Weather: 30º C and sunny (not a cloud in the sky)

10 minute walk into the old town and a much longer time looking for the information centre. It looked like one of the flower stalls in one of the plazas. Had to queue to go in it as it was only large enough for a few people. The door was controlled by the people inside.

Got some maps, information and tickets for the hop-on/hop-off bus. You will know by now that we find these quite informative and helpful when we only have a limited amount of time in the city. Half of the trip was spent in the newer part of the city. Apart from the Old Town it is quite a modern city although it also has a lot of history. The city has a large park (Jardines del Turia) which wanders through it. It used to the River Turia but after a catastrophic flood in 1957 the river was diverted around the city and the river bed converted into parks and gardens.

The old roman wall has mostly disappeared but a few very large gates still stand. Now that we are heading further south we are starting to see some remnants of the occupation by the Moors who crossed the straits of Gibraltar in 711 and remained in control until finally ousted 800 years later. In Turkey we saw churchs that had been turned into mosques and here we are seeing mosques that have been converted into churches. The Moors brought lots to Valencia – oranges, irrigation, spices and more.

After lunch we had a look through the old town and followed a path painted on the pavement which linked the 4 churches. Unfortunately only one of them was open – the cathedral. It is all about the timing and we have not been getting that right at the moment.

Some of you may want to skip this next paragraph on bull fighting.

Then it was off in search of the Museo Taurino. This is an amazing little museum that looks at bullfighting in Valencia. Very cheap to enter, it had a number of the costumes some of the better known bull fighters wore dating back to the 1920s. It appears there were a number of different people involved in a bullfight; the Picadors (horsemen who initially lances the bull), the Banderillero (put colourful sticks in the bull) and the Matador de Toros (killer of bulls). The purpose of the first 2 is to give the Matador information on the bulls strength and to limit the bulls movement to assist in the kill. You probably did not want to hear any of this but you will be pleased to know that the Matador can make a decision to not kill the bull if he thinks it has given a strong fight. Not sure how often this happens. At the end of the fight the crowd can give a thumbs up or down as to how the Matador performed. There is also the comic bull fighting which can sometimes take place where a dressed up performer “plays with” (annoys) a bull. After the museum we were allowed into the bullring where there were people training. Their movements were very formal and staged although from information in the museum a bull fighter could introduce their own movements. Some had become quite famous because of this.All very interesting we thought. The Roman games in the colosseums were possibly the precursor to bull fighting and perhaps a part of rodeos originated out of bullfighting (bull riding, clowns protecting riders etc).

Some parts of the old city are quite elegant. Will add a picture or 2 but pictures often don’t show things that well.

There is a lot to do here such as go to a large safari park, a bio park, beaches etc but these don’t interest us so you will have to come here to see those for yourself.

On the walk back to the apartment we went to the garage to see how to negotiate the roads and get the car back to the apartment on Sunday.

Once back we finshed the bottle of wine the owners had left for us and had some chilled red wine (ours from the Rioja region), snacks and off to bed. We first struck chilled red wine (not rose) in Australia and it is common to have it chilled here – especially Tempranillo – lovely on a hot day.