Visiting Valencia, Spain

This past weekend I took my last major trip of the summer: to Valencia, Spain. This was more of a spontaneous trip, because when I got here and my Spanish coworker heard I had never been to Spain, she invited me to visit her at her house there. What an amazing opportunity to see a country from an insider's perspective!

My coworker, Carmen, lives outside Valencia, so I flew into Valencia airport, spent the first evening with Carmen and her friends.

They took me to this beautifully restored restaurant in the old part of Valencia for dinner. The restaurant is famous for its wine (hence the decor). This is me with Carmen.

After dinner, they took me to a bar in the new part of Valencia which was built when they hosted America's Cup and is now being refurbished for a car race they are hosting. The bar was right on the water and it was pretty! And I was absolutely amazed at the number of people out dancing on a Thursday night!

Then Carmen and I spent the night at her friend Ana's house in Valencia, and the next day Ana lent me a bike and showed me around Valencia (Carmen had to take her mom to the doctor).

Me at the Valencia market, which was beautifully restored and also had a ton of really good food. We bought cherries there! (yum!)

This is the Valencia art museum, which is in a cluster of great museums called the "Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias," or the City of Arts and Sciences. It is also next to this park, shown here, that runs along the dry riverbed through town. So pretty!

Here I am with my borrowed bike (you can just see the handlebars) and the museums again: this time, the planetarium (in the foreground) and the art museum from another angle (in the background).

This is another park, this time running along a ridge beside the museums. There aren't actually that many parks in Valencia, but the ones they do have are really nice.

That evening, I took the train to Carmen's hometown of Villareal (Vila-real in Valenciano) where I met up with Carmen and her other friends where we spent ANOTHER evening out. I swear, Spanish people never sleep!! I learned that Valenciano, the local language (related to Catalan), is used in everyday interactions unless one of the participants only speaks Spanish (Castellano). Apparently during the Franco dictatorship, Valenciano was prohibited, and now that they have returned to democracy, they take pride in their unique local language.

The next day I was supposed to go to Barcelona but I think I was dehydrated from all the biking and the hot sun (I'm not used to real summer weather here in London) so I felt sick and decided not to make the trip. Instead, Carmen took me around in the air-conditioned car! Her hometown is small but there was a small church, called a hermitage because people used to make pilgramages there, which was really cute.

We also visited a park called el Desierto de las Palmeras (Palm Desert).

There was a functioning monastery in the Desierto de las Palmeras park, and there were also ruins of an old monastery. Here are the ruins:

Then Carmen took me to see a small town on the coast called Peniscola, which has a beautiful old section with all white buildings, and it also has a castle!

On the last day, we visited another beachside town but I didn't take any pictures. :( It was even hotter that day so we only went out for a couple of hours and then we were so wiped out we went back and had some coffee and rested! And then I was back to London late Sunday night!

One very cool thing I saw on the way back, from the plane: FIREWORKS! It is so neat to see fireworks from above! They look so tiny!