When you get bored, open your eyes…..
After six enjoyable days, I felt a little sad when we drove away from Calpe. The weather had been absolutely perfect, the campsite was really nice; the next place was an unknown. But we needed to get back on the road and it felt a little like we were setting off on a new adventure. With Gracie geranium (€2 at the market) stowed in the kitchen sink, we took the scenic route out to the coast towards Xabia / Javea and we couldn’t believe how many garden ornament outlets lined the road. You didn’t need to stop and look; you could see everything as you drove past. There were big pots, small pots, bench seats, rabbits, Chinese warriors, fountains and even a dragon here and there.
We didn’t see much of Xabia town, but we drove right along the seafront to Platja de l’Arenal and then strolled the promenade checking each café menu. Café Geographic had it; comfy armchairs, views of the sea and churros con chocolate. A nice slice of heaven, thank you. On the way back up the promenade I purchased a jolly green and blue kiddies’ bucket for Gracie to reside in.
Next stop was up on the top of Cap de Sant Antoni from where the view back over Xabia and the brilliant blue sea towards Cap de la Nau, was really lovely. Apart from the beach resorts with too many ugly old high-rise buildings, this coastline is really very scenic.
Having “faffed around enough”, according to Driver Rodney, we continued north on the motorway and knew for sure that we were getting close to Valencia. More and more orange trees crowded in on either side of the road. For a while we were impressed that we had timed our trip to coincide with seeing all the bright, shiny fruit on the trees, but have since discovered they actually have three harvests each year. Now that is impressive!
As we were nearing the city, we decided to turn Gertie Garmin on, to guide us to Camping Coll Vert at El Saler. Up to her usual tricks, at one point, she took us off the motorway, onto a short service road and then straight back on to the motorway, gawd knows why, but we’re used to this by now. But even with interesting diversions, she did manage to get us to the right place in the end. And so we settled in to the sleepy campsite for the rest of the day and planned our trip in to Valencia on Tuesday.
The bus stop was just outside the campsite gate and there was already a queue of happy campers when we arrived. The journey in didn’t take too long and we were soon staring at road names on walls, trying to work out in which direction we needed to start walking. The Mercado Central seemed like a good idea to start with; it’s always best to get to a market in Europe in the morning and it is a beautiful building; Art Nouveau in style and it’s one of the largest in Europe.
From there we did our usual sort of ‘follow-a-map-but-get-a-bit-lost-along-the-way’ city wandering. La Lonja de la Seda was a fabulous 15thC, castle-like hall which used to be the silk exchange and it has some huge gargoyles hanging from the tops of the walls. We peeked inside the Valencia cathedral, but being thoroughly ‘Baroqued out’ by now, we chose to ignore most of it and paid to go up yet another tower, the Torre Del Micalet. It was one of the toughest towers we’ve been up. Half-way up I was wishing they had installed an elevator in 1418ad. The steps were narrow and quite high, and they spiralled up seventy- metres without a break. You were also under pressure because it runs a one-way system where you can only go up when the light at the bottom is green and vice versa. If you meet people who don’t get up or down quickly enough, it becomes quite a squish to pass each other. But the view from the top was worth the effort.
It wasn’t until we left the cathedral that we found out we had missed one the most important relics in the whole world!!! I can’t think why the Monty Python team, the Nazis and Indiana Jones have all been out there searching, because it’s already been found and is sitting in a cabinet in Valencia Cathedral. The Holy Grail. It’s been there for years, since 1813, and even the Pope knows it’s there, he visited it in 2006, so call off the search…..!
We did a bit of advance research for a lunch spot, I found about eight Japanese restaurants in Valencia and we managed to find one of them, Osaka III, just as we were getting rather hungry. Amazingly it did a €11.95 ‘Eat-All-You-Can-Eat’ buffet and though initially we expected something not too brilliant, it turned out to be superb. The tuna and salmon sashimi melted in our mouths and we sampled as much of everything that we could. They even threw in a drink with the meal and ice-cream afterwards. This resulted in a slightly slower waddle around the rest of Valencia.
We checked the lovely railway station, Estación del Norte and then walked down Colón (must find out what that means in Spanish) and ended up in the Jardines del Rio Turia. This was once the River Turia, but that has now been diverted further south and the old riverbed has been turned into a 5kms long strip of gardens, sports fields and playgrounds, one of which contains a giant Gulliver pinned to the ground. Mr Gulliver is actually a maze of tunnels and slides and ropes for kiddies to play on; a very clever and creative idea and obviously very popular. At the southern end of the gardens the spectacular Ciudad De Las Artes Y Las Ciencias, rises up and glows in the sunshine.
There are six huge buildings, most of them surrounded by shallow water and fountains. It was completed in 2006 and still looks very futuristic and intriguing. We sat at a café by the Museum of Science to cool off and just stare at the buildings around us. Finally, after a short walk down to the Oceanographic, we found our way back to a No. 25 bus stop and hopped on the bus back to the campsite for one more night.
