Valencia - Saturday 6th March – Tuesday 8th March

Today we made our way up to Valencia and pitched up at a site 6km outside the city. We often find our campsites in the ACSI guide for ‘off-season’ camping. For ₤10 it comes with a card that entitles you to stay at its listed sites for an all inclusive price of 15 Euros. This compared to standard rates of 25 Euros upwards is very reasonable. We have discovered, contrary to what we imagined, that camping is by no means the cheap way of doing things. When you add up the cost of everything necessary for a reasonably comfortable 6 months it would be cheaper to rent an apartment somewhere. However you would not then have the freedom to travel around and get to know more than one place. We are thinking that now knowing the places we have liked more and those less perhaps this would be an option for the future.
The campsite for Valencia was very standard and functional for those like us who wanted to be in a convenient place for the city. We spent two days making the twenty minute journey by bus into the centre and discovering a little of the city. We had purposefully ensured that we were not here during the week of the ‘Fallas’ festival as we felt there would be too many people and too much noise for the baby. However as with so many celebrations nowadays things were revving up well in advance and there was already much related activity going on. During the ‘Fallas’ there are processions, burning effigies, fireworks and thousands of firecrackers being set off in the street. The firecrackers come in all sizes and some sound like bombs going off. We were vary of any being set off too close to Krista but soon found that it was difficult to escape them. But I do think Graham and I were far more affected by them than she seemed to be. Our hardy baby took it all very much in her stride.
In the run up to the festival hundreds of ‘official’ crackers were also being set off every day in the main square at two o’clock. It seemed that the whole of Valencia would flock there to witness the spectacle and deafening explosion of noise this created. We had heard it from a distance on the Sunday so knew on the Monday when we found ourselves wanting to cross the square at 10 minutes to two that we needed to get as far away as possible. This entailed running as fast as we could in that time from the square and against the throng of people hurry to it. We had done the right thing for even ten minutes away the buildings seemed to reverberate from the shock of what must be a lot of money and all the hard work of the set up going up in some very noisy smoke!
When not dodging firecrackers we visited what we found a fairly mediocre modern art museum and the very impressive bright white and sparkling complex of Opera House, Science and Oceanographic Museums. For refreshment after all the walking and running we tested the ‘Horchata’ drink that is a tradition in the region. Sweet and served semi-frozen we found it quite delicious and were pleasantly surprised from its milkyness to find that it is totally non-dairy. It is made simply from crushed monkey-nuts and also delicious in ice-cream form – a recommendation to vegans in particular (Rachel and Steve)!