Day 14 - Valencia

Our last day.

We had long sleeps and a lazy morning packing up the last of our things. We have a late flight, which seemed like a good idea at the time of booking, but in truth it meant we had a bit of hanging about in store for us.

We had cobbled together three things to see and set off for the old town.

Our first, very cute and quirky stop was La Casa de los Gatos. The house of the cats. It s a miniature house in the neighborhood of El Carmen that serves as a shelter for the neighbourhood cats.

According to the legend, during El Cid’s rule in Valencia, he ordered to make all the city’s cats disappear because the Catholics believed that they were diabolical and brought bad luck.

Allegedly, after that incident, only four cats still lived in the city. We haven’t seen that many cats at all, and you’d easily walk past this ornate cat flap if you didn’t know it was there.

There is also a marker here showing the height of the water during the great flood of 1957.

We walked from here to one of the main squares and to a very famous horchateria - Horchateria Santa Catalina. Horchata is a milk drink made from tiger nuts. It is a cold drink and is taken with a Farton - a kind of long thin doughnut covered in icing sugar. Andrew was the only one brave enough to try this. Oli had orange juice and I had coffee and we shared some churros and chocolate. The interior of the building is beautiful and has decorated ceramic tiles. It’s a real institution of Valencia and a must for any visit.

After that we were at a bit of a loss. We did have something else to see, but it was back near the hotel, which we didn’t need to go back to until 5ish for our cases.

Oli had an idea - let’s jump on the metro and just get off at any stop and then see what was there. So we did! We ended up at a lovely area in the outskirts of the city called Alboraia Peris Aragó and walked through the streets to a sweet square which had a cafe. So we stopped for a drink and played cards for a bit. Then we got the metro back to a stop called Alameda. The metro stop was beautiful.

The reason for the final stop was the flower bridge across the Turia gardens - Puente de las Flores. It wasn’t in full bloom, but it depends when you come I guess - such is the nature of flowers!

They did have some colourful benches too.

We then jumped on a bus back to our hotel. On our first afternoon we had bought three-day metro tickets which you can use on the tram and bus too. They were EUR 10.70 each and amazing value for money. We’ve certainly got our money’s worth!

We took a taxi to the airport, and waved goodbye to Spain.

It’s been a great trip. Tiring at times, but we feel we got the mix of rest and trips just right.