Blogs from Valencia, Valencian Community, Spain, Europe

The week before our planned 4 weeks of travel around Spain with a two-week extension to fit in Vienna and Budapest, lots of work was done on the boat. On Monday afternoon we were able to pick up the stainless-steel support that we took to the local boatyard to have welded. The welding job was an excellent one – they definitely have quite the craftsperson at Ascar Boatyard. Now the work had to be done to put all the 7 wires that were pulled out of it last week, back in! Trying to squeeze the wires in, especially with some of them having quite a large diameter and even larger fittings on the end, was a job but with the help of our “snake” and a little dish-soap to make the wire slippery, that part of ... read more

We were pretty tired when we went to bed, so we didn't get up until 8am. There was nothing planned for today except a foot tour of Valencia... and I mean foot! We walked to Alfafar train station and caught the train to Valencia Estacion Norte. We still had a few trips paid for with our metro ticket we'd bought at the Valencia Airport. Manoli bought an 8-trip ticket that would serve for both of us to take the Metro or Train 4 times. It worked fine, except the first person thru the gate had to pass the ticket off to the other. Oh well, it was a lot cheaper than individual one-trip tickets. We arrived just a little before 10am and started checking out the Plaza Ajuntimiento sights. First, we visited the museum inside the ... read more

This morning we’ve booked a tour to, well we don’t really know. We’d originally booked a tour to some Moorish Caves, but not enough people wanted to do that one, so they offered us something else instead. I’m now thinking maybe we should have asked a few more questions. Issy’s not feeling all that great so I head off on my own. Our guide introduces himself as Amir and our bus heads north along the coast and then inland along a windy road to the village of Montanejos. We’re apparently here to visit some hot springs, which we’re told are the local version of the fountain of youth. I think “hot” might be overstating the case just a tad; I think it was warmer in the sea a couple of days ago, but it’s extremely pleasant ... read more

Today we’ve decided to treat ourselves to a day relaxing on Playa de las Arenas, one of Valencia’s city beaches, so off we head on the bus. I think the name roughly translates to Beach of the Sands, and they weren’t kidding; there’s masses of the stuff. We think we can see the water in the distance, but it feels like it could take us a couple of days to get there from the promenade. Perhaps not surprisingly the first 800 metres or so of the sandy crossing doesn’t have any people on it; they’re all in the last two hundred or so metres nearest the water. We do however notice one exception, a bikini clad maiden lying out in the middle of the otherwise empty expanse, all by herself, half a kilometre or so from ... read more

Issy decides on a morning of hair washing. That activity’s not really an option for me, or at least not one that would take any time, so I head off exploring. First stop are the Quart Towers which are only a couple of hundred metres from our apartment. I read that they formed part of Valencia’s medieval wall, and are one of only two sets that are still standing. They were built over a twenty year period in the fifteenth century, and formed the city’s western entrance. It looks like some parts of the outer wall have started to deteriorate, but no, the holes are apparently the result of Napoleon and others lobbing cannonballs at them over the centuries. Next stop is the city’s other set of surviving towers, the Torres de Serrano. These were built ... read more