Day 241 Valencia, Spain

We woke to a bright sunny day and couldn’t wait to get out and about in Valencia.  I set out about 8 am for a walk to check out the area and about 50 minutes later returned. I’d walked much further than I thought I would and the boys were at home finishing up their home work.  Once we were all ready, we headed out into Valencia.

Many museums and exhibits are closed on Mondays so we had to see the top ones today, Sunday.  First stop was the prehistory and ethnology museum just around the corner.  Steve’s turn to go out and find a coffee whilst the boys and I started museuming. Steve met up with us in the museum after his coffee and we continued to discover the numerous floors of the museum.  The boys enjoyed the shadow tracing of old coins and the display which showcased old Spanish toys.

Following this museum we headed back to the hotel for a quick bite of lunch and then set out to get to the Las Fallas Museum on the other side of Valencia, by foot!  We really had to move our butts to get there before closing at 3pm or we would miss out since they were going to be closed on Monday. Luckily we could walk along the Jardin (Park) Turia which was once a river that ran through town.  The river was diverted after a serious flood in the 1950′s.  The whole river bed is now park land and absolutely fantastic.  It’s obviously where Valencians go on the weekend to ride bikes, skates, scooters, walk dogs an picnic.

As we headed towards the museum we made a quick stop at the Torres de Serrano (towers) on the way as it also would be closed on Monday.  It is also free to enter on Sunday. It is the kind of place that gives mothers’ heartaches because of the massive drop offs from every direction for kids!  I’ve actually shown a full size picture of the Torres de Quart which is the sister tower – you can see the pockmarks from French cannoballs!  Check it out …

Tower – tick!  Now off to Las Fallas Museum which you are no doubt wondering about.  Every year Valencia has a massive festival and parade which features la falla. These are very large parade floats that cost up to 900,000 Euro (yes, really) to build. Each year only one la falla is chosen to go to the museum and the others are …. burnt! Yes, big bonfire.  Yes, millions of Euro dollars up in smoke. Must be an equally spectacular sight to the actual parade because the las fallas are amazing.  Of course I couldn’t take photos of any of them so I found some images on google, plus I used google translate to work at what ‘la falla’ means in English; the answer ‘failure’ – obviously you fail you get burnt!

The museum was a lot of fun and also free on Sunday.  We wizzed around as quick as we could to see them all before the museum was due to close.  It was definitely worth the hike to get there in the sun with whinging children; they really had a good time looking at all the collection. Just wish I could have taken photos so you could see how great it was. Whilst we were walking down the Jardin we came across this horse-pulling-cart competition.  We couldn’t really understand what it was all about but here are some photos.

Since we were now really close to the tourist area with the aquarium and science centre we set off on foot again to get there; with the promise that we wouldn’t have to walk this far the next day!  The area is an architectural delight and was very busy with locals for the arroz (rice) festival of food and paella cooking competition.  Yum! 

We also found Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels which is a massive playground with slides all over his body. He is located along the river parkway.  After having a fantastic time in the playground we headed off to find our next museum with toy soldiers; not just a few toy soldiers … 85,000 toy soldiers.  Here they are …

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