Thursday, July 14, 2016

Valencia

We've been in Valencia for 4 days now.  We took a long, slow, beautiful train ride to get here.  It's much calmer and way cooler (temperature wise) than Madrid. We're at another shared airbnb. The place is great and the host is really funny and kind. She also has a turkish girl living with her too, and we had fun talking politics. The city has an amazing 7 km walking path/park that is often called the river because they actually replaced a real river with the park. It has bike and running paths, soccer fields, outdoor gyms, playgrounds, a fair, and the whole thing is beautifully lit and manicured. There is one stretch that has loads of flowering bushes that smell exactly like marshmallows.  At the end of the park is a massive museum/theater complex called the "city of science". It looks like something off of a SF book cover. By far some of the coolest architecture I've ever seen. We walked through it at night after I tricked Sunni into a suprise 5 mile walk. lol

The old town is nothing special, but we did have horchata (which is delicious!) at their central market. The best part about old town is the graffiti. It's everywhere and really good.  I found at least 4 full building pieces. There is something special about well done graffiti next to old building and churches.  

The cities main beach isn't all that pretty, but that water is warm and there are always waves to jump and play in. We went twice and I even got Sunni to join me (she is deathly afraid of waves).

We tried to go the nearby national park, but it was an epic fail. It's a preserved wetland with hiking trails, bird watching, etc. Except that it's not. We got there and all it was was a shitty little seafood town and some boat people. I wanted to take a boat tour, but there weren't enough other people and we weren't paying for a whole boat by ourselves. We did see a few big birds and some pretty green rice fields, but failed to find any hiking trails, or anything that remotely resembled a park. We left on the next bus trying to figure out what we did wrong.

We spent this morning at their contemporary art museum. It was very well laid out and had a diverse selection of galleries/exhibitions. For dinner we went to a vegan collective. They had a delicious set menu (with green apple gazpacho, yum)  and no prices, just pay whatever you want (we paid 20 euros)!



















  

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