Valenciana, Valencia 🍊

Dear Valencia,
You grew on us!
We got an overnight stop recommended by fellow travellers where we arrived around midday. I’m not sure if it was the weather or the big city, but somehow I was a bit sceptic on how we’ll feel here or if it was safe to park the van and leave it all by itself.
Turns out: great spot to stay for a couple of nights and Valencia is a very enjoyable city!

All three days we’ve been in Valencia we did a bike tour and as far as we know Jaro likes it (at least no complaints and he even sleeps in his carriage).

The first tour wasn’t laid out to be that long: we went to get coffee at the Tallat coffee roastery. It didn’t seem far - just the other end of the city’s beach - but it was about 4 km. From there we saw a park on the map that seemed to have bike routes. So we took one of them to go into the old town and check that out a bit. Then we made our way back home. 20 km check!
The second tour was only to get into old town for our walking tour through the cities most popular ancient sites (7 km there and later back again). The walking tour was worth its time and we really learned a lot about Valencia*!
The third day we (again) went to have coffee (same place as the first day) and then took a closer look at the Ciutat de les Arts i Ciencias, which turned out to be again about 14 km.
Valencia has great bike paths and we loved exploring it that way!

*things we remember from our walking tour through Valencia’s old town
- the Túria river got redirected to protect the city from flooding ; the former riverbed turned into the park we rode our bikes through the first day (Jardi Túria) - we guess it’s about 10 km park with separate walking-, jogging- and biking lanes & nice fauna
- Agua de Valencia is far from agua (it contains vodka, gin, cava and orange juice)
- Paella originates from south of Valencia (see next footprint)
- Valencia was one end of the Silk Road —> this made the city flourish until around 1492, when “the americas were discovered” and the economic focus shifted west
- Romans were everywhere —> Valencia was a retirement place for Roman soldiers
- the Cathedral was originally a Mosque from the Moores, then turned into a church when the city became Christian (the king who turned it catholic didn’t have the money to make it more of a Christian church which is why he looked for investors and all seven families who sponsored the redesign have a picture of themselves a window above one entrance)
- Valnecias Mercat Central is the biggest indoor market of Europe
- more than 300 days of sun per year (and most of the rain in October)
- there are some wild festivities one of them is I think in March when everyone turnes crazy about a week of all-day-fireworksRead more