February 21, 2025
Day 4: Valencia: checking out the city
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I once had a friend who never went to restaurants, claiming that he could make everything at home, and better. I really can't agree with him, because restaurants have expertise that we often lack, suppliers of possibly hard to find ingredients, and importantly, enough customers to make it worthwhile preparing a wide variety of items. It's really a no brainer. For example, when you walk in to a bakery there are perhaps fifty items on display. There is no way a normal sane person would whip up fifty different items in a day at home. In fact, even if you end up buying five items in the bakery, it's unlikely that even five would be worth doing in a day at home.
If it's such a no brainer, why is this the first thing crossing my mind today? Well, it's just an offshoot of the ten jammer breakfast, which does have a good claim to being the first thing on my mind. At home, sad to say, only three things have much chance of showing up at breakfast on any given day. These are the Egg McBagel, the stack of pancakes, and the Red River cereal. We seem happy enough to run through this list of three for months on end. But here at the Turia, only the pancakes are sort of in evidence. Instead there is what must be a hundred other items. I had the thought of documenting just what these are. But despite the effort it takes to prepare them, I had not the patience to even list them. Here are a few, though: Quiche Puerro, Empanadillas - pesto or tuna, Grilled tomato slices with cheese, bacon, fried eggs, Brie cheese, goat bleu, Serrano Ham, Manchego cheese, Mortadela, Gouda, Fruit Smoothie, Beet Smoothie, Green Smoothie, Yogurt parfait, Chia parfait, Baked beans, Scrambled Eggs, Cantonese Rice, Taboule and Quinoa, BBQ meat, Churros, stirfry veggies, fresh orange juice, about ten kinds of sweet buns or donuts, about ten kinds of sliced fresh fruits, about ten styles of coffee drinks, hot chocolate, and so on. Looking at my plate, though, I think I was coming as close as possible to assembling an Egg McBagel! It would be cheaper to just leave me back on the farm.
Stoked up on whatever we did choose from the ten jammer, our objectives today were clustered around the Valencia old town. We would ride the Turia linear park before heading over to the Botanical Garden. Then to the Market, and finally the train station - to scope it out for tomorrow's attempt to leave town.
The Turia park, formed by diverting the river, was a brilliant move for the city. Today, as every day, people were out in it, running, cycling, doing exercise classes, etc. There were also a certain number of birds there, for us to spot:
The Hoopoe was really exciting, for its gaudy shape and colouring, and because we did not expect to see it exactly here. But little escapes Dodie's keen eye.
In a 'warmup" walk in the snow before coming here, I had slipped while carrying the Nikon P950 mounted on a monopod. The 67 inch stick had lots of leverage, and it ripped the bottom out of the camera! Even so, it still seemed to work, and I patched it up with tape and glue. In fact it waited until we had brought it over to here, and for that Hoopoe to appear. After that the lens jammed! The shots above were taken with our little cameras, but what of all the birding sites we had planned to cycle by? We happened to know that Cortes Ingles sells the P950, so for $1500 or so this could be put right. We could change our plans to include a trip to the store, but what to do with the hulk of our current P950? Dodie was surprised to see me whaling on the camera with a fist. This was not a fit of pique, but came from the knowledge that I had (mostly) fixed the Lumix with a dead blow plastic hammer. And yes, after about ten precise punches, the P950 lens here unjammed. It worked for most of the rest of our outing, but it did jam once more. Right now it's working, but it is probably waiting until we leave town to act up again. There is no way to throw a working camera of that cost into the garbage, so now we just have to wait for it to fail. If it then takes a beating and stays dead, we are going to be looking for a camera store - somewhere!
Aside from the people out enjoying the fresh air, and the birds, the park also affords views of nearby architecture, and also a number of bridges of varying ages and styles. We really love the whole thing.
The Park also includes some people who are living under the bridges. We saw that last year as well, but it does not seem to be a growing or even vexing thing.
From the park we cycled to the botanic garden which is hidden pretty much in the centre of town. It's entirely surrounded by a high wall, so you have to know it's there to find it. We stumbled on it last year, but it was closed due to the flood. This year we got in and discovered an enchanting place where all the plants and trees are labelled. The garden was established in 1567 and for two hundred years was reserved for the study of medicinal plants. It was moved to its present location in 1802. So none of the grand old trees or other plants is more than 250 years old.
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The garden had a fair number of birds, but it took patience to ferret them out. We found some old favourites and also several that were new to us - "lifers".
From the Garden we delved deeper into the Valencia old town, by the Market. The buildings of old Valencia are really pleasant, with very detailed window treatments and with balconies. The Market building itself is very handsome and of course, this being Spain, it contains very bountiful and colourful seafood, fruits, and vegetables.
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We carried on through the old town, with its attractive buildings, on the way to the train station.
The station building is a heritage site, with lots of decoration on the facade. Inside, display cases show bits that presumably fell off, or were upgraded.
Dodie parked me outside, while she checked out what we will encounter tomorrow as we try to board a train for Albacete. This allowed me to look at the surrounding buildings, and eventually to take my own peek inside.
We set off through the very active streets, back to the Turia park, and our hotel. We found bike lanes to take us the whole way, though those were often narrow and crowded with cyclists (and those electric scooters that people use to go too fast).
It has been a really nice day, in this active city, with its great climate. And for birding, we have added twelve to our yearly list, which now stands at 87. For our life list, there were five, bringing the total to 353 (we have only been counting for the past two years).
Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 20 km (12 miles)
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