Adventure Is Out There!: Valencia

I decided to take a solo trip for a few days to the town of Valencia. It's about 3 hours away by train. It was awesome!

Day 1

I arrived late in the evening and checked into my hostel. I went out exploring in the Plaza Reina/cathedral area:

I went inside the cathedral and they were in the middle of a service.

I had a club sandwich for dinner:

Then I went back to the hostel. I met some amazing girls and got invited to do a pub crawl. we pre-gamed with some cheap sangria (when I say cheap, I mean like 1 Euro cheap):

Don Simon is the way to go.

Let's pub crawl!

The last club was at The City of Art and Science Center, which is amazing!

Super fun! I got back to the hostel around 4:30am and passed out.

Day 2

I woke up and decided to hit the beach, which is a 20 minute bus ride away. I found the bus and ran into some of the ladies from the night before, so I tagged along on their beach day and it turned out to be great.

We laid out for a few hours, then took the bus back. On the way, we saw some sights. Here's the bullring:

This is the square where the post office and city hall are:

We had time to shower before taking a free walking tour called The New City Tour. Valencia has parts that are considered "old town" and parts that are considered "new town." Let's go!
We passed some old town stuff, like the cathedral and fountain:

Okay, New City Tour time! The Jardin de Turia is a dried up river that has been transformed into a practical and beautiful large park:

There are a series of bridges, each with a story, we passed while walking along the "river."

They do outdoor movies in summer:

Music center:

Park for kids inspired by Gulliver's Travels.

How freakin cool is that??
Dog park:

Ponie and Kaney would go nuts!
Now the cool part: we went to The City of Arts and Sciences (where they had the party last night) and in the daytime it's incredible! We learned all the buildings are modeled after something in nature.
The Art Center has 4 venues for shows and music:

It's currently being fixed because it's made of mosaic and pieces started to fall off! So it has to be redone...oops! It's supposed to look like 2 shells and a feather on top.

You can at least see the feather in that one.

Next up: Hemisferic, the largest IMAX theater in Europe.

Modeled after an eye.

Next: The Science Museum

It's modeled after human ribs.

Lastly, in the distance is the Oceanografic, a giant aquarium.

It's the dark blue building in the distance. Modeled after a shark's mouth, complete with teeth and everything.
Here's the botanical garden we partied in last night:

Here's the whole gang:

I also found out they were featured in the new George Clooney movie, Tomorrowland! So I found some pics online:

Neat-o!
Then we bused back to the start because we'd walked pretty darn far. We had a nice dinner:

For a whopping 8 Euro, we got sangria, paella and creme brulee. Awesome!

Traditional Valencian paella is with saffron, rabbit and chicken:

Everything was so good!
We passed this strange gelato shop on the way back to the hostel:

They had mustard, salmon and Red Bull flavors. Yuck!
Then off to bed!

Day 3

Since a couple of the ladies were leaving today, we woke up early and visited the market. Not just any market:

They had all the normal produce and meats, so I just snapped the weird stuff. Like....ostrich eggs, they're huge!

Pig's heads (and Jen's):

Rabbits:

Green and yellow figs and prickly pear:

These are called fartons LOL (they're like long donuts):

Then my dear friend, Annie, and I took the Old City Tour (you probably saw that coming).

Same cathedral, still spectacular.

The people building all the churches were actually the poorest in the city and treated the worst, so as revenge they hid funny things in the architecture. Like this:

On the left, normal gargoyle, on the right, guy taking a shit on passersby. See it? Here's the close-up:

Too funny!

Beautiful church:

Most narrow building in Europe at 107 cm:

We tried horchata.

Valencian horchata is made with chufa (tiger) nuts (they call the Mexican horchata fake because it's made with rice). Here are the nuts:

They tasted somewhat like almonds, but not crunchy. so, like a stale almond. You soak them in water for awhile, then grind them up with the water and add sugar.

It was really interesting. Not my thing, but I'm glad I tried it. There were bits of nuts and it kinda tasted earthy, but VERY sweet.

Ceramic museum (used to be a private residence):

This used to be part of the gate separating Valencia from the outside:

After the tour, we went back to the hostel and my friend, Genica and I decided to go to The City of Arts and Sciences AGAIN because I'd been dying to go inside.

First up: an IMAX movie:

We had to wear these space-y headsets because there was a long selection of languages to choose from and this is how we would hear.

The theater was amazing! Biggest IMAX I've ever seen! The movie we saw was called Jerusalem (the only one playing at that time), but we didn't mind one bit. It was so cool, I felt like I was there.

Film reel:

Next up: The Science Museum! They were having a Pixar exhibit:

We weren't allowed to take pictures, but I snuck this one (I'm a rebel):

It's Up! My fav!

The exhibit was mostly storyboards and clay sculptures of the characters. Each movie had a section and it was kinda cool. Okay, let's go into the museum! The exhibits themselves were like interactive science experiments, nothing all that fascinating, but I was just mesmerized by the building itself:

Baby chicks!

We hung around awhile and left at dinnertime. Our hostel had a "Free Food" bin with non-perishables and we found a mountain of pasta, not to mention our recently departed friends left us some bacon and cheese, so we bought sauce and veggies and made a giant pot of pasta, only spending 3 Euro!