Short break in Valencia part.1

We were tired of the too long winter, so we decided to visit a country with a warmer climate. Since we are cheap and mostly close to broke, we checked special offers online. Valencia in Spain looked promising. We have been to Spain a few times, but, since it is absolutely huge, there are lots of places we haven’t seen yet.

Here is the first part of our short guide to a very big city of Valencia.

We love Spanish food

Vegetarians, please look away. Or skip this part. There are also non-food related experiences to be had in Valencia.

We tried heavenly cured ham in Spain.

We have our own Slovenian type of cured ham. It is called Karst prosciutto ham. We eat too much of it. In Italy we gorged ourselves on Italian paninis with prosciutto. But, when in Spain, we love to eat the local version. We love it. There was a shop Porcus in Girona (close to Barcelona ), where you could stop for a short break and drink a glass of wine and enjoy the taste of the freshly made sandwich with some jamon and tomatoes. During our short stay, we couldn’t find something similar in Verona, but you can order tapas with jamon everywhere.

You can live on tapas

We realized, eating out can be budget option in Spain. We checked a few restaurants in the centre and finally sat down in the one closest to our place. Even with English translations we weren’t so sure what we were ordering. After some heavy research we realized we love calamari, olives stuffed with anchovies,  ensaladilla rusa (Spanish potato salad) and tortilla Espanola (Spanish potato tortilla or potato pie). We were not so impressed by Patatas bravas. So called spicy potatoes were not really spicy by our standards.

We ate a lot. Too much. But we also took some time for sightseeing.

Valencians are not very bull friendly

We went to famous Plaza de Toros de Valencia, the bullfighting ring.  We also visited the Bullfighting museum. We were not impressed. They show you a movie about toreadors, picadors and other national heroes being not very friendly to the bulls. There is also a bullfighting academy in Spain. We were happy to get out of the museum and get some fresh air. We were a bit green and changed to eating vegetarian tapas for a while. Main bullfighting events in this arena are in March and July. But I think I can say for both of us that bullfights are not something we would like to see live.

Valencia is perfect for long walks

We love walking. Even though our Airbnb host advised us to take the bus to the coast, we knew better. We walked from centre to the dried out riverbed. Kilometres of land were taken away from Turia river and changed to outdoor walking, yoga, sunbathing, dog walking and people watching heaven. After a few hours with lots of stops and posing we reached first the City of sciences and much later, the Valencian coast. We arrived in the time for sunset. We were of course dog tired and took the bus back.

Oceanographic has 45000 representatives of 500 different marine species

Oceanographic Park is filled with all types of different fishes. Don’t go, unless you have at least half of a day to spend there. Prices of entrance tickets are a bit high, but it was worth the price. We were there on Valentine’s Day, so a big part of the park was still under renovations. It should be all nice and finished by now. There were dolphins, whales, belugas and all types of different sea creatures. There were some we meet before while scuba diving and some I hope we never do.

What else can you do in Valencia? Soon in part 2.

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