¡Vamos a Valencia!

Carrying on from my whistlestop trip to Paris, there’s no rest for the wicked as I left the next day for Spain! I had a week off from classes so had decided to go and visit my friend Lucy who is studying in Valencia for a semester at the moment. The plan was to stay for a few days and then head north to Andorra. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit and this seemed like as good a chance as any! You can hear more about that part of my trip in the next blog.

Thankfully my flight wasn’t until late afternoon so I was able to sleep in after my busy day in Paris. The travelling was all pretty easy, the flight is about two hours from Basel to Valencia and I only had a backpack with me. I breezed through everything on either side, so much so that I actually beat Lucy to the airport. It was so good to see her when she finally got there as we’ve been able to support each other going through some of the same things in the past few months with moving to a new European country around the same time.

We took the metro straight to somewhere in the old town to get some food. My first night in Spain called, of course, for some tapas. Lucy had heard good things about the place we headed to but in the end it was a bit disappointing. It didn’t have a lot of choices so we just had some olives, manchego cheese, olive oil crisps and a beer. We caught up on how France has been and how Valencia has been and then walked around a little bit to find somewhere else. We found a new place near the Mercado Central and got some patatras bravas and a wee cod fritter each. I also tried a version of Valencia’s signature drink, Agua de Valencia. Typically it is made with cava or champagne, orange juice, vodka and gin. The one I tried was a little different, I think it had a little bit of cranberry juice or something in it but either way it was very nice!

Lucy actually still had classes that week including an 8am the next day so we headed home after we finished eating. We walked through Plaza del Ayuntamiento which is the city’s main square with the council buildings, post office and art museum. The buildings are all beautiful and very Spanish looking. Our taxi got us just opposite the main train station and the bull ring which looks like a mini coliseum. Apparently they still run the bulls in Valencia even though a man died during a bull running festival in the Valencia area only days after I was there.

The next morning I headed off on my own, following some of Lucy’s recommendations while she was in class. Lucy had suggested that I head down to the City of Arts and Sciences (La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciènces) which is a really cool area to wander around. It was about a 25 minute walk from her apartment in lovely warm, sunny weather. The main buildings there house a science museum, an IMAX theatre and a performance centre in some incredible architecture. There is also the Umbracle which is a strip of enclosed garden space that was full of cats! From there I went and sat in La Turia which is a park that fills the old river basin. After a flood in the 1950s the river was diverted out of the city and the space converted into a 12km park that runs from the City of Arts and Sciences in the east around the north of the city centre.

After lunch – a local favourite of tortilla española in a baguette – we headed towards the beach. This was one of the only things that I requested we do because I love the beach and the sea but am very solidly landlocked where I am in Alsace. We walked via the port but it still didn’t take long to get there. It’s a really long, wide beach and it had some decent waves, not quite big enough to surf in but fun for swimming. After we’d been for a swim and jumped around in the waves a while we headed to a bar just off the beach that Lucy wanted to try called La Fábrica de Hielo. It was a really cool space that apparently does live music sometimes. After that it was time for some dinner and I couldn’t leave Spain without eating some paella and drinking some sangria!

We started my second full day by going to the Mercado Central where I got some maracuya juice (passion fruit, a favourite from my time in Honduras) and a caramelised onion and goats cheese empanada. From there we walked around the old town and saw La Estrecha Valencia, the narrowest building in Europe which is just 107cm wide! We headed towards Torres de Serranos, one of the gates in the old city walls that gives you a good view over La Turia and the city. The afternoon included a stop at 100 Montaditos, a little chain that serves cheap beer and tiny little sandwiches, and Cafe Ubik, both in the Russafa neighbourhood, an area popular with young people. Cafe Ubik is really more of a bar and a bookshop than a cafe but was really cool. At this point we were really just killing time until going to a Honduran restaurant for dinner, the second of my specific requests for my time in Valencia.

Valencia has quite a few Latin American restaurants and even a few specifically Honduran ones. Lucy was in Honduras with me so we were both super excited for Honduran food but a little apprehensive in case it didn’t live up to our fond memories. The restaurant was called El Saborcito Hondureño and was decked out with a neon sign with the name of the restaurant and also the outline of Honduras itself. We obviously had to start with a Salva Vida, one of Honduras’ national beers, and then decided to split a couple of things. We ordered a portion of baleadas con huevo (a flour tortilla folded in half with refried beans, dry cheese called queso seco, mantequilla which is a bit like sour cream and scrambled eggs in the middle), catrachas (a deep fried tortilla topped with refried beans and cheese) and pupasas de queso y frijoles (tortillas stuffed with refried beans and cheese). It was… perfect. It tasted exactly like in Honduras and immediately took both of us back. When we were paying we got talking a little to the staff and I’m pretty sure they’re all a Honduran family which explains the authentic taste.

We ended the night with a drink at another bar by the beach, Mercabañal. It was like a food hall with different food and drink vendors. It was Lucy’s 23rd birthday the next day so we had a pre-birthday drink before heading back to her flat to celebrate at midnight. It was a nice way to finish my time in Valencia and visiting Lucy. My bus left at 10am the next morning so that pretty much wraps up my time in Spain. Even though I’ve been on wee staycations in the UK, this felt like my first proper holiday since Covid started and it was amazing. I really liked Valencia as a city, it’s a bit bigger than Mulhouse but not an unmanageable size. There’s lots to do, lots of neighbourhoods to explore and of course the beach is a big plus! Thank you to Lucy for being my host, tour guide and translator for the length of my stay – your 5 star Tripadvisor review is coming soon!