A Gandia gander

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Neighbouring Gandia, we had read, was worth a visit so we jumped in the car and drove up the road for a gander.

Of course, we forgot that no where is really worth a visit on a Sunday as everything is closed. Nevermind, we found a map at the closed tourist - quite a cool idea, it was touch screen behind some safety glass that allowed you to navigate the town and find out a bit about it before choosing what was worth further investigation.

Apparently, not much, as although there was an old town, the info didn’t elaborate enough. So we grabbed a shot (of coffee) and the mandatory chocolate buttery pastry while locals ogled Kaspar, agreed on a direction, and walked. And wouldn’t you know it before very long we stumbled across the rather discrete (you could easily walk past the front door without realising it was a palce) Palau Ducal dels Borja - the Ducal Palace of Borja. It was open, and they were just about to do a guided tour (you can’t wander around yourself) - nice find!

The tour was guided in Spanish so the lucky people from NZ got a brief two page photocopy to read as an elaborate tale was told of the Palace’s near 800 year history…

We were guided through only the first floor of the palace, but that was more than enough. It was truly massive, and by all appearances built for really really really tall people.

Its hard to describe the combination of piety and over the top opulence of this place…in one massive room there is little more than a few old floor tiles and a furnished corner where Duchess Juana of Aragon was born five centuries ago, yet in another room dubbed the “Golden Gallery” which is a gargantuan corridor decorated in the most elaborate gilded wood carvings (on closer observation it is actually five rooms with walls that fold right back), and then onto the chapel - a spooky elaborately adorned claustrophobic room in the shape of a coffin (very weird).

Some other rooms you could spend days in are the Crown Assembly Room, which has a dozen or so enormous tapestries detailing significant life events of St Francis of Borja. You can get quite up close and personal with these tapestries and see that they are indeed very big, very old, and very very elaborate.

The neogothic chapel is a symphony of colour, and an obvious place for St Francis to write letters and attend to business when it was originally used as his office.

This palace was a real find on an otherwise ‘closed for Sunday’ day in Spain. But most frustratingly we weren’t allowed to take photos inside. I did manage to sneak a couple of highly unsuccessful covert shots from the hip while the tour guide was not looking, but she soon cottoned on and had ‘una pelabra con senor’. So if you want to get an idea of what this place looks like you’ll have to check out their own site (click on the numbered pics on the left hand side of the page) http://www.palauducal.com/v_guia3.html.

We lunched at Gandia beach and then headed home to laze by the pool for the afternoon.

Tomorrow we’re off again, this time heading north to the small coastal town of Peniscola (a cos 4,800 inhabitants) about 150km north of Valencia. Four nights by the beach…we’re expecting tans by the time we get to Barcelona.

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