And I thought San Francisco was Confusing! (Valencia finally)

Sorry this is so delayed--I couldn't access the internet in Granada. I'm safely in Madrid now though.

You only get one post for Valencia because on the day I arrived, I gave myself a much needed rest day (especially after my much needed adventure) and didn’t take any pictures or really do anything. (Except I went to Subway—wincing because—Subway?? In Spain?) But I had “tortilla frances” (a crepe, as far as I could tell) on my sandwich instead of meat because it was something different. And I took a long nap. And met two girls from the Netherlands in the hostel kitchen. And wrote blogs for you : )

But anyway, most of the stuff I did happened on Thursday. Our hostel was conveniently located right across from the Mercat de Sant Josep—the largest indoor market in Europe I think. 

From the inside

From across the street

I went there to get breakfast with Nicola, a girl from my room and also from Australia. She's traveling in Europe for a year. 
This is my room by the way:

And remember how I said I loved balconies? Well guess, what? We had our very own balcony!

And, on the night I got there, there were people playing music on the street below, so we got to hear them!

Anyway, I bought a huge avocado and some bread and lettuce and oranges because, you know, Valencian oranges are famous. (They were pretty good, but I've had better) And some dried fruit. 

This is where I ended up--it turned out to be part of our tour.

After breakfast, I headed off for a free walking tour of the city --or really, the old quarter. Almost all of the historical cites are clustered in one corner of the city, which is where I spent most of my time. It’s also a labyrinth of tangled streets. If I thought Barcelona and San Francisco were confusing, Valencia was even more. Here’s a map so you can get the picture. (Zoom in)
I ended up usually just figuring out the rough direction I was supposed to be walking and tried to keep going that direction. In addition, distances that look fairly far on the map are often not very far at all. That being said, I passed the site where the tour was supposed to start and ended up at the edge of the old quarter. But I did eventually find the spot!

This was our guide Jamie—from Scotland, so I got to listen to his accent the whole tour ^_^ and. . .check out those curls! It was a rather irreverent tour . . .but easier to tell you with pictures than words.

The sidewalk in a lot of parts of the Old Quarter looks like this!

This is the site of the oldest tribunal in the world (like thousands of years old.) They officially meet to decide how the water from the 7? rivers will be divided up for irrigation, but now they don't do anything really. In the words of my tour guide, "Now they just sit down, stand up, and *BLEEP* off."

Some pretty blue domes.

Oh, this is the tribunal. Just those guys at the front. The rest of those people are tourists trying to get a picture.

I think this is a basilica--it was a home for mentally disabled people.

I loved these streets, but I couldn't capture them fully in a picture.

So the place I ended up earlier when I was looking for the tour is one of the old gates to the city, when Valencia used to be a Roman town. This, is a model for blind people to feel so they can get a feel (haha no pun intended) for what it looks like. Isn't that cool?

An orange grove in the middle of the city, that is, unfortunately, purely ornamental due to the amount of insecticides and pesticides put on the oranges.

This is some rich family's house. And they used to have the Virgin Mary there move on top. If they were in the house, the Virgin Mary would face inside and if they were out, she would face outside. That seems like a bad idea to me--letting people know when you're not home?

Bell tower!

This is a really old horchata shop. It's like over a hundred years old. Horchata is made from chufas or tiger nuts.

Can you see it?

That red house--the really skinny one--used to be the skinniest house in all of Europe. It was only a meter wide all the way through--for tax reasons--can you imagine?

Street Art

Purple chairs!
   
After the tour, I came back and had my lunch and a little break (not quite a siesta) before I rented a bike to ride down the Jardín de Turín, which is the old riverbed of the Turín river. There’s a cool story behind this park—which is that the Turín river was dammed up because it kept flooding the city, so for many years it was just a dry riverbed. Then the city officials wanted to build a thoroughfare for cars on the riverbed—however, the people of the city protested by secretly planting trees in the riverbed at night. Coolest protest ever! Anyway, there’s a nice bike path down the middle of the park, which leads almost all the way down to the port. It also leads past La Ciudad de las Artes y Sciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), a huge complex consisting of a music hall, an aquarium, an interactive science museum, and other things. I didn’t have the time to go inside (although I would have liked to) but the outside was breathtakingly beautiful on its own.

These are the cities of Arts and Sciences

Ah so beautiful!

My plan was to take the Jardín de Turín all the way to the port and then ride down to the beach. But of course, I got on the right street going in the wrong direction. So I got to see a lot of downtown (I guess?) Valencia. The part that is not the old quarter. 

I was afraid that I wouldn’t have any time at the beach before I had to meet someone for dinner, but I eventually did make it to the beach! I was so happy when I saw the ocean. Felt a little like an explorer—Lewis and Clark you know?

This Atlantic, (Mediterranean here) is ridiculously warm compared to our ocean. I mean, it wasn’t like bathtub warm, but definitely heated swimming pool in the morning warm. It was really nice and I was able to go for a short swim. Yay!

After changing my clothes and riding up and down the beach getting lost, I eventually found the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Nicola for dinner. Eating paella was one of my goals for Valencia so I was really happy when Nicola invited me to join her for her paella eating. We went to La Pepica, which was a pretty fancy restaurant right on the beach. (I regret that I do not have a picture with Nicola, but here are her arms with the paella : )

          

 The paella was really very good and I was happy to have someone to enjoy it with. Ooh! We ate out on the patio, and for a while, there was someone serenading outside on an accordion <3 ! We had a nice leisurely dinner in the Spanish style (start at 8:30ish, end at 11:30ish) and then headed back.

I enjoyed Valencia more than Barcelona. Maybe it’s because I’m getting used to being here, maybe it’s because I was able to talk to people, maybe because I was in the old quarter and it didn’t feel so large and overwhelming, maybe because I gave myself permission to just rest. . .it seemed more laid back and accessible than Barcelona. I would like to go back someday maybe : )

I’m off to go explore Granada now! (Well, as I wrote this I was. . .but you know how that goes. No internet in Granada, not so much internet in Madrid. Sorry the formatting is so funky)