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Published: April 3rd 2007
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Valencia at Night
the city's main train station and bull ring After our stint in Barcelona, Emily and I headed on to Valencia. We arrived at the train station in the early evening, and decided (ironically enough) that our first task should be to figure out how to leave again. We waited with our ticket numbers for about an hour, just to make it up to the window to learn that all overnight trains from Valencia to Granada were sold out for a week. Thus began our lovely transportation ordeal . . . we spent about 5 minutes trying to communicate with the man behind the desk before the one English speaking worker was able to come assist us. With her help, we discovered that the only way to get to Granada and stay on schedule was to take a 100 Euro, half-day train routed through Madrid. So . . . Emily and I reluctantly bought those tickets (fearing that the Holy Week travel crowd would cause everything to be booked), then rushed the couple miles to the bus station (stopping briefly to check in with our hostel and drop off our bags). Thankfully, we arrived to find that the one bus company that still appeared to be open had an
overnight bus headed to Granada and a few seats still available. After communicating (once again) through pictures and hand gestures, we managed to buy tickets (for much cheaper than even the original overnight train). Thus we rushed back to the train station in order to return our obscenely over-priced train tickets. Of course, when we got there, they had stopped handing out line tickets since they were close to closing and still had a massive crowd. But Emily and I just stood near the window with the one English-speaking worker, looking exhausted and pathetic. She took pity on us, and told us to just jump the line over at our original window. We did, and even got a full refund. So . . . moral of this story . . . if you’re ever headed to Granada during Holy Week, consider actually becoming a Renfe member so you can purchase train tickets online. Blaaaaaaa . . . To brighten things up a bit . . . at least it was a beautiful night in Valencia, so Emily and I were able to walk around the old city center and de-stress . . . with some ice cream. Ice cream always
helps.
The next day we hit the town early since we only had one day in Valencia. It didn’t take long to realize that Valencia is a town with wonderful ambience and a distinct Spanish feel. As far as atmosphere, I even like it better than Barcelona . . . the old city center is full of beautiful buildings, fountains, and plazas separated from the newer city by a “river” of gardens called “Antiguo Cauce del Rio Turia. On a beautiful day (which we luckily had) it is delightful to wander through the old town and gardens. However, it is not much of a “destination city,” thus sites are kind of lacking. Emily and I spent the entire day just walking and getting a feel for the place. We started out in the center, then walked the garden all the way out to Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (Valencia’s one main attraction complete with an omniplex and aquarium). We were tempted to go into the aquarium, but tickets were fairly pricey. Plus, I’m not paying for such a ticket unless I’m guaranteed to see otters . . . and there was no guarantee on this one. Thus,
we continued walking. We made it to the port (which we’d heard was about a 20 minute BUS ride from our hostel) and found it all decked out for the 32nd America’s Cup. They had set up team stores for all the competitors, and had little cafes and food stands completely surrounding the harbor. We had to stop into the store for the defending champion Swiss team, since Emily has dual citizenship and I just think Switzerland is awesome . . . but other than that we simply wandered up and down both the north and south sides of the port. There was a smaller sailing competition going on (I’m not sure what they’re called since I have no clue about sailing lingo . . .), so we did attempt to watch from our spots on the peer. It didn’t work out too well though since they were pretty far out. We spent a little more time just relaxing on the beach (even though it was entirely too cold to be considered beach weather) before walking all the way back into town to catch our bus.
From our one-day walking tour of Valencia I have come to the conclusion
Antiguo Cauce Del Rio Turia
A view of the gardens that border the old section of town that it is either a city that one just passes through or spends a great deal of time in. I am convinced it would be a great place to study abroad because it has the atmosphere to sustain you, but, even with our short visit, we grew a little bored by the end of the day. Maybe if there had been otters . . .
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