Weekend in Valencia

With three and a half months under our belt, we have realized just how fast two years is going to fly by.  Initially I had given myself permission to use the first six months as a "settling in" period, giving us some slack if we didn't travel as often as we would have liked, with the perspective that anything we did manage to see would be a bonus.   Now, looking ahead towards a very busy summer, I realized it's time to start being a little more proactive in our approach.  What do they say? If you don't have a plan, you plan to fail...Though, Chris and I never seem to have plan...we figure it is never too late to start.  So last week we decided to sit down and "map out" what we wanted our travel plans to look like over the next 6-12 months.  It was a blast! 

Mia being cute. 

Once we DID start to plan, that's when we realized -- summer is BUSY.  Business trips, trainings, little weekend getaways, and visitors...all capped off with a two week trip home for the whole family to the US in August!  It feels like the whole summer is planned already, but definitely not in a bad way...it's all good stuff!  We have our first wave of visitors (hooray!!!) coming almost back to back.  Chris' father, John, and Lynne (aka Granddad and Meemah) were the first to arrive-- pulling into port (literally) at the end of a two week long trans-Atlantic cruise earlier this month.  It was so wonderful to see some familiar faces and to share our day to day excursions and adventures with family.  Sadly, the kiddos had a stomach bug for a chunk of the week they were here, making it a little challenging to do a lot of the bigger excursions outside the city we had planned to do together as a group, but our guests were understanding and had a great week regardless.  They saw a huge chunk of the Barcelona city sites, and were happy to spend some time staying local, strolling the streets of Poblenou enjoying the bocadillos, pastries, and local charm. 

Next up is Chris's mother, Judie, set to arrive in one week!  And just three weeks after that, my mother will be here for the first half of July...we are beyond excited for all these visitors.  

Then there are the things you do not plan...As I sat at the dining table drinking coffee after breakfast one morning last week, I saw a new groupon email pop up for a discounted hotel stay in Valencia.  I get groupon emails daily, and read them mostly for a daily Spanish lesson to see if I can understand what they say, but lately have been seeing some great deals on hotels in various places we are looking to go.  I already passed up one offer for a super cheap hotel in Budapest which I should have grabbed, so when I saw this offer for Valencia -- a place we had talked about wanting to travel-- I thought, NOW is the time.  It's time to stop talking and start doing.

"You wanna go to Valencia this weekend?  It's 32 euros for a night with this Groupon..."  I asked Chris, knowing full well what his answer would be. 

"Yeah, man." 

And that was that. 

Within one hour we had a rental car booked, the hotel booked, Molly's doggie sitters booked, and a weekend trip to look forward to. 

We had one night of hotel, so we decided to drive down to Valencia Friday night after Chris got out of work, then spend all day Saturday in the city and come home Saturday night.  It is about 3.5 hours south of Barcelona, right on the coast...there is something about having a car that just feels "normal" again.  I can't really explain it. 

One night, and we still can't travel light

"We're in a CAR!"

We got on the road around 7pm Friday night, and flew through the city...shocked by how little traffic there was.  Here we are, it is rush hour and we are heading south on a Friday before a long weekend (Monday was a holiday here in Spain too).  I had to wonder what 93 in Boston would look like heading south to the Cape at rush hour before Memorial Day weekend....not the same, I would imagine. 

Leaving Barcelona

Yet, as soon as my haughty-little "isn't Barcelona so great" remark came out of my mouth, the traffic stopped dead.  And I mean, DEAD.  Like, not moving in 45 minutes dead.  Yet, in typical BCN fashion, everyone got out of their cars and started milling around the highway chatting it up with other people and catching some rays.  Me?  Not super happy, and I didn't take a picture of that, as it was an hour of my life I'd rather not remember.

We made it to our hotel around 11:30pm, and checked in, got some sleep, and were up and out around 9am the next day.  I have to say, we were pleased with our groupon hotel.  When we arrived, I could see why it was so cheap.  We were about a 5-10 minute drive outside the city, and our check-in involved someone checking off our name from a penciled in list of "guests" and then handing over one card key with the room number and a remote for the TV, not a word said.  OK, nothing fancy, but it was clean and cheap and we were in Valencia.  Plus, breaky the next AM was free and really, REALLY good.  Also important to note, the restaurant inside the hotel was decorated with huge, life size photographs of nude people in yoga poses.  Boobs.  Butts.  It was all out there.  Have your OJ, and enjoy some nudes.  Chris suggested we take a picture, but I had to refuse that one...the American tourists with the loud crazy kids running around are snapping photos of the nudie pictures on the wall...not the look I'm going for :)

So, Valencia. 

Valencia is a beautiful city, the third largest behind Madrid and Barcelona...and surprisingly not as touristy as I would expect on a holiday weekend in May.  While we do do our research before we travel, I'm not one to write a ton of facts and history on the places we will travel -- I'll leave wikipedia to that.  I will say that it is a gorgeous city, full of a mix of old and new architecture that was the most impressive I've seen in my life so far.

There is a lot to see and do there, but we decided to focus our efforts this time on the Arts and Sciences section of the city, home to the Aquarium - known as the best in Europe.  We had planned to spend the morning walking around there, then head over to the "old town" for some famed Paella (invented in Valencia) for lunch and do some wandering around the market until early evening (or until the kids started to lose it --which ever came first) then head home.

The Aquarium was beautiful -- huge, with lots of outdoor spaces and, shockingly, not crowded at all!  The kids loved it.

My little Mia surrounded!

They loved this -- Evan especially. A little child-sized tunnel into a little room. Every minute or so a wave would break over the glass, Evan was in there for at least 30 mins.

We spent about 4 hours walking around the Aquarium, then headed down the rest of the strip to see all the architecture and let the kids nap a bit in the stroller...The Arts and Sciences area is about a mile long, lined with incredible sci-fi looking buildings (I'm sure there are lots of architects names I should be dropping).  Some of the most awe inspiring buildings I've ever seen. 

We stopped to sample some horchata - a Valencian drink made from Tiger nuts, unique to this area.  It tasted a lot like iced chai, delicious super refreshing on a hot day...

Tiger nuts

We ended our day in the old town...wandering the streets around the huge fresh market.  There were live street performers, and plenty of street vendors with huge pans of paella serving folks sitting at street side counters with cold draft beers and fresh olives.  We peaked inside the fresh market, then settled into a outdoor table to enjoy some paella for lunch and take in as much as we could before heading out. 
An electric guitarists came by, playing some Hendrix, and wooing our kids out of their seats and onto the street for some dancing. 
Sadly, my picture taking had slowed at this point, as I was more concerned with my fork getting to my mouth, then capturing everything on film (something I need to work on), but here are a few from our afternoon stroll in old town.

All in all, a great visit -- a place we'd love to come again.  Spain itself has so much to offer, so it felt good to "keep it local" for this one, and have a little family adventure close to home yet a world away from the everyday.