Valencia Trip Report

Then we took the 2-hour high-speed train to Valencia. We bought first-class seats, and I can tell you although the first class train seats are wider than economy seats, and very comfortable, with more legroom, economy seats on the high speed trains are really good, far better than airline economy seats, so 19 days later on the way back to Madrid we bought economy seats.

We had an apartment right in the middle of the middle of Valencia. This was May, and although there were a lot of tourists in Valencia, it wasn’t like Madrid or Barcelona at all. It had a much more local vibe, even smack in the middle of the old town.

Valencia. We’ve been to Europe many times, almost always to the major tourist hot spots, and
Valencia is the first place we’ve been where at the end, after all 19 days, I felt like I would be very happy living there. I know just enough Spanish to interact with the local shopkeepers, and it was so much fun and I felt really comfortable there. We shopped most of the time at the Central Market, which is huge and has the best fish market I’ve ever seen, and the local fish sellers got to where they recognized us and started giving us extra stuff for free because we were buying their fresh seafood almost every day. Interacting with the shopkeepers in Valencia was really easy and added so much to the experience. There was a little bakery right around the corner from us and we bought fresh baked bread there several times.

One evening church bells started ringing and kept on ringing and ringing, so I asked Gemini why that was happening, and the answer was that the bells were ringing for the Feast of Our Lady of the Forsaken, which is the Patron Saint of Valencia. The church bells rang for about a half hour. It was pretty pleasant. So the next day, we went to the Traslado, where they carry the statue of the Virgin from the Basilica to the Cathedral. There was a huge crowd, and people strained to touch the hem of the statue, including right in front of us a baby, maybe one year old, was passed over the crowd until it touched the hem of the statue, and back over the crowd to the (I assume) parents. The baby did not enjoy that. Then that night, there was a very long parade featuring an endless procession of locals dressed in traditional clothing, and musicians, followed by politicians and notables, followed by priests, followed by the statue of the Virgin, carried along by about 20 guys. People threw rose petals (real ones) from the balconies as the Virgin passed.

What did we do for 19 days in Valencia? We did all the usual touristy things, plus a lot of wandering around slowly. Highlights were St Nicholas Church, which is frescoed from top to bottom and end to end. Another highlight was shopping for food in the Central Market. We bought a lot of fish there, plus fresh fruits and vegetables. We went early, before the daily influx of tourists. We bought scallops, tiny clams, mussels, shrimp, cod, sea bream, salmon, and lots of others that I can’t remember. It was fun interacting with the fish vendors.

We also went to the City of Arts and Sciences, the ultra-modern complex of buildings by architect Santiago Calatrava. It’s a very beautiful set of very modern buildings. We went to the aquarium there. Although it is “the largest aquarium in Europe,” we’ve been to Seaworld in Orlando which dwarfs the one in Valencia.

One funny thing was “The Cat House.” About 20 years ago, a local artist in the El Carmen neighborhood noticed a cat going in and out of his garden via a hole in the wall. So, using various materials, he constructed a façade of a house with the front door being the hole the cat went in and out of. It’s about 2 feet high and 2 feet wide. On our penultimate day in Valencia, just for the hell of it, we decided to take a walk in El Carmen and find the Cat House. We found it. There’s still a cat going in and out. The people who run the museum across from the cat house are feeding the cat. BUT, finding the Cat House led to us finding the CCCC museum right across the street. It’s in a 13th century convent which his been repurposed as an art museum featuring modern art. We came back the next day to see the art museum, which was free. That's one of the great things about slow travel- you go out to find one thing, and you turn around, and find something else really interesting and beautiful.

El Carmen is noted for its street art. There are numerous paintings and murals on the walls along the streets. Some of them are very good.

By the way, no one in Valencia cares if you are from the United States. The thing I did was speak Spanish no matter what. As bad as my Spanish is, the local shopkeepers would light up when I spoke bad Spanish to them. They were all very friendly. I only saw “Tourist go home” signs graffitied on the wall twice. But I never encounted anything but pure friendliness the whole time we were there.

Best restaurant we ate at: La Terracita. 450 google reviews, and a 5-star average. It’s only about 20 seats, and it’s only open 4 days a week, but what the chef/waiter/everything guy does is go to the market in the morning, decide what he wants to cook, and that’s what you get. There is no menu. The food was outstanding. He asked me what I wanted to drink, and I responded, whatever you recommend. So he poured me a glass of very good white wine. I never asked what it would cost. And when the bill came, he only charged me 6 Euros for the wine. What a classy guy. And the food? He deserves a Michelin star or something. It was that kind of food. A great culinary experience.

Although coming home it took us 2 hours in the Madrid airport to reach our gate, the EES was not any problem. It went very quickly.

On the flights home, on the shorter leg (thank God), we had economy seats on that one short leg of the journey, and there was a screaming baby on the plane, right in front of us. The poor guy sitting next to this screaming baby suffered through it like a saint. They should pass a law, no babies on commercial airlines.

And by the way, I don't expect anyone else to travel the way we do. A lot of people seem to be kind of sensitive when slow travel is mentioned, but in my opinion, if you are young and full of energy, fast travel, hopping from place to place, at high speed, is the way to go, and loads of fun. That's what you should be doing. I just can't do that anymore.

One other thing comes to mind. In Valencia Cathedral, they have what they allege is The Holy Grail. I have always been skeptical of relics like that. It must have been so easy for someone to say, "here's a piece of the real cross Jesus was crucified on," and some king in the Middle Ages would buy it so his local cathedral could house a relic. But I will say, for the Holy Grail in Valencia Cathedral, they make quite a strong case that it is the real Holy Grail. They have studied it extensively, scientifically dated it from the first century BC, and traced the ownership all the way back to the Last Supper. I don't know if it's the real Holy Grail. But I think if there is such a thing as The Holy Grail, that could possibly be it.

Anyway, that's the end of my trip report. If you've read this far, thank you for reading.

Thanks for your trip report. It sounds like you had a very nice trip. We like slow travel-walk then sit and people watch and then walk some more. I love your Cat House story. That's the kind of novelty we enjoy going on a hunt for. 19 days in one place sound delightful. We were just talking about maybe spending a whole month somewhere, not next trip but the one after.

What a lovely trip and report. How did you find your apartment in Valencia?

Ahhh your trip sounds wonderful. Thank you for telling us about it!

How did you find your apartment in Valencia?

Airbnb. It was an awesome location. We were just a couple of hundred feet from the Central Market, but on a quiet side street. It seemed like every time I consulted Google Maps for the next thing we wanted to do or see, the distance would be less than 300 meters. Except for the City of Arts and Sciences, which was far enough away that we decided to take a bus. Incidentally, they let you pay by tapping your credit card on the credit card reader when you get on the bus. So easy.

Thank you for your excellent trip report. Sincerely appeciated. Mr. Rick is of no help on the topic of Valencia, unless you read the Mediterranean Cruise Ports book - which , I believe is his only mention of Spain's third largest city in any RS publication. With your report, you have expanded my knowledge of Valencia, considerably.

Mr. Rick is of no help on the topic of Valencia

I have noticed that, and I find it surprising. The apartment we were in had his book on Spain, which is quite lengthy, and Valencia is absolutely nowhere in it. You can't even find it in the index, even though it is the 3rd largest city in Spain and full of history and culture.

I started my planning by telling Gemini about us, our interests, and what we like to do and not do, and asked for a 19 day itinerary. It gave me a detailed itinerary, which I did not necessarily follow, but it was a good starting point for my planning. Like they say, "a battle plan does not survive first contact with the enemy," but at least one should start with a plan, even if you toss it out the window on day one.

This sounds like a lovely trip! I bet 19 days didn’t feel long at all!

Mr. Rick is of no help on the topic of Valencia

I asked Gemini to speculate on why Rick Steves ignores Valencia, and it gave me a pretty solid answer.

1) His books are not intended to be all-inclusive. They're intended to give the traveler a digestible set of places to go to on a first-time 2- or 3-week vacation.

2) He likes the C-shaped high speed rail route: Barcelona to Madrid to Cordoba/Seville/Granada. Valencia does not fall into this convenient route.

3) Valencia does not personify the quintessential Spain that tourists want to see. Tourists go to Barcelona for modernism, Madrid for world class museums, and Andalusia for flamenco, white hill towns and Moorish palaces.

4) The Rick Steves books almost always cover the stops in his tours. He doesn't have any tours going to Valencia.

Gemini: "It is certainly a massive blind spot, but for many travelers, Rick’s snub is a blessing in disguise—it keeps Valencia feeling just a little bit more local and a little less crowded than the tourist bottlenecks of Barcelona and Sevilla." <That was exactly my impression.

So, I asked Gemini, since I enjoyed Valencia so much, give me some other great cities that Rick Steves is ignoring. It gave me Bologna, Zaragoza, Lyon, and Turin. Then it said, "In a way, finding out which cities Rick Steves ignores has become a shortcut to finding the most authentic, rewarding, and crowd-free urban destinations in Western Europe." <How about that? That's a pretty nice list of places to go to.

"In a way, finding out which cities Rick Steves ignores has become a shortcut to finding the most authentic, rewarding, and crowd-free urban destinations in Western Europe."
Difficult to spin that statement into a compliment.

This was fun to read, coming on the heels of my own (shorter) visit to Valencia in April - which I absolutely loved.

Thank you for the recommendation for La Terracita restaurant, which I've added to my notes to check out for a (hopeful) next visit. In reading reviews, the restaurant is very much based on a concept of sharing the dishes. Would it still be a good place for me, as a solo diner?

We bought scallops, tiny clams, mussels, shrimp, cod, sea bream, salmon, and lots of others that I can’t remember.

Sounds amazing, what were you cooking with all these great catches?

We bought scallops, tiny clams, mussels, shrimp, cod, sea bream, salmon, and lots of others that I can’t remember.

Sounds amazing, what were you cooking with all these great catches?

My wife does the cooking. Tiny clams were sauteed in a pan until they opened, shrimp were boiled, sea bream was roasted in the oven with vegetables, salmon was pan sauteed. Mussels were also somehow cooked in a pan until they opened. The mussels were very salty. We also bought some sort of flat fish, about 6 inches long and 4 inches wide. We pan fried those.

When we bought bacalao (cod) filets the fish sellers would put a handful of parsley in with it, so we looked up a recipe and there is a local recipe. Here it is: chop up the parsley, put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, slice up some garlic, and fry the sliced garlic. Take the fried garlic out of the pan and put the bacalao filets in the pan to sauté in the garlic-infused olive oil. In the last 30 seconds of cooking the bacalao, put the fried garlic slices and the parsley in the pan with the fish. Don't overcook the fish. It was pretty good.

With them were an assortment of vegetables which were roasted in the oven. We had zucchini, red bell peppers, and cauliflower for roasting in the oven. Eggplant was dipped in egg and fried.

Potatoes were microwaved. We had bought some butter, and my wife was brought up poor so she can't let anything go to waste, and she said we have to eat up all that butter before we leave, so the potatoes were invariably drenched in butter.

We also bought chicken. We noticed they had regular looking chicken and yellow chicken. We asked about the yellow chicken and they said it was some sort of free-range, special feed, etc. We tried cooking that in the oven and it turned out kind of tough. Not a good choice.

We also ate a lot of apples and oranges.

Thank you for the recommendation for La Terracita restaurant, which I've added to my notes to check out for a (hopeful) next visit. In reading reviews, the restaurant is very much based on a concept of sharing the dishes. Would it still be a good place for me, as a solo diner?

That's a great question and I don't have an answer. If you are planning to eat there, you might ask the proprietor. He's from Britain, so you will have no trouble communicating. No need to use your Italian-accented Spanish, haha.

"My wife does the cooking."

Compliments to your chef. It would be fun to travel slow and shop local with her. I'm envious!

If you are planning to eat there, you might ask the proprietor.

It sounds so fun to see what he would cook up each day, so I guess I can give it a shot.

Good to know my Italian accented Spanish won't be necessary... it's not so great anyway! :-)