Valencia

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This past weekend our group went to Valencia. After a 4 hour bus ride, we arrived and immediately met our tour guide to see the city! We saw the Cathedral, which to be honest looks like every other cathedral we have visited in Spain, a palace/really pretty house, and just walked around the city. It was nice except that the tour guide just kept talking and talking about completely irrelevant things, I think she just wanted to dictate to us everything she had ever learned about, things not even concerning Valencia. Anyways, the director of our program was getting really angry that she wasn't ending the tour and actually had to tell her to stop talking. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we were supposed to go out with a couple Valencian students so they could take us out to dinner. A few of my friends and I were way too tired to go with the group so we ended up going to an American-style restaurant. The next day was so much better!!! We went to this new modern section of Valencia called the City of Arts and Science. They haven't finished building a lot of it yet, but they already have a science museum, the largest aquarium in Europe (which seemed even smaller than the Camden aquarium, which is surprising), etc. There are some buildings where the top can be moved down kind of like a convertible. We had a tour of the science museum, which seemed kind of random because it would've made a little more sense for us to have just wandered around, and then a lot of us went off to the aquarium for a while. Later, we to a ride on this small boat in some river/lake outside of Valencia. It was just our group crammed on the boat and the sun was setting- it was really nice. The last day we had a tour of the modern art museum, where the same tour guide was talking so much that I swore the director of the program was going to strangle her. The look on his face was classic. Then we went to the port of Valencia where we were supposed to have another tour but the director told the tour guide to stop the tour 2 hours early and we had free time. We went to the beach and I, being my crazy self, decided to go swimming in the FREEZING water with a bunch of boys. After lunch, we came home. Overall a really fun weekend. The worst part was that for lunch both days the program gave us seafood paella. I really like shellfish, which you all know, but this shellfish was HORRIBLE...it was mushy, fishy tasting, just plain bad. The rice/chopped up noodles just tasted like rotten fish with no other spices. half the program doesn't eat fish/shellfish so they barely ate lunch, the other half thought it was absolutely nasty and ate as much as they could stomach. I was very surprised that we had bad paella twice, since paella is a Valencian specialty. It must have just been the places we went to, but I'm not sure I am going to eat Paella again any time soon 😊

That's all for now!

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Photos

We were bored on the tour...
so then we started to take pictures!

The City of Arts and Sciences
The building in front is one of the buildings with a retractable roof and the other in the back is the opera house.

Me and a Puffin
I really wanted a picture with a puffin but they moved too fast and my friend max wasn't very good at keeping the camera steady.

A Moon Fish
This picture is really blurry, but this is one of the most bizarre fish I have ever seen. It is flat and has a fit on the top and bottom of its body instead of the sides.

Hannah and I at the head of the boat
There is a more technical term for that part of the boat that i can't remember.