Darth Vaders head

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I woke to find it was raining, what a crock, this place is supposed to have 320 sunshine days a year, why the heck did it have to rain when we were there. I decided to go back to bed in the hope it would clear up. By mid morning it had cleared enough for us to go out. We decided food was in order but instead of something cheap and nasty we opted to go to the market. It was huge and rather daunting as it was full of locals and no one spoke any English. We did some scouting, trying to find the best prices. About two hours later after some shouting, mostly at us (once pretty loudly for touching some fruit), we had accumulated food fit for a king, or two in our case. We had … Two fingers worth of a delicious gouda cheese, a pack of salami, some shaved pancetta, a fresh ciabatta loaf and a French stick, two ripe red tomatoes, a cos lettuce, a case of orange juice, a can of lemon fanta and a can of orange fanta, a bag of juicy strawberries, two local Valencian oranges, a chocolate Danish and a glazed pastry. God this is making me hungry. Once out of the market we walked towards where the river used to flow through the city. It flooded the city in the 1950’s so they decided to drain and reroute it and have converted the old river bed into a park. Before exploring it we made some sandwiches and devoured them, boy were they taste sensations. The well manicured park winds for miles, we watched some baseball, and football, strolled passed fountains, fruit trees, bridges, old buildings and at one stage a crazy old cat lady who had lured about 10 stray cats to feed.

After many miles of walking through the park we stumbled upon a building which looked like Darth Vader’s head! There were equally unique buildings scattered nearby. We found out that they are the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences buildings which contain an opera house/performing arts centre, a science museum, an IMAX cinema/planetarium, an oceanographic park and some restaurants. Valencia is really proud of them and they are truly unique, I felt like I was in the future or in the movie The Island. Two strange incidents happened here, firstly we walked into some private enclosure by accident and had a security guard start hurling abuse at us, and secondly we saw a girl walking a pet ferret. Weird.

We had planned to walk all the way out to the beach, but we kind of got lost and after crossing some train tracks, climbing a few fences and walking through a few dodgy areas we came across a bus stop and worked out it would take us to the beach. Once at the beach the rain started coming down and the wind picked up, it was a shame because it was a beautiful sandy beach which stretched for miles. On a sunny day it would be a hive of activity. There was no point crying over spilt milk though, there are hoards of bars along the beach so we headed in out of the rain and had a few pints. Once the rain had abated we made our way to the America’s cup sailing village, we found the Team NZ camp and took a few photos. It was pretty quiet, but come June 2009 it will be all go again.

We were pretty knackered that night, we played some 500 and then went out for some gelati. Whilst eating our gelatis we were playing the ‘Would you rather game’, for example would you rather be blind or deaf. Obviously neither but you have to answer. Anyway Jez came up with this pearler: ‘Would you rather have no friends for 20 years or get given 2 million dollars, right now’. I’m pretty sure I laughed Gelati out my nose.

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Comments

[caitlin]

amazing