Finally, about thirty hours later than originally anticipated, I arrived in Spain. My plan had been to spend a day in Barcelona, two days in Valencia, four days in Madrid and then return to Barcelona for three days. Because of the communist, frog-eating strikers in France (yes, I’m still pissed), I had to cancel my first day in Barcelona and my first night in Valencia. I arrived in Valencia at 8 am with no sleep and had to catch a train the next morning to Madrid. Well, let’s see what we can do.
The first thing I had to do was find the hotel. As luck would have it, the hotel was much easier to find from the bus station than it would have been from the train station and I was there in no time. I was pretty much dead on my feet, so I decided that I needed a nap. I set the alarm on my iPhone for 11 am and got a few hours of shuteye. When I woke up, I looked on the internet for a Valencia tourist map. I found one and noticed that most of the landmarks were just to the north or just to the south of the train station. Since I had to get a reservation for my train to Madrid anyway, I figured that my tour of the city would begin there.
Getting to the station and getting the reservation were both fairly painless procedures. When I got out of the metro station, which I knew was close to the train station but not at the train station, I noticed two structures. One was what appeared to be the Colosseum except that it was all in one piece and it wasn’t in Rome. Next to that was a large, colorful building. I made a mental note that I would have to photograph both, but first I had to find the train station. After looking around for around 45-seconds, I realized that the large, colorful building WAS the train station. Cool. After getting my ticket, I headed south.
I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going and I didn’t see a lot of stuff to the south of the station. I walked along what appeared to be a main road until I came upon Valencia’s football stadium. I thought it was cool that it was right in the middle of town. If you’ve been following this blog then you know that I love me some football stadiums, so I walked around it and took some pictures. Afterwards, I followed the main road to a bridge and a park in the middle of the old part of the city.
I walked around the park for a while and it eventually led me close to the train station again. Well, that was as good a point of reference as any so I headed back. This time, I turned north and went to see what I could find in this part of town. Here, there were many more landmarks. There was a huge cathedral and a castle-like building flying a Valencian flag that I had seen on many of the souvenirs that were being sold in the city. I also had lunch – which was at Burger King because I knew I would be dropping some dime on paella later in the evening and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on two meals in one day. For the record, the Burger Kings in Spain have tapas – though the tapas consist of chicken fries, chicken fingers and the like.
After the touring and the eating, I returned to my hotel. Next door to my hotel was a shopping mall so I checked that out a little bit. It was a combination of stores you see in typical American shopping malls (e.g., the Gap) and various other European versions of the same type of stores. I bought a bottle of Valencian wine for the evening and brought it back to the hotel.
Soon, it was time for dinner. Dinner was the one thing in Valencia regarding which I knew what I needed to do. I had read that Valencia was the home of paella (thanks for the reminder, Scott). My only goal for dinner was to find an acceptable paella. I knew that this wouldn’t be much of a problem in Valencia. I decided on a place in the old city that was packed with people speaking Spanish. It looked kind of touristy, but if the Spanish were eating there, it was good enough for me.
I ordered the Paella Valencia. I’m no expert on paellas, but this one had chicken wings, green beans, some big white beans and sweet red peppers with Spanish rice. It took about 25-minutes to cook but it was worth the wait. The only other paella that I can remember eating was in the cafeteria at Dickstein Shapiro. The paella here in Valencia was much better. The rice was tender but not soggy and the chicken was lightly but appropriately seasoned. I saw paella served all over the place, but I was glad that I chose the restaurant that I was at because the presentation was perfect. Even though my trip to Valencia was cut short, I didn’t get to see much, and I didn’t really know what it was I did see, but I did have paella in Valencia and that made the entire trip worthwhile.
Obviously, there is so much more to Valencia than I was able to see in my brief stay. I’m sure I’ll have an opportunity to go back when I am studying Spanish this summer in Spain and I look forward to it.
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