 |
| Me, Hollie and Ali in the Torres de Serranos |
This past weekend I finally went on my first excursion!!! I went to Valencia, Spain with two other CMU students, Hollie and Ali. We had such a great time and Valencia is an amazing and beautiful city and I am so glad I chose to go there. To me it seems that Valencia is overlooked by a lot of tourists in favor of Madrid and Barcelona, for example I had never heard of it until I started learning more about Spain in my classes. However, I recomend it; I think it is definitely worth it to go.
We took the train, which only takes about 2 hours from Alicante, and my first experience with RENFE, Spain's train company (comparable to Amtrak), was nice. The train ride actually seemed a lot smoother than when I took the train to Chicago to get my visa and the RENFE employees were pretty friendly.
As soon as we got off the train (and finished gawking at the beautiful train station Estació del Nord) we found our hostel and they let us keep our backpacks there why we walked around the city. As we were walking we came upon the Catedral de Valencia (Cathedral of Valencia), which wasn't the hard to find since it has a giant bell tower, plus it's in the center of the old city.
The Cathedral has tons of amazing works of art such as statues and paintings and has a history dating back to the 1200s when the Christians conquered Valencia from the Moors and built a church where the mosque used to stand. And a few of other cool things about the Catedral de Valencia: one pope, Pope Alexander VI, came from Valencia and used to preside over the Cathedral as the Archbishop of Valencia; two popes from modern times, John Paul II and Benedict the XVI, have both visited it; it holds the left arm of Saint Vincent, the patron Saint of Valencia; and it claims to have the Holy Grail. All of this information I found out because the ticket (which only cost 5€) comes with an audio tour, which I chose to listen to the Spanish version to test my skill.
 |
| The façade of the Catedral de Valencia |
 |
| The Cathedral´s Altar |
 |
| Museu de Belles Arts |
After the Catedral de Valencia, we hung out for a little along the fountain in la Plaza de la Virgen, the plaza behind the Cathedral, before heading to the Museu de Belles Arts/Museo de Bellas Artes (pretty much everything in Valencia has two names, one in Valencian and one in Spanish) or the Museum of Fine Arts. Much like the Smithsonian in Washington, the Museu de les Belles Arts is free all of time because it is run by the government (in this case the state government). It focuses on art by Valencian artists or artists such as Francisco de Goya and Diego Velázquez, two of the most famous Spanish painters. I really liked the exhibit about Joaquín Sorolla, who I gather is one of the most important Valencian painters.
 |
| Self-portrait by Velázquez |
 |
| Self-portrait by Sorolla |
 |
| Las Torres de Serranos at night |
On our way to check into the hostel, we decided to check out the Torres de Serranos (Serranos Towers), two towers that make a gate as part of the old city walls. The walls no longer stand, but the old entrance into the city still does and is one of the most recognized landmarks of Valencia. For only a euro we were able to climb to the top and get some amazing views of the city.
 |
| Hollie and Ali |
We checked into the hostel, which was really nice. Our room came with free lockers and a balcony overlooking a Gothic building called La Lonja. We decided to eat at our hotel (it had a communal kitchen), so we went to a supermarket to get some food. Then we walked around Valencia some more, including the Jardí del Turía/Jardín del Turía (Turía Garden) which used to be a river, but after flood over various years they diverted the river and turned where the river used to be into a park. Then we went to dinner, where I had paella valenciana (rice seasoned with saffron with rabbit, chicken, green beans and some sort of white bean too) because paella originated from Valencia so paella valenciana is the original paella; it was very delicious!
 |
The view from our balcony
(with part of La Lonja on the left) |
 |
| Pallea valenciana |
On Saturday, we walked through the Jardí del Turía to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències/Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) which contains a few museums and the largest aquarium in Europe (and 4th largest in the world), L'Oceanogràfic. They had probably every single species that lives in the ocean/sea including dolphins. In L'Hemisfèric, the Imax theater, we saw a documentary on Las Fallas, a festival in Valencia from the 15th-19th of March (so unfortunately we just missed it) where giant statues made of wood are burned to demonstrate the beginning of spring (March 20th); they burn away the old to make way for the new. Although we did miss the festival, we were able to see them finishing building the statues and they already had lights hung above the streets all over the city.
 |
| An 70m(230ft) underwater tunnel |
 |
| Playa de las Arenas |
Sunday was a fairly peaceful day because all we did was go to the beach and had lunch. Unfortunately we missed the train because either we didn't catch the bus in time or the bus was running late, or maybe a mix of the two. Either way, we had to buy another ticket, but we definitely learned our lesson. When I got home I relaxed a bit after unpacking and then did some homework I put off in order to go to Valencia (another lesson I learned: do your homework before going on a trip!).
This weekend I am going to Granada, a city in the autonomous community called Andalucía in the south of Spain. It's most famous for being the last city held by the Moors (and therefore the last city conquered by the Christians). It was conquered by the "Catholic Monarchs," Isabel I de Castilla and Fernando II de Aragón, and now they are both entombed in a chapel off of the Cathedral; I'm very excited to visit their tomb because they are arguably the two most important people in the history of Spain. But I am most excited about going to the Alhambra, the palace used by the Moors until they were expelled from Spain; it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the place of interest that makes the second most amount of money for the Spanish Ministry of Culture because it is visited so often.
¡Hasta la semana que viene! Until next week!
