Wrapping Up Valencia - Adios España!

Our final full day of our Spain trip was spent exploring some of the newer sights in Valencia - a couple of modernist markets and the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (city of arts and sciences). We started with mercat central, a 1920s art nouveau market just down the street from our hotel. From there we began a leisurely stroll through the Turia park, first stopping by Mercat de Colom (Mercado de Colón), a modernist market from 1916. A unique site along the way was a giant Gulliver playground. It consists of a huge fiberglass statue of Gulliver tied to the ground. Kids can climb all over and around him in a series of pathways and slides.

Mercat central is an impressive market.

The soaring interior of mercat central.

A giant tree in a square.

Mercat de Colom's exterior.

The cool modernist interior.

A leafy street in one of the modernist neighborhoods of Valencia.

Colonnades in the Turia gardens/park.

Gulliver has fallen!

Our main sight for the day was the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, or City of Arts and Sciences. This is an expansive campus of museums, event venues, and public spaces designed by the famous Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. It was built from 1996-2009, and is considered one of the "12 treasures of Spain." It's a cool area of futuristic architecture, although it can feel a little dystopian and sterile since it's disconnected from the city fabric. 

Like a spaceship landed on Valencia.

The buildings have amazing soaring interiors.

Calatrava is big on clean repitition.

David in L'Umbracle.

The area has a lot of huge reflecting pools.

View from the adjacent rose garden.

After leaving the City of Arts and Sciences, we had a quick drink at a snack kiosk in the park, then we decided to take the subway back, since we hadn't yet used it. We walked to the Amistat station and rode to the central train station. After a quick stop in a store and our hotel, we went for our lunch reservations at Rincon 33, which is known for their paella. The paella was good, but overall we're not huge seafood people so the dish is probably mostly wasted on us. Next time, we would try a less seafoody variety perhaps (we love rice dishes in general). After lunch we grabbed a bit more ice cream...because why not?

Nice bicycle infrastructure in the neighborhood we walked through.

Ummm... Ok.

The exterior of the train station.

Squid ink paella!

I mean you could go a meal without patatas bravas...but why would you?

One last ice cream before we leave Europe.

After a siesta at hotel, we went out for the evening, enjoying our final night on the streets of Valencia. We walked around and did a little last minute shopping, and joined a crowd watching the end of the Brazil vs. Croatia world cup game outside a pub. We got empanadas to go from a place called Yaya's, and went back to our hotel to pack and get ready for our very early morning.

A big crowd gathered to watch the game on a little TV.

Empanadas are all over Valencia. These were delicious!

Saturday morning we woke up extremely early to catch a 4AM taxi to the airport, in time for our 6AM flight. The airport experience was really quick and easy, so we could have slept in a bit more, but always better not to take the chance of missing your flight! The plane from Valencia to Paris was quite small, so we thought we might have to check our bags. I asked the gate agent if my bag would fit in the overhead compartment, and her response was "more or less." 😅  It did end up fitting and luckily we could take our bags as carry-on all the way to Atlanta.

Overall, this was a great and relaxing trip to Spain for David's birthday, mirroring the trip we took for his birthday to Italy the previous year. We've been to Spain a few times and really enjoy the food, sites and culture this country has to offer.