Weekend in Valencia - the home of the Valencia orange

We have left Madrid in our own four wheels with Michael once again being our trusty driver on foreign roads. The road between Madrid and Valencia is pretty non-descript but does have some quite picturesque areas of olive trees and other horticulture. Trish managed to get a live stream of the All Black game on her phone, so we managed to hear most of the second half. It was a bit close!

Our first stop in Valencia was a fruit and vege market which is reportedly one of the biggest ? oldest in the world. To be honest we thought the outside one in Paris was better. We were starving by this time and unfortunately didn't take the time to find somewhere nice to eat, consequently our lunch was a disappointment but filled a gap. We headed to our hotel down a number of one way streets to find that our rental car was too big for their car park because they use a lift to put the car onto and the car then somehow gets deposited into the car park. The service behind the counter was rubbish. As the guys were parking down the road Trish and I were getting a trolley and lugging our bages on to it ourselves (they only fell off once) - and this is supposedly a four star hotel called Vincci Palace.   Just as well we can manage that but there would be lots of women that would have difficulty.

Anyway we headed off to the area where the America's Cup was held. What a magnificent venue for sailing. Some of the buildings still have the names of the syndicate, for example, Alinghi, Prada, and of course Team New Zealand. Before we hit the beach we waited to watch the largest outdoor spin class imaginable. We estimated there were 1000 bikes set up and when the 3 instructors started up, the place was pumping.

The beach along here goes for miles and is about 200m wide from the promenade to the waters edge. What is interesting is that there are wooden walkways on to the beach and everyone walks up and down these and no one is on vast areas of the beach except for a narrow strip running parrell with the water. It makes it easy of getting wheelchairs down to the water as well. I think they must do this because the sand gets so hot. It peaked at 34 degrees and there were plenty of lobster looking bodies that are going to be sore. Topless sunbathing wasn't anything out of the norm either.

We walked along the edge of the water amongst the hundreds/ thousands of people and then found a different walkway up to the promenade. Once there we headed back the way we had come and found ourselves a nice restaurant which made up for our dismal lunch.

Valencia doesn't seem quite the clean, beautiful city that we experienced in Madrid, although it is the third largest in Spain. We will have a better idea tomorrow when we get to bike around the city.