The next two blogs will be out of order time wise and geographically because I need to go back and pick up our visit to Valencia and our first two days in Barcelona before the hospital stay. So just know that we are now in Paris and read them as a little historical vignette.
After the train ride from hell to Valencia on Saturday we had to rest. So we took a little siesta. When we awoke we took a walk looking for a dinner place and trying to get our bearings. We ended up in a Chinese restaurant which had mediocre food. I don’t know why we keeping eating Asian food in Spain, maybe because Leea is vegetarian and it is easier to find things she can eat in Asian restaurants. They almost always have tofu they can substitute for meat.
The next day we took the Bus Touristico. These are double decker buses the have in most major cities to drive the tourists around all the sights you might want to see. They stop several times and you can get off and go see things then hop on the next bus. They also have audio guides on board which tell you about the various sights and the city’s history, If it is not too hot hey are usually kind of fun and more relaxing than the constant standing and walking of sight seeing. They also usually have two or more loops that go different places and your tickets are good for one or two days.
Unfortunately the day we took the bus in Valencia, it was hot. But we still had fun. The audio guide was a riot. First, most of what they told us about the architecture was that over the years they had torn town or restored the old Spanish building in a French style. And they were proud of this. How sad. Not that I have anything against French architecture. I love it, in France. Also after every description of a building they would say, “To see the interior of this structure see the DVD that is available on the bus.” Or when they gave some historical fact they said, “For more information see the DVD that is available on the bus.” It became a joke with us because you heard this every five minutes; we started laughing every time it came on.
Valencia is a nice city, but as we discovered, there is no there there. There are miles and miles of beaches. They have lots of great things like their Oceanographic center which sounded like the most amazing aquarium where the fish actually swim in tanks all around you, even overhead. And a large BioParc which is an open zoo full of animals from all over. There are no old style cages. Animals are kept from eating the visitors by topography and glass in large open spaces, and the animals are mixed together. There are miles and miles of beaches. But there is nothing really historically Spanish about any of it. There is a small circle they call Ciudad Vieja (Old City) which is about a block in diameter. This fit well into our plan because we used Valencia to take a breath and get rested before our last two weeks in Barcelona and Paris.
After our bus tour on one loop, we had a siesta. That evening we took the other loop of the tourist bus and ended our evening in Ciudad Vieja. During the ride we passed the Fería closing ceremonies and traffic was a mess. We watched from our perch on the top of the bus as motorists honked and tried to squeeze through small openings. At one point someone tapped another car and scratched it. Both drivers were out of their cars yelling at each others while their cars in a jackknifed position blocked the entire street and traffic behind them backed up even further so other motorist got out of their cars to get these guys to give it up and move on. Unfortunately, our bus was able to move at that point because we were to the front and side of this mess and we missed the rest of the action. We had dinner in a fine restaurant in Ciudad Vieja. I ordered roasted potatoes and salted fish being assured it would be deboned. It took forever to get served for some reason and when they brought out our food they set a platter in front of me that had a fish with head and tail covered in salt. I’m thinking Nemo fell in a salt pit. My little vegetarian was disgusted. I was speechless and said I would just eat the potatoes. The waitress whisked the fish, saying this was just for presentation and came back with the fish skinned and deboned. It was delicious.
The next day, at Leea’s suggestion we went to the BioParc and spent the day watching wild animals and strange people watching the wild animals. We had a lot of fun. After the bike ride we went to a pizza place and had a yummy pizza. We spent the evening in our room writing and catching up on emails and facebook.
Our last day in Valencia we rented bikes at the hotel and rode down to the beach and along the paseo. They have wonderful bike lanes in Valencia. The ride was relaxing. At one point we passed the Big Thinkers on the paseo. These are the guys you see along any warm beach in any city in the world discussing world affairs, geopolitical thought, the world economy and the state of their bursitis. They also sit in other locations depending upon the geography of the city. In cities without beaches you will most likely find this species on park benches, Anyway when we passed they stopped thinking and started throwing comments at us, like "muy bonita" and whistling. We encouraged them, of course, by smiling at them. I think they were doing this because Leea had taken her tank top off earlier and was riding in her bathing suit top. We stayed in the hotel for a light dinner. We shared three tapas, salad, patatas bravas (chunks of fried potatoes with a spick tomato sauce, and chicken croquettes. After savoring these tasty morsels we settled ourselves in to get a good night’s sleep and prepare to leave for Barcelona the next day..
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