What can we say? We loved it! The apartment, the city, the people, it was all great.
We checked in to our penthouse apartment with our hosts Ruben and Anne. Their place was awesome, especially the terrace compete with sunset view and BBQ so we made full use of it on the first day. After a bit of a walk round their town of Catarrojas we picked up some supplies and enjoyed a very chilled out evening on the terrace. Just what we needed after the craziness of Barcelona.
Our first day in Valencia and we decided to head to the Biopark as it's cheap on a Sunday. It took us a while to find the way in, somehow we managed to end up halfway between the entrance and the ticket office underneath a bridge we were supposed to be on. Oops! It's like a cross between a safari park and a zoo, and the best bit is definitely the Madagascar area where the lemurs are free to run around you. James was staring at the ones in trees, oblivious to the ones chasing each other a foot behind him! We had lots of fun watching them all playing, especially when we saw the babies. Seeing the people at the gorilla enclosure made us sad though. He looked so fed up and we're not surprised considering the amount of people ignoring the signs saying 'keep quiet' and 'no flash photos'. Christine found some aardvarks to sing to "there's a large, dark aardvark in the park" lalala! We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening starting to explore the city, wandering the side streets and enjoying a couple of cheap drinks. The city is even more beautiful at night, all the important buildings are lit from the ground and looked spectacular.
Our second and last (aww) day in Valencia and we set off the explore more of the city. We enjoyed a bit of our usual aimless wandering finding some of the historic buildings, the old market was particularly nice - very Gaudi-esque. Since we made an early(ish) start today we treated ourselves to a 3 course dinner in the sunshine in a restaurant we stumbled across in a random square. Very tasty but very filling, we both wished we could have had a siesta after that but we went to walk it off instead. Valencia used to have a river running around the top of the city but because of past flooding they've redirected it and turned the old river bed into a series of themed gardens. We were aiming for Gulliver - an enormous play area shaped like the character when he was tied to the ground in Lilliput. He was great fun, covered in steps, slides and passage ways. We both definitely regressed a few years!
We finished off the day with our first trip to a beach. It was deserted and we had it all to ourselves to watch the sunset and have a bit of a paddle. A beautiful city and a brilliant couple of days, if only it was a bit longer.
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