and museums. We kept walking but decided to turn around because there was not much else to see, and we had to walk all the way back to get back to our hostel!

 

When we got back to the historical town we rewarded ourselves with an ice cream!

 

Barcelona, here we come!