Today I orignally planned to take a tour of the Lladro Musem and Factory. Unfortunately you needed 24hour notice and reservation for it and seeing as how I only made up my mind 12 hours ago. I wasn't able to go. However they did have a store in the center of town. There was also the Museum of Ceramics near the store and since I really didn't know much about Llardo I thought going to the museum first would be good for me. What I wasn't prepared for was that there was no English audio guide or guide book. I had to settle for French , go figure! They had some placards that explained what each of the pieces in every room were. What was weird about going through the museum was that since I was the first visitor every security person in the room followed me. They would just slowly walk behind me or when I left their areas that they covered they would talk on their portable radio to the next person and advise them I was coming. Yeah it was a tad bit disconcerting! The musem was pretty cool though, it used to be a former palace so you can still see the grandure and oppulence of the place. I spent about an hour and a half there. They didn't have a shop where I could get some postcards, so I had to discreetly take pictures. Let me tell you this is harder than it sounds! But I think I managed, haven't had time to look at the pictures yet. I'll upload them after dinner.

I loved the Llardo store! The porcelin was so delicate and exquisite. The bigger the piece the more expensive the price tag though!! Apparently you can collect these things.

Valencia as a Bus Turistic (hop on & off bus) too so I went on that and used it to get me back to my hote. Well near it anyways to where I can walk! I had to drop off something before heading back out. When I looked at the Bus Turistic Map they showed that Valencia had an Art Museum near their gardens. So I hopped back on the bus and went there. The nice thing about their art museum was that it was free! Yay!!! They had Jose Velasquez's self portrait there along with plenty of religious art works. It kind of reminded me of BJU's Art Gallery but on a much grander and larger scale with more paintings. Also they had two exibitions. One guy did pictures which were amazing. He played around with buildings in Mexico, showing off their symmetry and how the various pieces were eye catching. It was really cool!

Then since it was lunch time I asked the lady at the front desk to recommend a good place for paella. She couldn't do that for me. Apparently since it was 2pm and I was late it wouldn't have worked out for me to head to the beach to get the real genunite paella. I ended up walking down the Jardin Turia (yes I had my mace in my pocket with me! ) and going down stream. Then I ened up near one of the city's old walls and wandered in the back alley looking for a good place to eat lunch. The key to finding a good place to eat is either getting a recommendation from a local or seeing if there are non-English menus. I found this Moroccan restaruant called "Sahara". The food was so good! I had shish kebab with roasted veggetables. It was rather filling!

I spent the afternoon getting lost. I think I must walked around in circles for two hours looking for the bull ring and train station. It ended up that I was walking in circles outside the center of town and the only map I had was rather crummy. It didn't have all the streets names on it and it was way too general for the nice lady whom I asked for directions to sort out for me. It's a good thing I had changed into my tennis shoes by then! I just wanted to get some trinkets and postcards as souveniers and trying to go where the tourist were. So once I got some kind of direction from that helpful local lady (Mind you it was all in Spanish and I only understood like 1/5 of what she said but she pointed and that helped alot!) I was able to walk some more but in the right direction this time!

Once I got my souveniers I was ready to head home. I found my bus number and jumped on giving my weary feet a much needed break. Then I told the front desk lady I really, really wanted to eat some paella. So she got me directions and I will be back on the bus heading towards the beach. This time I'm bringing my big map that has better streets on it!