Valencia
Our first port stop in Spain was Valencia. The one word I can use to describe Valencia is incredible. The mixture of old world and new world, the weather, and of course, paella. Valencia is the home of paella.
We did an early morning tour called Ancient and Modern Valencia with Wine and Tapas. The meeting point for tours was about a mile from where we docked but the cruise ship provided bus transportation to the port’s terminal where we met our tour guide Tula who is from Ireland but has lived in Spain for 5 years. She was most delightful and knowledgable. We waited for 10 other people at the meeting point so we got to talk to Tula about Ireland.
Once everyone arrived we traveled by van to the new part of the city where we saw the spectacular architecture of Santiago Calatrava who reimagined what was a river into an incredible park that included the Museum or Science that looks like a whale, the IMAX Theater that looks like an eye with lashes that open and close for special occasions, and the Opera House shaped like a knight’s helmet, The buildings and water lead into a green space which stretches for miles into the city. .
From the new town area we took a van to the old town where we spent time in the largest public market in the world, then walked through the old town, making a number of stops where we learned about Valencia history including things as diverse as the spectacular church with a ceiling that is similar to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and the narrowest house in Europe with a spiral staircase leading to the 5th floor.,
After our walking tour we stopped at a private venue where we enjoyed some great wine and appetizers, followed by some traditional chicken and rabbit paella, and ending our meal with a limoncello frozen ice with vanilla ice cream and a dessert wine. This tour far surpassed our expectations.
After returning to the ship in mid afternoon we rested for a while before heading back out for a dinner at the oldest paella restaurant in Valencia, La Pepica. The restaurant is located on an immense beach with lots of restaurants and cafes. La Peptic has been around since before 1900 and reportedly was Ernest Hemingway’s favorite restaurant in Spain. Dinner in Spain usually starts at 7 or 8 PM. Our ship boarding time was 9:30. I really wanted to have the paella here. I was able to get a dinner reservations for 7:30 so we knew we would not have much time. It took quite a while to get checked into the restaurant and we were not seated until almost 8 PM so we were unsure if we would have time. Our wonderful waiter, Sebastian assured us we could get paella and it would be ready for us in time. He suggested the seafood paella which came within about 30 minutes. It was excellent and we enjoyed it with sangria and wine, and had plenty of time to get back to the port by taxi.
We scanned into the ship about 15 minutes before boarding time and the crew member told us David was the last of the ship’s passengers to return. Anyone who knows David, will get a chuckle out of that. He is always worried we will be late so we always arrive way ahead of time.
Tomorrow we will be in Cartegena and it will be a much shorter day in port. I think we need that to recuperate a little.