Sunday 5/30/10 Valencia

Biking through the park

View down the bike path

Octopus being served at the international food fair

Camille climbing in the cool spider-web park

Libby in the park

An interesting building that we passed

A view from the top of the spider-web playground

A bridge in the park

Today we rented bikes and biked around the city. Originally we planned to bike to L’Albufera, 6 miles south of the city, where there are empty beaches and rice-growing marshes (to supply the paella, the favorite local dish). We tried to find the bike path that would take us but we couldn’t find it because of construction of the Formula 1 (car racing) course, which is being built for Jun 25, 2010. It isn’t in a stadium but is on the existing streets with fences, barriers, and bleachers being built and installed around it. After trying for two hours we gave up and biked around the city and down the green belt going through the city. Along the way we stopped at a café and got sodas. We weren’t hungry because we had a big breakfast (even by American standards). We each had two pieces of toast, a chocolate croissant-type pastry. There was also ham and cheese and jam for the toast, fresh-squeezed orange juice, coffee, a plate of fruit, and chocolate.

The park cuts through the center of the entire city and must be 10 miles long. It used to be the riverbed, but because of flooding, they rerouted the rived and turned the entire thing into a park. It is slightly submerged and the traffic crosses over it on bridges, one of which was an ancient bridge, and one a Calatrava masterpiece, which looks like a comb. The park is beautiful, with gardens, soccer fields, playgrounds, fountains, picnic areas, paths, other sports fields, sculptures, etc. We spent over 5 hours biking through it and only saw about 2/3 of it. There were interesting things going on too. There was a fair with international food and shopping, a pickup game of some kind of Indian wrestling match, dogs fetching oranges out of the pools, and lots of families enjoying their day off, having picnics in large groups. We also enjoyed the variety of parks for the children: one was a rock-climbing wall, one was a giant spider net of ropes to climb on, and the best was a giant Gulliver, which was for climbing on (by children Lilliputians). It had slides, ropes, tunnels, etc and was huge.

When we returned we had another huge meal waiting for us. First came fish soup and tuna salad and bread. We thought that was all, but then she brought the main course, which was veal and vegetables, followed by fruit.