Our research told us that one of the things we should do in Valencia is visit the Oceanogràfic - their huge aquarium complex. So, we'd bought tickets through our apartment reception; along with that we also had a ticket for a short film in their IMAX cinema (Hemisfèric) and access the science centre (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias).
Valencia does have a tram/metro system, but it didn't seem to go anywhere near where our apartment was; as a result, we were dependent on the buses. They go just about everywhere, but they are very slow so it took us quite a while to get there - fortunately, our trip to the grocery store the previous evening had included us buying food for breakfast (Rochelle, who can't live without coffee first thing, rented a coffee capsule machine from the apartment reception) so we didn't have to stop anywhere for that beforehand.
It's an impressive-looking place:
The whole complex is just massive - which makes sense when you consider just how much sea life they have there. It's easily the largest of these sorts of things I've ever seen. So we wandered around for a while and looked at things.
Sigh. Yes, we found Nemo.
They have quite a few jellyfish.
Now I've seen all sorts of fish, coral, craps, starfish, anemones etc. - but I've never seen a beluga whale before. They have two.
More tortoises. Giant tortoises, even.
Not aquarium related - this guy just has a weasel on his backpack, which I thought was cool.
♬ That's a-moray. ♬
Japanese spider crabs. Considering they grow to be four meters across (mostly legs) these ones are babies.
Another beluga pic. Not sure why it's out of order.
Sharks!
It's a shame about ray (a joke for the Lemonheads fans out there).
And we're outside again. We found wee tortoises - hilariously, the little ones seem to communicate by very angrily headbutting the shells of the larger ones.
We walk to the IMAX building.
We saw people with a shiba inu! We got very excited.
Inside the science building. I can't remember who this guy is, but they made a scary sculpture of him.
There was a section about Mars, so we wandered around that for a while. They have a model of one of the Mars vehicles. I can't remember which one.
There was a display of penny farthing bikes. I didn't see any hipsters around, though.
Back to the Oceanografic to see the dolphins. Am a bit conflicted about this; we're told that they've
achieved a certification for human treatment, but I'm not sure it should still be a thing.
Then we caught another slow-moving local bus to get to the part of town we were having dinner.
A big-ass hat sculpture. Fun fact: sombrero is just the Spanish word for hat, not just the massive ones more associated with Mexico.
We're now at the harbour.
Wandering the streets. Again.
We had some time on our hands before dinner so we found a bar and ordered a local cocktail, Agua de Valencia. They are very strong: recipe is usually orange juice, sparkling white wine, gin, vodka and sugar.
An akita inu walked past our table.
There's a police station with an interesting image.
Someone's had the brilliant idea of doing Oktoberfest in Spain. Of course it's not October yet - but the one in Germany starts in September as well. We know 'cause we were leaving Munich around this time last year, and saw all the people coming to town for it.
The name of this place is interesting 'cause there's a Spanish guy at work whose name is Coso.
Now at La Pepica for dinner. It's considered - by the tourist websites at least - to be a good place to have paella. We were there at 7.30, which is very early by Spanish standards; pretty much everyone there at that time was a tourist, or looked like one.
We'd opted for the terrace, so we got this quite nice view.
Drinks. I got a local beer that wasn't very cold.
We ordered bread; it came with a kind of garlic mayonnaise, but I'd have called it a garlic cream, since it wasn't very mayonnaise-y. The other container is crushed tomato, which the Spanish eat on bread all the time, including for breakfast. It's pretty nice like that - we had it in Barcelona - but it's amazing with the garlic spread.
Paella! You have to get it in serves of two or more, which is a bit annoying because I wanted the traditional (chicken and rabbit) but Rochelle wanted a seafood one. But I can't eat the seafood one (too many prawns, which I'm not a fan of) so we went with the traditional Easily the best paella either of us have had.
On the way out I decided I liked the mosaic floor.
That was pretty much that. Oh, except for the bus ride home - something like 33 stops and close to an hour. This would play a part in us doing things a bit differently the following evening.
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