Nobody has asked us why we decided to spend the bulk of our summer (July 3 to August 3) in Valencia, Spain. This is only surprising if you consider that Frommers.com only lists two attractions for this city on Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast. Valencia doesn’t even warrant mention by Rick Steves, one of our favorite travel experts.
So why are we spending a month in Spain’s third largest and apparently attraction-deprived city?
Well, admittedly our first choice had been Barcelona, but summer lodging prices were much more attractive in Valencia. But a key to remember is that we aren’t on vacation: we’re working as we go, and we need occasional places to settle in for a while. That we settle into some interesting locations is a benefit. The only thing about Valencia most Americans seem to know is that they grow oranges there, which is true, but it was the beaches and the architecture of Valencia that clinched the deal for us.
Rewind thirty-plus years. I (Chuck) was still in high school thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like George Costanza, I wanted to be an architect. At least until my best friend’s father let me spend a day at their architecture firm and I saw just how hard those poor bastards worked. Then I decided I wanted to be an astronaut, but that’s a blog for another day.
I still have an affinity for architecture. I think of it as a form of art, and flipping through Google Earth pictures of Valencia, I was sold. This city is filled with palm-lined streets, marble sidewalks, classical Mediterranean buildings, and mid 1800’s structures like the Plaza de Toros (bullfighting ring) which we look down into every morning from our balcony. And that’s just the classical architecture.
Valencia also has no shortage of modern architecture, most notably the Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), a spectacular complex of museums and performance halls. Designed by architects Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela and completed in 1998, it’s primarily known for its Smithsonian-like science museum, but we primarily want to marvel at the building.
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| Palm-Lined Valencian Streets |
Despite Frommer’s very abbreviated list of things to see in Valencia (and Rick Steves’ non-existent list), here’s what we’ve bookmarked in TripAdvisor as things we might try to see while we’re here:
- La Malvarossa Beach
- Bioparc Valencia (their very unique zoo)
- Jardi Botanic (their botanical gardens)
- City of the Arts and Sciences
- The Basilica of San Vicente Ferrer (a church)
- The Iglesia de los Santos Juanes (the church of St John)
- Torres de Serranos (the city’s ancient guard towers)
- The Iglesia del Patriarca o del Corpus Christi (another church)
- Torres de Quart (15th century towers)
- The Cathedral of Valencia (their relic is the Holy Grail. No, really)
- L’lber Museo de Los Soldaditos de Plomo (the world’s largest museum of toy soldiers)
- La Lonja de la Seda (a 15th century fortress-like building)
- Plaza del Mercado (one of the most renowned markets in Europe)
- Miguelete (the massive tower next to the cathedral)
- Clue Hunter Valencia (an interactive puzzle/riddle solving game adventure)
- San Agustin Church (yet another church)
- Palacio del Marques de Dos Aquas and Ceramic Museum (everyone says the palace is the real site to see, not the ceramics it houses)
- Plaza Ayuntamiento (Valencia’s town hall, a work of architectural art)
- Basilica de le Virgen do los Desamparados (where they house the giant Mary statue they parade around the city once a year in March: you’d recognize it if you saw it)
- The Post Office (yep, the post office: another work of architectural art)
- Taurino Museum (a museum of bull fighting)
- A bull fight – Chuck, at least, plans to attend one
- Seafood, tapas, and tempranillo wines, oh my!
Finally, I should point out that the island of Ibiza, where my great grandfather immigrated from, is just 50 miles off the coast. I had hoped to get over there to do a bit of ancestry research, but it’s just far enough to make a day trip impractical, and besides, a day trip likely wouldn’t yield a lot of genealogical information.
Obviously there’s lot of travel blog material to be found in Valencia, plenty enough for us to discover what it is that Frommers and Rick Steves seem to have overlooked. Stay tuned for lots more orange-scented blogs coming from Valencia.
