Spanish Experience: Valencia

After our three days in Madrid, we headed by bus four hours to Valencia. The city of Valencia is considerably smaller than Madrid and Barcelona and right on the Mediterranean Sea. Our hostel was right off of one of the main plazas, although when we first arrived we went a round about way of getting there so when we realized how close we really were it made for a good laugh. Hillary has a good friend studying in Valencia so after we arrived and settled into the hostel we met her for dinner and to show us around.

She had heard there was a great little bar that had paella parties for international students on Tuesdays, it ended up being right by the hostel. The deal was if you bought a drink you could get a plate of paella for 3 euro. The woman who worked there must have really liked us, because she brought out huge plates of Valencia paella, it was out of this world (Amy, you have to learn how to make this, I really think you would love it)! Since it was a long day of traveling we called it an early night because we knew we wanted to wake up early and go to the tourism office.

Valencia has two big attractions, the first is the Bioparc that we visited on Wednesday. The Bioparc was great because it is a free range zoo, this meaning that all animals enclosures are natural and they co-habitate as they would in nature (with the exception of the lions and leopards). If it was allowed we would have been able to touch the animals, that is how close we were to them. We of course chose the day to go that must have been the Spanish kindergarten day to go to the zoo, because there were school groups everywhere! All in all even with screaming Spanish children it was a really fun time. That night we had read some reviews about a great tapas restaurant.

Valencia's other main attraction is the Arts and Sciences campus near the beach. A famous Spanish architect designed these five really modern and cutting edge buildings to house different things in the arts and sciences. We went to the Oceanographico (pretty much a bonified aquarium). It was a pretty standard aquarium but the architecture was awesome! We ended up sending a long time at the Oceanographico, my friend Margaret got a huge grasshopper in her hair, getting it out was quite memorable. After the campus of Arts and Sciences we went to the beach, for five girls from states with no access to the ocean we went crazy. We were jumping up and down in the sand, taking pictures, and walking barefoot into the freezing cold water. The Spanish I am sure thought we were insane for wanting to go into the water. Katharine thought she might bring her bathing suit and go all the way in, but after how cold it was, that quickly changed.

All in all Valencia was great, it was the most laid back of the three cities, mostly because it was the smallest and quaint. I would definitely consider going back to Valencia. Love from Paris...