Today our plan was to wander around Old Town a bit more and go into a few of the buildings we saw on the walking tour on our first day here. So, we set off on foot and (as usual) found some interesting buildings and street art along the way.
An odd-looking local tree.
There was a street mural of mice doing 'Hamlet'.
We were barked at by a balcony corgi.
We'd decided we'd get breakfast from the market today. It's a lovely building but the stands themselves are just run of the mill compared to the explosion of colours we saw at La Boqueria in Barcelona.
After breakfast we were off to Valencia Cathedral.
It was quite busy so we had to line up for a while to get in.
Once inside we found a fairly typical old church, but it did have some quite magnificent pieces.
This was almost certainly some creepy relic.
Yep. It's some dead guy's mummified arm.
The cathedral had a museum, which of course had some very old and very creepy religious art. Case in point: Thomas getting busy with Jesus' side wound.
Ah, painters who lack a grasp of female anatomy. Be more like Leonardo da Vinci and get in some quality cadaver time, dammit.
Mary gets assumpted, i.e. turned into a ghost without physically dying. At least, that's what I think the audioguide guy said.
One of the many places that claim the cup they have is the Holy Grail is here in Valencia.
We paid to walk up the 207 steps to the top of the tower. Not pleasant, but the views were spectacular. The pics would be better if many of them didn't have my thumb in them, but in my defence I was trying to work around the safety mesh.
Hilariously, the bell rang while we were up there, scaring the crap out of everyone. On the plus side, it was only one o'clock, so we were only subjected to one dong.
[insert bell picture here]
Down from the tower and roaming the streets now.
Now inside Valencia silk exchange building, the [insert text here].
I came across this tree, in Valencia. It's odd that there are so many trees like it in Valencia, and they have fruit on them. Must be some kind of Valencian fruit, but I'm buggered if I know what it could be. Oh, will I ever solve the mystery of this fruit of Valencia?
Easily one of the most impressive buildings I've been that was neither religious nor military in nature.
Back to the streets. In case you hadn't noticed, I like doors - and there are a lot of cool doors in Europe.
Yellow Happiness is a store that just sells rubber ducks and rubber duck paraphernalia.
Today the giant panda was joined by a polar bear.
Wasn't sure what this was. It looks like a sword, but up close it doesn't have a hilt like a sword, and nor is he holding it like a sword.
Next on today's list was the Museu de Belles Arts - the fine arts museum. Lots of fun stuff (weird and interesting paintings) there.
A somewhat feminine-featured St. George.
Inspiration for Lord Farquad from 'Shrek'? Incidentally, that's been on Spanish tv twice that we've noticed so far.
"Your tray of boobs, sir." [Might be Saint Agatha?]
We've been a bit light on Saint Sebastians so far, but here's one.
A carving to represent Montserrat and its Madonna. We've been there!
Saint John the Baptist, by El Greco.
One of Hieronymous Bosch.
Given this is Spain, it's unsurprising there are a few of Diego Velázquez's works around.
An impressively-mustachioed Spanish gentleman.
A portrait by Van Dyk.
Rubens.
Goya.
Not sure of the significance of the angry cat.
The museum had a pretty courtyard.
Not to do with the painting, just the name: Jose Mongrell Torrent.
There was a whole section devoted to Joaquin Sorolla, who's like the patron saint of Valencian painting. Most of his stuff was portraits of people I'd never heard of, but there was also this (which was huge).
Once out of the museum, we wandered around for a bit and didn't see much. But there was a park with an aviary that had various non-local birds, including a few cockatiels.
We had to walk to a bus stop to get to our next destination, the harbour, to go on a cruise. Some buildings along the way.
I neglected to take many photos from the boat, which took us on a cruise just outside the harbour.
One of the sea without land.
One of the sea with a bit of land.
That night we decided to eat in and grabbed a pizza from the shops plus some wine. We were supposed to eat the leftover paella we had from the previous night, but the fridge in our apartment had been acting weird that morning and, despite the fact we asked the front desk to look at it and just turn it back on (the problem was it was beeping quite loudly), they hadn't so we didn't want to risk eating food that hadn't been kept cool. But we had enough.
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