City of Arts & Sciences

Yesterday, Tuesday, January 10, I went for a brief run in the morning - over to Central Park (which I mistakenly referred to as City Park in my last post) and up and down its various pathways, ramps and staircases, then along the main road toward Estacion de Nord and back along Calle de Sueca. 

Later, I asked Karen where she wanted to walk this morning and she said right away, “Down to the City of Arts and Sciences.” “Why?” I asked. “Just because its a nice place to go - and there might be a new sculpture exhibit.” All true. So that’s what we did. 

It was an absolutely gorgeous day, much nicer than forecast, with full sun and temperatures over 20C. We walked by way of the Ruzafa Market and stopped to buy ginger and an avocado. (The people in this market are generally friendly and welcoming to foreigners - in our experience - including the woman who waited on us today. This is unlike at the Central Market, where they no doubt get way too many foreigners for their liking and are sometimes less than friendly.) 

We continued on to Avenida de Reino de Valencia (King of Valencia Avenue - I can’t remember who the king was) and walked along the central boulevard to the Turia River and across it at the Bridge of the Winged Demons (not its real name)

King of Valencia Avenue

The City of Arts and Sciences, as faithful readers of this sometime blog will already know, is an architectural wonderland created by two contemporary Spanish architecture stars, Santiago Calatrava, a local, and Félix Candela. Building began in 1996 and it opened in 2005. The project was supposed to cost 300 million euros but the budget ended up ballooning to three times that amount. The site includes an opera and concert hall, a science museum, an aquarium and assorted other buildings, plus gardens - including fabulous rose gardens - and promenades.

City of Arts & Sciences: l to r, Umbracle, Hemisferic, Reina Sofia Concert Hall

We noticed a few changes. One building, the Agora, which looks like an anorexic astronomical observatory and has been used for a variety of special events, including tennis tournaments, has now been taken over by the Caixa Bank Foundation. The foundation presents special museum and art exhibits. There’s one on right now of Egyptian artefacts from the British Museum that we’re planning to see.

City of Arts & Sciences: Agora, now CaixaForum

The other noticeable change is that they’re now offering visitors rental of various types of water craft to skim across the big shallow pool in front of the Science Museum. In the past, they didn’t even allow wading in the pool. Karen speculated that they didn’t want the pool used for recreation because it would spoil the aesthetic - but now they need the money. It was a sparse crowd today but all three types of craft were out on the water: a pedal catamaran, paddle board versions of the stand up electric scooters that are ubiquitous arund town, and row boats.

City of Arts & Sciences: Umbracle (l), Science Museum (r)

The other disappointing change is that they have apparently discontinued the tradition of mounting sculpture exhibits along the Umbracle promenade across from the Science Museum. Oh, well. Lots of other art to see in the city.

Science Museum

Science Museum

Umbracle

We walked back along a street choked with teenagers just out of school for the lunch break. We got back to the flat a little after 2.

Karen wanted to do an evening, after-dark walk today, so we waited until after 5 and set out for the city centre just as dark was falling. 

We initially had decided not to join Valenbisi, the city-run bike rental subscription service, this year. Karen’s arthritic knees make biking an iffy proposition for her. But she decided, given that Valencia is so flat, and we’ve enjoyed biking here so much in the past, that she should give it a try. Her first idea was that we’d just rent for a couple of weeks on the weekly plan to see how it goes, but it turns out subscribing for two weeks costs only a few euros less than the annual memberships we’ve bought in the past. The annual membership is up to just under 30 euros now, but it’s still a fabulously good deal - about CDN$41.

Valenbisi has a slick new subscription process and app that allows you to register and subscribe online with no need for a card - which in the past has been a problem because they wanted to mail it to us. Now you just use your cell phone to get bikes. They’re also now specifically targeting foreign visitors, with a new well-translated English-language website and an English-language help line. I used the help line and got a really helpful guy who spoke perfect English - he sounded vaguely American.

We could have gotten away with having two subscriptions using one cell phone, but it would mean logging out of one account and into the other every time we wanted to get bikes. The easier solution, the help line guy said, was to get a Mobili - mass transit - card and associate it with your Valenbisi account. Then you can use the card to get bikes out. So we walked over to the Xativa Metro stop by the bull ring tonight and bought two cards. That cost 15.20 euros, but includes 20 subway or bus rides. Tomorrow, I’ll complete the process by buying two Valenbisi annual memberships.

They were lining up at the bull ring box office, we think for bull fight events, but will have to check back when it’s light and not so crowded.

After the Metro stop, we wandered down Avenida de Colon, which was choked with early-evening shoppers, and ducked into the Camper store. We each immediately found sale shoes we wanted. The trouble would be finding room in our jam-packed luggage to get them back to England. We didn’t go much further along Colon before turning back towards home.

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This morning, Wednesday, January 11, I went out for a longer-than- planned power walk: over to Central Park, through it to the pedestrian overpass over the tracks, then along beside the tracks, past Joaquin Sorolla Station and back across the tracks at the Bailen underpass - and so home along Sueca.

After that, I finished the online process of subscribing to Valenbisi, then went out and set up one of the Mobilis cards for Karen to use and tested the mobile phone Valenbisi app. The app works very slickly. You get a map showing nearby stations, with the number of bikes available at each, and user ratings of each bike. Go to the nearest station, find a bike that looks good, swipe its number in the presented list and the bike is released from its locking.

Setting up the Mobilis card was a pain because of a balky touch screen at the station I used, and the fact that the interface is all in Spanish. You have to put in your phone number and six-digit security code to register the card with your account. Trouble is, even the list of country codes is in Spanish, so United Kingdom isn’t under ‘U’ but  under ‘R’ for Reino Unido. It took me a while to find it. After that, the card works like the Valenbisi cards we used to get when we subscribed: you tap it at the station, key in your security code, select a bike - and it’s unlocked.

Our idea was to get bikes and ride down to the beach, but then we also decided to go out for lunch. So we thought we’d better do that first. We went out a bit before one to look for a restaurant in Ruzafa, but were disappointed. Fewer, it seems, now offer menus del dia with a fixed price - and usually a very good price - for a three-course lunch with drink. They used to be everywhere in Spanish cities, but seem a little thinner on the ground post-Covid.

We gave up on Ruzafa in the end and walked over into the centre to a place called Rodrigo Botet Square, one of our old favourite spots for lunch. It’s tucked in behind City Hall Square, a quiet little oasis with a fountain, pretty buildings and a few restaurants with tables in the middle of the square. Most now offer only tapas, but we found one, Geppetto Trattoria (with a Pinocchio theme) that offered a 10 euro menu del dia. Drinks were not included, and cost 4 euros each for small glasses of wine. It was still one of the best-value menus del dia we’ve had here.

Karen had a tomato salad with tuna and hard boiled egg for starters. I had the Quesadilla Iberico with ham and cheese. Both were excellent. Then for mains, we both had quite good BBQ entrecote with roast potatoes and aioli. Dessert was an excellent brownie with ice cream. Total bill: just over 30 euros (about CDN$42).

Sometimes you have to look up to see the pretties

We strolled down to the El Corte Ingles, the big posh department store, in search of a cheap ball cap for running and bike riding. We found the men’s hat section. The first one I picked up was a Kangol cap for 54 euros! Another was on sale - 15% off the sticker price of 39 euros. At that point, we left in disgust, got bikes outside on Avenida de Colon and rode home. 

An evening stroll around the neighbourhood is still planned.