25th July
Valencia

I had chosen Valencia purely on account of the presence of Santiago Calatrava's Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, being as I am a bit of a modernist architecture buff, so that was the first place I headed for when I (eventually) woke up

It was a bit of a strange place, I must admit. The bins etc all around were absolutely overflowing with garbage. One of the first structures I walked past on the way was L'Agora, which seemed to be completely abandoned (I gather it is a performing arts space)


Being as I am both a total cheapskate and not really interested in aquariums or zoos, I skipped over paying the entrance fee for L'Oceanographic, which means you're stuck with arty photos of the outside instead


Heading back, I took in El Museu de les Ciencias Principe Felipe, which is apparently designed to resemble a whale skeleton

The water in the reflecting pools was a sort of dirty brown colour; interestingly as I worked my way round to the other side I found a large team (squad) of chaps with some kind of underwater vacuum cleaner tidying up the various ponds- it seems the water itself is not the issue but rather some kind of residue forming on the white tiles which line all these things

The inside of the Prince Felipe has things to interest plane buffs (which you can look at from below without paying...)

Mirage III (I think)

I believe this is a replica of the first airplane to fly in Spain, as produced by Gaspart Brunet and flown by Juan Olivert on September 5th 1909

...while the outside continues to have options for the architecturally inclined




Wandering further along to L'Hemisferic, a giant IMAX cinema, the surrounding reflecting pools having perspex kayaks and walk on water type balloons to rent (not my cup of tea!!)- note how much clearer the water is this side (post cleaning)



The grand daddy of the complex is the opera house, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia. It is absolutely huge and looks like some kind of alien space ship





Between l'hemispheric and the opera house there was an interesting outdoor exhibit on Women in Science, which was being almost universally ignored by the many posers and #boyfriendsofinstagram . To my eternal shame I was only able to recognise 2 of the 50+ names (Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin, in case you're wondering)


Finally, up on top of the car park was probably my favourite part of the whole complex- a kind of open air "greenhouse with no glass" full of Valencian plant species, "L'Umbracle", which reminded me a bit of the palm house at Kew Gardens





I came away from the complex feeling a bit weird about it- it was all quite sterile and there seemed to be lot of wasted space and opportunities; plus it's abundantly clear that not many of the people visiting have any interest in the actual exhibits themselves (and to be fair I probably belong in that group as well!). I dunno, weird

I headed off into the older part of town for a change of pace, stopping first at a Horchateria for...whatever horchata and fatons is (delicious, BTW, so to a large extent I don't really care what it's made of)



Valencia Cathedral





On the way back I took a wrong turn and utterly by chance stumbled upon the Valencian Art Nouveau-style Mercat de Colon, undergoing renovation but clearly still an absolute gem and unexpected highlight of the trip




And thus, even though it was still early, it was time for bed as I had an early start the next day