Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
August 2003
Valencia
David Aaronson2005-09-28 21:32:15
Displayed times (last time: )
We flew into Barcelona for our trip to Spain and immediately drove south to the city of Valencia which would be our base for the next few days. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and has a very nice historic center and good beaches nearby as well. The original city walls of Valencia are gone, but the two gates remain. This is Torres de Serrano which faces north towards Barcelona (1). The other gate (Torres de Quart) faces west towards Madrid. Torres de Serrano dates from the 14th century.
The old city of Valencia was bounded on one side by the Turia River. After some flooding issues, the government rerouted the river entirely and the old riverbed has been remade into parkland featuring playgrounds, formal gardens and innumerable football (soccer) fields. We stayed near the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in old Valencia (ayuntamiento = city hall), which is shown in this picture (2). The building with the clock is the city hall.
We spent more time however in the Plaza de la Virgen. This was originally the forum in the Roman town of Valentia, and in fact just a block or so from this plaza is an extensive archeological site featuring Roman and Moorish ruins. There are quite a few cafes and restaurants on this square as well and I think we may have tried just about all of them at some point. More on that later though. The eclectic building in this picture is Valencia's cathedral - an unsual mixture of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and a few other inspirations as well (3).
This is the baroque entrance to the cathedral which is located on the third major plaza in Valencia, the Plaza de la Reina (4). There's some pretty good shopping in this area which is an unsual recommendation from us. In particular, fans seem to be a ubiquitous Spanish souvenir although several of the shops in this area of Valencia have much higher quality versions than we saw anywhere else. Of course, they're also priced substantially
...
See photographs from:
Spain Gallery
