Day 22: The City of Oranges

Date: Saturday 19th April
Staying: Devesa Gardens – Valencia, Spain
Distance Travelled: 0 Miles
Song of the day: We are the waiting – Green Day

Our day in Valencia got off to a slow start. We were out at the bus stop at 9.12am, awaiting the trusty local bus to Valencia. One hour later the bus arrived. No problems, at least we were on the way.

Valencia is a port city, and host of the last America’s Cup, so they have a lot of impressive waterside buildings on the way into town. We were dropped off on the Grand Via. No problems, we’d just find our way to an Information Centre, get a map, and figure out what to see in Valencia. After a few false starts (there is more than one Grand Via in Valencia, and ours was off the city map), we made our way to what seemed to be the centre of town, and found an Information Kiosk. Kiosk is the operative word in that sentence, being a building a size of a hot water cupboard, manned by one person, looking very harassed and apparently full of flu. We joined the 10 person deep queue to get our map. 45 minutes later we had befriended the people behind us in the queue, thought up some new slogans for Valencia, and we were at the front of the queue. Our anticipated time in Valencia now being half over, we thought we’d better go and get some sightseeing done.

After all that waiting around, Valencia is actually a very pretty city, even though we managed to end up at the Central Markets twice, thinking it was a cathedral on the illustrated map of Valencia. The Plaza Ayuntamiento was lovely, and while in the queue at the Information Centre, we admired (what I took to be), the Town Hall and the Post Office, that boasted syncopated chiming clocks. Another highlight was the town old town gates, two overwhelming edifices that would have scared the pants off anyone trying to come in unlawfully I’m sure.

Having had our fill of Valencia, we returned to the campsite, and took a walk down to the beach. Which was gorgeous. We could see right down the coast to Valencia (about 13 km away), and it was totally deserted. We sat down to admire the view with a couple of beers, opened with the car keys, having discovered neither of us had thought to bring a bottle opener. Well, you can’t have everything can you?