Valencia: "Increible, pero cierto!"

First off, courtesy of Jesse (thank you!), for those Wall-E lovers out there (or those who know how much of one Wall-E fan I am) I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was when I opened up this link

Note: Some language that appears to be Spanish in this (names etc) is Valencian so if you're confused....you should be. :) Also to see bigger versions of the pictures, simply click on them.
Friday:
So this past weekend was our first 4-day travel weekend and we went to Valencia. Friday we had to be up and ready to go in order to catch an 8am bus (which was pretty rough considering the majority of people had very little sleep) and got on our way to Valencia. Once there our first stop was the Aquarium where Rocio and I had a lot of fun getting super-excited about pretty much everything there. ("Tiburon! Tiburon!" somehow it's more fun to say "fishy" than "pez" though..)Dolphin show!Apparently it is the biggest Aquarium or "L'Oceanografic" in Europe, which was pretty neat. It was set up as a series of buildings and the exhibits were both inside and outside. It's one set of buildings in a series of ultra-modern buildings (named the City of Arts and Sciences) that were designed by Santiago Calatrava. They are also situated on another neat feature of the city; there once was a river that ran through the city, but with flooding and the sporadic nature of it, the people of the city decided to divert it to another route. This means that there is a large strip of land that runs though the city (which once was the river bed) that has been converted into a large extensive series of parks and recreational areas. For a map of Valencia click here
The next thing we did was go to La Lonja de la Seda, it was what was once the silk market place cerca 14th century or so. It was very ornate and extravagent. Apparently it was the Valencian silk market place which individually financed the majority of Christopher Columbus' excursion.
Across the street is the main marketplace of the city (Mercado Central), which was also HUGE. This is a picture from the inside.After the market place we had a little bit of lunch at a montadito's restaurant (aka mini sandwiches on mini french loaves like small bocadillos) and headed to the Conjunto Catedralicio in the Plaza de la Reina. This was an absolutely beautiful Cathedral which is said to contain the Holy Grail within. It definitely could have been one my favorite places in Valencia.
This is at the top of the bell tower: 203 steps according to Bayo!The next few pictures are from the City of Arts and Sciences. We ended up going to L'Hemisferic to see an IMAX film on the first sucessful excusion of rafters to go the length of the Blue Nile from source to the Mediterranean Sea. It actually ended up being pretty good. We also had the chance to try Orxata or Hortchata from a street vendor. Orxata is a drink made from tigernuts that is one of the things that Valencia is known for. The following are pictures from the City of Arts and Sciences:
After the movie pretty much everyone was getting pretty tired so we grabbed some quick food from a pizza place and crashed for the night. Our room at the hostel! It was actually a very nice hostel, although it was quite annoying that our rooms didn't have any normal lights. Just one red tinted light which made it very hard to find things at night....View from our balcony:Saturday:
We woke Saturday and grabbed some food in the the Plaza de la Reina and did a little shopping around in the little shops and then took a historical bus tour around the city. We ended up getting off at the Palacio de Congresos (Political center) and walked through the Jardin de Polifilo where we stumbled across some orange trees. So of course we had to try them....

I didn't think the one I tried was too terrible, but they were very sour:
After that we jumped back on the bus tour and saw some other areas of the city that we normally wouldn't have gotten to.
After some food while the majority of the group hung out at the hostel for some siesta, about six of us headed to Torres de Serranos which was once a guard tower and the main entrance to the city. We had seen it from the bus tour and decided that it was worth investigating. We wanted to go to a museum as well, but we ended up getting short on time because we had to leave for the futbol game!
We conquered that guard tower:
Super Tony!The Valencia soccer game was a lot of fun. We were split up basically into three groups of 4-5 so the seating worked out well. It turns out since it was a post-season game it wasn't necessary to buy the tickets so far in advance and we got jipped a bit on the price, but at least we had the peace of mind going into the game that we had a ticket. AND Valencia won!


After the game people regrouped and headed out to see the dance clubs etc, but after getting lost for a while and it getting late I called it a night and headed back to the hostel to crash.
Sunday:
Sunday I woke up early with hopes to book a Sunset sailboat excursion for the group, but since the weather wasn't really looking to great it it turned out not to work out, but the company also has boats in Alicante so it is certainly a possibility for later. After that others met me at 11:00 for mass at the big Cathedral. We were worried about being under-dressed since no one had thought of having super nice clothes for mass at a Cathedral, but it turned out that they let tourists walk through sections of the Cathedral while mass was going on so we didn't feel quite so bad. While most of his humor was lost on those of us speakin English, the priest was fantastic. He was very animated and had an awesome way of running mass. Rather than saying "Rise" or "Stand" he kept saying "On your feet!" and also was not afraid of making a few jokes during the service.
After mass we met up with the others and, after some confusion on how to get there, most of us headed to the Marina/Beach.
For those of you who don't know, Valencia played host to the America's Cup in 2007. Which is a pretty big deal in the sailing world. If you're interested in learning more about it click here, and that will give some basic information. Or here for the 2007 website for a more in depth information.
In front of the North Harbor!
Jenna was nice and humored me by taking picture for me while the rest of the group headed straight to the beach since they didn't have much interest of the harbor/marina etc.


It's hard to tell, but I thought this was a neat picture because you can see part of the City of Sciences and Arts rising up on the skyline behind the boats. It's not "Falcon" but it certainly is close!After some beach time the rest of the group headed back for a siesta and some showers back at the hostel since the weather wasn't the best (It drizzled a bit and was overcast for most of the morning). I wanted to see more of the port so I stuck around and walked along the North Harbor just looking at boats, enjoying the sights etc. but I also had a project: Jack had mentioned at one point how neat it would be to get someone to rise the Notre Dame flag in Valencia. So I while I was wondering around I also was keeping at eye out to see if there was anyone who looked like they might humor me. I eventually came upon the catamaran which made the boat trips we were considering doing that morning though I didn't realize it at the time. They didn't look like they were up to much of anything so I asked the two guys on the deck, but they said that they didn't know what the company rules were and had to ask the Captain. So I waited about 5-10 minutes while the Captain to finish up something below deck with low hopes, but when he came up and I explained what I wanted to do and why he just said "Si, claro!" (aka "Of course!"). This picture has the flag backwards, but it meant that I could have the North Harbor behind, there are plenty of other pictures with the ND in the right direction, but I won't put them all up right now.

Well after I got the picture taken with the flag up I got to talking with the guys and they asked me if I would be interested in coming out with them if other people showed up for the (next) 6:00pm outing. It was 5:20pm at the time, but I figured I wasn't doing anything else and it would be a neat thing to do. At 5:55pm just as I was starting to think that it wasn't going to work out a group of 10 people showed up! The Captain (Emil) wouldn't let me pay, which was really nice....I'm pretty sure the other customers thought I was a little sister or working for the company as well because they definitely started asking me about what and wasn't allowed on the boat :p. We were doubly lucky because just before that the sky started to clear up so I got some really beautiful pictures:Once we were out of the harbor we but up the ND flag again, but this time with another... Long and short it turned out to be a pretty amazing afternoon. I also got some more information on the best places to go sailing and diving near Alicante with promises that if/when I/Jack and I come and I contact Emil that we won't be charged for whatever we decide to do :) Pretty amazing! After that I headed back to the hostel to meet up with the others and grabbed some quick food.
At midnight some of the group really wanted to go on a pub crawl and essentially the rest of us got talked into joining. I don't think it was quite as much fun since it was a Sunday and everywhere was pretty empty, but I did practice some ballroom-style dancing with Bayo and overall had a good time.
Monday most of us headed back to Aloy early after some breakfast with hopes that after we got back, settled we'd be more likely to start some serious work on our research paper. And do some laundry in my case. So I better get to it, but it was a absolutely awesome weekend. And we have some great activites planned for this week!