Usually when we cruise, we take excursions to give us an overview of the places we visit. On this cruise, though, we've been taking the port shuttles into town instead. Then, tourist map in hand, after marking where the shuttle bus stops, we start to walk. We can count on finding three things: interesting side streets, a church, and a cafe.
We find interesting side streets because there is actually no direct way to get anywhere. No street grids here! We turn into a street, walk to the corner, check the map, adjust our heading, repeat. The buildings are beautiful, and I must have thousands of pictures already, just looking down the streetscapes. Today we saw oranges and pomegranates (pomegranates!) growing in a garden outside an apartment building.
We then stumbled upon a cafe and had iced coffee to cool down. The cafe was part of a chocolate shop, and the woman at the table next to us had a cup of warm chocolate, kind of like fondue, into which she was dipping something that looked like cross between a bread stick and a donut. I think Tom was hoping she'd offer him some!
Right next to the cafe was Plaza de la Reina where there was a .... cathedral! And what a beauty!
One more interesting thing about Valencia: They had a big flood in the 1950's when the river overflowed its banks, in some places 16 m deep. To prevent this from happening again, they diverted the river around the city. They contemplated turning the former river bed into a motorway, but instead turned it into a most beautiful sunken park, crossed every few blocks by bridges. (Hey, Winnipeg ....!)
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