Valencia, Spain

We did not do too much travel planning for Valencia. We just spend 2 weeks in 4 different Spanish cities with P & K, which were thoroughly researched and planned.. Now P & K have left, and we are again left to our own planning (or lack thereof). So… the first thing to do in a new city is to go on a walking tour. 2.5 hours later, we had all the info we needed. We learned history, saw the big sites downtown, and now knew what places we wanted to visit. Nothing needed advance reservations and it made us feel better about being unprepared. Most of the museums were reasonable with many being only 2 euros for admission which made it easier. Walking through the old town was easy and it didn’t really feel like a big place even though Valencia is Spain’s third biggest city. We ended up walking pretty much everywhere in our 4 days here, and only took public transportation once.

During our stay, besides the market and silk exchange, we also visited an art museum, cathedrals, the city gate tower and an archeological site and museum. We enjoyed them all but none of them were particularly amazing or something we haven’t seen before. That’s OK because they were all reasonably priced. What we really like about Valencia was just hanging out in the plazas slowly sipping our drinks and having some great tapas and other Spanish food. We were able to meet some other nomads one day for a quick meetup and learn how others are traveling.

We did get out of old town to see some of the newer attractions for the city. There is a park in the old river bed that goes out to the sea (after a particularly destructive flood in 1957, they rerouted the river to a route farther away from the city center – leaving the old riverbed to be developed. Luckily they turned it into a big park area) – many of the cities museums area also nearby. There is an IMAX theatre, a science center and an oceanographic museum. All of them were modern architecture which was in contrast with the old buildings downtown. We weren’t in the mood to see these attractions, but did enjoy the walk through the river park. There was a kids playground (Parque Gulliver) which was a bunch of slides and climbing structures in the shape of a lying down Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels. Very fun. The best part of our walk was having a fantastic lunch at a place called Casa Montana. We lucked out and got in right when it opened, without a reservation.

Our airbnb was just fine. It was just on the outside of the old town but everything was still walkable like I said. Valencia does have some great huge beaches, but we didn’t do any beach sitting during our stay because it is late October…. and we are heading for another beach town next. Alicante!!!