A day in Valencia

When I was on my gap year in Germany between 2016 and 2017, I met lots of new people from all over the world. One girl I met is Marina, who is from a small village near Castellon de la Plana, and the second weekend of November I had organised to go and visit her. Given that Marina had to work all day on Friday, I decided to go to València for the day as I would be down that way anyway.

Another friend I met in Germany was Jesus, whose mum now lives in Valencia, so I messaged her and asked if she was free, and she was, so she was my personal tour guide for the day!

My first impression of Valencia was that it was very grand. Valencia North train station is beautiful and the ceiling in the ticket hall is decorated with typical mosaic features.

Yaika (jesus’ mum) met me there, and we wandered together towards the cathedral and the basilica, passing through the square in front of the post office and the government building. We stopped for lunch in Cien Montaditos (a chain restaurant in Spain that do little slices of bread with various toppings, but we went for the nachos and cheese and bacon chips, #health ). Afterwards we went to look inside the cathedral but as i was only there for 6 hours we didn’t have enough time this time to walk around it. I’ll definitely have to come back!!

Behind the cathedral, there is another lovely square that actually had nearly as many pigeons as it did people haha! We went to see the ancient ruins of the city which have been preserved underneath the city. Then we went to Serrans Gate which was one of 12 gates that formed part of the ancient city wall.

We caught the bus down to the arts and science centre to save ourselves a 2km walk. This was, I think, my favourite part of Valencia because the light was perfect for me to take some pictures!

Once the sun set, we headed back to the city centre as I had to get a train up to castellon to meet Marina, but I will definitely be returning to Valencia in the future! My next blog post will be about what Marina and I got up to, as there was a medieval festival which was great fun!