No Sleep Till Spain: Adventures IN Valencia - A Full Week Without Boarding a Plane

How time has flown in this country! I'm already down to my last 4 days of classes & 8 days abroad - ¡qué deprimente! This past weekend our study abroad program advisors had planned for us trips to La Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, La Albufera, & Gandia in Valencia, so none of our little family traveled outside the city. After hopping aboard planes these past 2 weekends prior, it was nice to spend some time just enjoying the country I came to Europe to see. La Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, (which we visited on Friday), is not actually it's own city, as its title would suggest, but rather a large museum comprised of about 3 or 4 very modern looking buildings. While the museum itself might have left something to be desired, the very large zoo attached to it made the trip infinitely more enjoyable. La Albufera & Gandia are destinations located outside of the city of Valencia, but still within the province. Our group took a boat tour of the region of la Albufera, which is chock-full of farms & restaurants & not much else, before heading to the beach in Gandia where we spent the majority of this past Saturday. In Gandia we all had the opportunity to surf, kite-surf, kayak, & enjoy a catamaran ride. Before this excursion I knew next to nothing about surfing, & after this excursion I still know next to nothing about surfing, but all in all it was a pretty great day. Sunday some of my friends & I trekked over to los Torres de Serranos, found in the older part of Valencia, to catch a birds eye view of the city. Los Torres is comprised of 2 towers left standing from the old Valencian city wall, which was created to protect the city from invasion. The towers contain many holes left from cannonballs & such from way back when, & that's probably the most interesting part about them. We pass these towers almost every time we're in old Valencia & had wanted to climb them for a while, but the view from the top just didn't quite do it justice. After visiting el Castillo de Xátiva & the Eiffel Tower I may be a little jaded on the subject, but hey at least it was an adventure(ish)! In the evening we smooshed ourselves into a teeny-tiny bar in old Valencia to watch what has to have been one of the coolest (& only) Flamenco shows I have ever seen. What a night. It has also finally gotten warm enough to spend some quality time at the beach, so after a very lonely 2 months of sitting in my closet (since Jamaica) my bikinis are back in action. (It's beginning to feel a lot like summer...)

Can You Canoe?

Kayaking at La Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias. You can see one of the mod buildings in the background.