We arrived in Valencia on Monday evening, after a 7.5-hour drive from Andorra via France. We checked into Hotel Melià, showered, and went in search of food. Narelle had already arrived but was out exploring, and we bumped into Ur from Toronto, so cobbled together a group of five to have dinner at the restaurant on the corner.

Again, completely unused to restaurants only serving dinner after 8pm, we got stuck into some drinks and snacks, before ordering up a feast and pushing our bedtime out til about 11pm. Day one, done.

Bioparc Valencia

Glen opted to attend the conference so that left me free to explore Valencia. Tuesday, I set off for Bioparc Valencia, the zoo at the start of the 7.5km-long Jardín del Turia. I didn’t expect much from this zoo, but I was completely blown away.

The giant elephant entry statement was an awesome first impression, then the walk over the Turia on a big bridge into the park, was a nice way to begin. Less nice was being hassled to take a “souvenir photo” beside some gorilla sculptures, which you can’t take photos of yourself unless you get the official one. On leaving the zoo, I saw that they’d already printed out the photos, which seemed like an odd choice for a conservation organisation. But apart from that annoyance, my experience was awesome.

I’m not sure when the zoo was built, but it must have been within recent memory. The exhibits were all open air with low-level fencing and no bars. They utilised moats a lot, and whenever they could mix species, they did. 

Flamingos and fossa were the first animals I saw, which thrilled me no end! Then there was a walk-through Madagascar (lemur) exhibit with free-roaming animals (and one very attentive staff member). The cafe had a spectacular view across water to giraffe, antelope, zebra and birds. Another exhibit had baboons with some other birds and a hippo! 

Gorillas, chimps, elephants, lions and more…I saw EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL they had. And it wasn’t like I had to look very hard either. Every animal was African (though I’ve seen that there’s a Biopac at Malaga which also has South-east Asian species) but they had so many. Not once did I feel disappointed about the lack of animal viewing. I got through it all in about two hours and was thrilled with my morning.

Jardín del Turia

After leaving the Bioparc, I went down into the Jardin. This used to be the river that ran through the city until they diverted it to stop the city from flooding. They converted into a mixed-use green space that has things like tennis courts, basketball courts, sculptures, gardens, running tracks etc going through it, all the way down the city.

Despite the blisters on my feet, I managed to walk all of it, stopping about halfway to check out the Old City for a bit and grabbing a disappointing lunch nearby. I made it all the way down to the City of the Arts and Science, the giant futuristic complex that collocates the aquarium, IMAX cinema, and the opera house.

The gardens weren’t as beautiful as I was expecting, but it’s summer and it’s well used, so it was a pleasant way of getting through the city that didn’t involve going down the traffic-clogged streets.

The Opera

Tuesday evening we went to the Opera. Narelle was keen to see inside the Opera House and the best way of doing that was to see something. We saw Verdi’s Ernarni. The opera house was very modern and pleasant, but I guess I was expected typical opulence, rather than austere post-modernism combined with an opera that I’d never heard of and didn’t really care for.

Unfortunately, we didn’t do our research before seeing it so I was completely lost as to who was doing what to whom and why (though the motivation of the characters left a lot to be desired, especially for their sudden change of heart for no definable reason). 

The singers were good, there were a lot of them, but after the first two acts, Glen and I had seen enough and without a shred of guilt, left during the intermission. We emerged into pouring rain and a beautiful rainbow crowning the opera house. We read up about the opera on the way back to the hotel and unsurprisingly the main guy dies, by suicide, because someone told him to. Bra-vo.

Oceanografic

Wednesday was for the aquarium — Oceanografic — Europe’s largest aquarium. It was HEAVING with people, mostly students. It’s a large sprawling complex with exhibits at ground level and below. I’m not a fan of seeing whales and dolphins in aquariums so bypassed the dolphinarium, but wandered through the Arctic exhibit, which had two Beluga whales. 

I was less enthusiastic about my experience here than at the Bioparc, maybe because of all the people or the closed in spaces, but it was generally good. Heaps of fish, sharks, jellyfish etc, as well as other less expected animals like Aldabra tortoises, crocodiles, and birds. I spent about two hours here as well, then went off to meet Glen and Ravinder at Mercat de Colon.

Old Town

Mercat de Colon used to be something, a train station perhaps, but has been transformed into an eatery. I was expecting something like the big market in Madrid with a hundred stalls and lots of tapas-style food, but this was about eight restaurants with seating. We sat, we ate, we moved on.

The walk took us up to the Silk Exchange and the other food markets (which sold fresh produce but was shutting down for siesta). We looked in the Silk Exchange, wandered around the old streets, then caught the tram back to the hotel.

In the evening, Glen went off for dinner with doctors, while I went back to the Old Town for dinner at Hotel Helen Berger, a restaurant we’d seen on our earlier walk. Delicious food, nice relaxed evening there, before grabbing an ice cream in a square, then a jug of Agua de Valencia (orange juice, cava, gin and vodka — I could only drink half), before catching the tram back to the hotel and getting in just after Glen.

Wrap-up

Thursday was a quieter day, with a drive to the beach for all of an hour as I forgot my sun cream. The water was still, the temperature pleasant. I relaxed in the afternoon. In the evening we had the end of conference function at a hotel by a different beach, where I had enough to drink to enjoy myself. I ended up talking to the non-doctors and probably had a better time than Glen.

We got home at midnight, after hailing down a taxi driver who got so concerned that he was going a better route to what Google Maps was telling him and us to go. We managed to let him know that we didn’t care and that we trusted him to get us to the hotel. He calmed down after that.

Barcelona

On Friday, after the morning conference stuff, I drove us up to Barcelona, taking about 3.5 hours to arrive. We checked into the hotel then went for dinner at Disfrutar. Twenty-eight courses and 11 matched wines (plus a glass of cava) – four hours flew by. Delicious food, interesting flavours, creative design, well worth the diversion to Barcelona for the night.