The Beach

Today Georgia and I took the subway to the beach. It’s about a 15 minute walk to the closest subway station from our Airbnb. The beach is then 2 different subway cars to actually get to the beach. It is only a couple of miles as the crow flies but we’re staying in the old section of town.

The beach in Valencia is absolutely beautiful. It stretches for miles in both directions and it’s like fine sugar. There is a boardwalk taking you close to the waters edge. This is important because it’s about 50 yards to the water and the sand sure can get hot. After we tanned for a bit, we ventured into the water. I was a bit hesitant having been tossed by a strong wave in Rio once but there was nothing to fear. Though the waves sometimes were big, I could easily navigate the breakers. The water was so warm and pretty clear. Valencia has many blue flag beaches which means they are not polluted. We saw lots of people paddle boarding and somebody fly boarding (That’s the jet pack that pushes you between 2 and 4 metes above the water). Georgia wanted to try it but she’s going to wait and do it with a friend. There are also jet skis to rent and we may try that later in the week.

After a couple of hours, we decided it was time to head back to the apartment. It was so much fun that we plan to go back most mornings when we get back from Morocco.

After we freshened up a bit, I wanted to try a local drink called horchata. It is made from a nut called a tiger nut. It is served cold with donuts called fartons that you dip into the horchata. We headed over to a beautiful building called the Mercat Colon. This is a beautiful building with bar, restaurants, and horchatarias. We weren’t impressed with the horchata and fartons but we plan to try them again somewhere else just in case this wasn’t a good horchataria.

We ended the day by going out for tapas at a restaurant close to our Airbnb. Tapas are appetizers so I figured if we ordered 3, that would have been good for dinner. The portions were huge so next time we probably only need 1. We tried a variety of croquettes, calamari, and patatas bravas which are fried potato chunks with spicy paprika, a spicy ketchup, and mayonnaise. The food was pretty good. Georgia also ordered another small pitcher of Agua de Valencia.

Sorry about no pictures. I’ll add them later.Read more