Valencia

After a big day yesterday, I was surprisingly full of energy and keen to see what Valencia had to offer. I started by walking around the town, looking at some very old buildings before I realised it would be far more beneficial to participate in a free walking tour to get some context of what I am looking at. So this is exactly what I did. Although this was cool and informative, he had a very thick accent and spoke very quickly, making it sometimes difficult to understand. But it was really cool to get some history of the city. He showed us the different castle limits under Greek, Roman, and Ottoman rule. Similar to Nice, you could once again see the influence that each occupation had on the town and its architecture. Perhaps the most interesting thing he explained during the tour relates to the "river" that passes through the town. I had noticed last night that what I identified as a river on google maps, was in fact, an incredibly long park stretching from the West to the Ocean in the East. I remember looking over the bridge, expecting to see water and instead saw a football pitch, a child's playground, and even a rugby ground. I was very confused until the tour guide explained that although it was a river until the 50s, a huge flood had come through the town and destroyed much of the town. It is uniquely flat, and so once it broke the river wall, most of the city was engulfed. To mitigate this, a diversionary river was built to bypass the town and send the water to the ocean via a man-made river, now to the south of the town. Quite an impressive engineering achievement. All this, and you'd be surprised to know it only rains 32 days per year. More interestingly still, the original plans were to turn the old river bed into a highway connecting the city to Madrid. But due to some legal confusion that I did not understand, the river was owned by a single individual and although the government took away his holdings, he and the town rejected the idea and protested to keep it green. The result is a town built for bikes and scooters as opposed to cars. Hundred of people use the park each day for recreation, and the city has less dependence on vehicles. The benefit of this is that you can get anywhere in the city quite easily as the park is a highway for bikes and you are always close to it. Tomorrow, I planned to cycle the whole 20km to the beach and back. But today, after the tour, I walked a brief section, and the most stunning part was how green and colourful it was. It was mind-blowing. I've never seen such a well maintained park in my life, and it was 10km long. I stopped at one last church on my way home, and I was done for the day. I headed home and prepared for the long bike ride tomorrow.Read more