Valencia | Eurotrip 09

Dec

2008

Valencia

Written by Ro

Of startling resemblance to Perth is Valencia, the third largest Spanish city located between Madrid and Barcelona. The populations of the both cities are around the same and while Perth is much more sprawled, both are seaside cities with remarkable cleanliness and greenery.

Our short visit to Valencia housed us at the ultra-funky Red Nest Hostel. Having a kitchen in the dorm and grocery store saved us a whole heap of money and we managed to eat our first really filling meal since arriving in Europe. Packet pasta never tasted so good.

The dorm was like a backpacker’s playground: with free wi-fi, a book exchange, fooz-ball, home theatre and dvd library it was everything you could expect for people to make themselves home on the move. There were also a webcam in the kitchen broadcasting live to the internet so you could keep an eye on your steak from the dorm room.

Valencia is steeped in history but at the same time is refreshingly modern. A lot of time and money has gone into building the city’s Centre for Arts and Sciences. The giant complex is architecturally unique and can be seen from kilometres around (and later from the train when leaving the city northbound). We decided to see it all, including L’Oceanographic the largest aquarium in Europe.

Needless to say the experience was fantastic with the largest variety of underwater wildlife I have ever seen. My favourite was the beluga whale who appeared positively photogenic – we got some amazing shots. We also saw the dolphin show – the real deal with trainers propelled out of the water as high as 3 meters on the nose of the powerful dolphins.

As a part of the visit package we also saw a Imax documentary on Dinosaurs. Cool little headsets overlaid audio narration to the documentary in 4 languages, though listening to your neighbours listening to the narration in a different language with the volume on high got a little annoying.

The next day we visited the Centre for Sciences – a sort of huge Scitech. We wish someone had told us this because we were expecting an interactive museum of sorts, which I guess it was. It was more targeted toward locals though – not our thing, and it took a huge amount of time to get through and most of it was in Spanish, we’d have preferred to see more of the city instead.

We also did a walking tour which expanded on some of the history from the Madrid tour regarding Franco and his dictatorship with reference to Valencia. We saw the remnants of the old city gates, a museum of Roman ruins and met a fellow aussie who was avoiding spending big on necessities such as accommodation “...so that I can go on the piss, mate”.

The city is a beautiful one, housing sights such as the cathedral that holds the official (yep -sanctioned by the Catholic Church) holy grail. No, it’s not wooden and you dont become immortal if you drink from it (too much Indiana Jones for you) – it’s gold with two handles and is dated around 1BC, which makes sense.

We also tried a local drink made out of tiger nuts, white in appearance with a sweet milk taste. The guide at this point stopped to recite a story about one American tourist “...from some generic American city...” who refused to try the drink on moral grounds since tigers were an endangered species. Needless to say, it was not that kind of nut.

Valencia brought back a lot of memories from home, from its public transportation to its newest developments - the city is a shining example of modern age Spain. We loved it and would easily have spent more time here because we still didn’t get to see those European re-known beaches.

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