Valencia - Home of paella

After leaving Madrid, we headed 3hrs to Valencia on the east coast of Spain. On arriving in Valencia you straight away sense that it is very different to Madrid. It has a much less grand feel to the place, on top of being a lot more enclosed. The city like many in Spain is centred on the old centre, with the important old buildings and more traditional architecture. It then had the business and residential areas surrounding the old centre, with the famous Science park located on the outskirts of this region.

Valencia City Hall

 Valencia is the city that many people living in Madrid go to when they want to visit the beach. This is easy to see why when seeing their many long stretches of beaches, none of which are too over crowded with the usual tourist throngs.

Nice sandy beach with hardly anyone there!

Valencia as a city has a lot to offer, it has some really nice sights, some world famous museums, nice sandy beaches, good climate, great food and an ideal base to visit a few different places nearby, including Madrid and Barcelona (3 and 4 hours away by train respectively). We did most of these things whilst in Valencia, and would strongly recommend anyone doing them if they visit the city.

Most importantly though, whilst in Valencia there is one thing that everyone should do; try Paella! Whether you are a fan of rice dishes or not, I would recommend to still try it. Paella is Valencia's regional dish and one of their identifying symbols. There are two main types of Paella, seafood paella (paella de marisco) and Valencian Paella (paella valenciana). The one we tried was of course Valencian paella. We went to the restaurant La Cigrona, which is supposedly one of the best places to eat paella in Valencia. It is made with rice, chicken, rabbit, beans and green vegetables, with seasoning and cooked in plenty of oil. All in all a truely delicious combination, we just wished we had bigger appetites as the portions were huge!

Two huge plates of paella valenciana

Apart from Paella though the old city centre is a great place to go. Key highlights being the cathedral, the silk exchange (La Lonja de la Seda), which is an UNESCO world heritage site where silk used to be traded up to 500 years ago, although the interior is the only original part of the building. The towers (Torres de Quart and Torres de Serrano), which used to be part of the ancient city wall are also worth a visit, and you can even climb them (for a fee) to get some nice views over the old centre.

Torres de Serrano from the outside

Whilst in Valencia we also thought we would do something we hadn't done for a long time; go for a bike ride! To hire a bike for 24hrs cost us only 9 Euros a piece. It was a great feeling to be back on a bike again after being off of one for over 2 months, although I might add, not as nice as being on our own trusty bikes! We cycled around the centre of the city going through the Jardines de Turia, which is a 9km long garden that used to be a river before being converted into a beautiful garden. It runs past some lovely sites along the way including, Palau de la Musica and City of Art and Sciences.

City of Arts and Sciences

 We continued cycling outside of the city itself as well and went to visit the nearby Albufera Natural Park (where in a small village, paella originated from). It was a nice ride once outside of the city and had some nice views along the coast and across a huge lake located right in the centre of the Natural Park. Unfortunately for us by the time we reached the lake it had started getting extremely windy and some rain was starting to fall so we decided to turn around and head back, cutting our cycle ride short a little bit. But we still made use of the bikes the next day as we had them up until midday, so that we could visit the university and see a bit more of the northern part of the city.

Carmen happy to be back on a bike and no knee pain!

The last thing we did in Valencia was a day trip to a nearby town called Xativa (or Jativa), where there is located a nice castle on top of a hill, which has some stunning views of the nearby area. Xativa is located about an hour south of Valencia by train and is supposedly one of the hottest parts of the country in summer!

Xativa Castle

It is a long walk up to the castle from the train station, through the town centre and up some winding roads, but once getting to the top the views are well worth the effort (you can go up by tourist train if you are feeling lazy). The castle is over 1000 years old and has a lot of history behind it, swapping hands between the Moors and Valencians 4 times in a 200 year period.We spent several hours there exploring its different sections before making our way back to the train station.

The view from Xativa Castle

This ended our stay in Valencia, but our next stop was the island of Mallorca!