These are a few of my favourite things...

Gearing up to leave Valencia and begin a new adventure has me in a reflective mood.  I started to think about this post I wrote last August about the things that I was most excited to do when we first moved here.

I thought I´d look back and see if we did them all and whether anything else needed a mention as I look back on the year.


Living with Rich. It was brilliant and I am missing him now that we no longer do :(

Finding an apartment and making it our own. We found such a great apartment, and it´s sad to have to leave it.  As it´s right on the Riverbed, it´s great for getting out and enjoying the sunshine.

Learning Spanish. Well, that´s never really happened *embarrassed face*

Wandering through the Riverbed Park One of my favourite things about Valencia, we have spent many hours wandering and discovering new parts to it.

Getting to know my new class and colleagues.  My class were hard work to begin with, but my goodness they were fantastic children and I´m lucky to have worked with wonderful collegues this year too who I will definitely keep it touch with on Facebook.

Agua de Valencia (a mix of champagne, Cointreau, vodka and orange juice!) I´ve had it a few times and it´s nice, but not one of my favourite drinks.

Paella, tapas and sangria. You know what? I´m not a big tapas fan, but my goodness do I love Valencian paella.  I could eat the stuff every day.  And, I only had sangria once all year but I am partial to it.

Trips to the beach. Definitely one of my favourite places in this city.

Having our friends and family to stay and showing them round. Every trip has been amazing.

The Valencian fiesta, Fallas. Words fail me but maybe these posts will help...

So that´s what I was most looking forward to, but what do I rate now, after a glorious 11 months here?

The Bioparc
Easily my favourite place in the city.  I haven´t kept count (but wish I had) and I think I´ve visited 11 times now, and getting great value for money out of my annual pass! I change my mind all the time about my favourite animals, but it´s usually between the giraffes, elephants, gorillas and the hippos for me.

The City of Arts and Sciences
We are so lucky to have lived across the road from these incredible buildings which I never get tired of seeing.  We´ve seen 2 movies at the Hemisferic IMAX cinema, visited the Science Museum and visited the Oceanorafic many times.  This is a must see area if you´re visiting Valencia.

Walking, running and cycling
An odd choice?  Well I know you can do this in lots of places, but a year here has made me far more active and healthy.  I love being outside in the year round sunshine, and we very rarely take the bus or Metro.  I will certainly miss this in Doha.

Cheap wine
It´s local, it costs 1 Euro a bottle. Amazing!

Sorsi e Morsi restaurant
 One of our absolute favourites, they know our order when we walk in now.  Great food, very reasonably priced.  We´ve eaten here, and at their sister restaurants, over 30 times! Eek!

It really has been an incredible year here in Valencia.  I´m sure that our next adventure, in Doha, will also be amazing and I´ll be setting a blog for that too! I´ll pop a link up here as soon as I set it up, so you can all see how we get on!

Moving Day

Well we have moved into our new flat.  A mountain of cases and a taxi ride later we found ourselves in Monteolivet.

Our flat is in a large complex, on the 6th floor and it seems like a nice area.  There are lots of little cafes and bars nearby and one even sells perfectly drinkably wine for 50c a glass.  OK that's a small 125ml glass for 50c but at 250ml for less than £1, we're happy!

What makes the location even better is that we have 5 tennis courts just outside the building and we're only a 5 minute stroll from the Riverbed park and the City of Arts and Sciences with its incredible architecture.  We've yet to explore either properly but I know we'll be there soon and no doubt take all our visitors there too.

We took some pictures of the new flat so you can have a gander...

Not a bad park to bike and walk in eh?

The view at the end of our street.

I was a little bit excited to get the keys and move in!

The lounge.  The colours in the flat are a bit loud but it's really comfy and homey.

Dining area in the lounge.

If you look closely you might spot a few tiny pictures of my family- I got them up as soon as I could and now we need to get some of Rich's family organised.

The kitchen is a little galley kitchen, but very well equipped.  Our landlady has left crockery, cutlery, glassware, everything for us right down to tea towels which is a bonus when you can;t bring any of that stuff with you. 

I took this before I bought more hangers to hang my dresses up and before I put some new sheets on the bed but this is the master room in all its red and gold glory.  I told you it was bright!

The guest room is orange and has quite a tribal feel.  It'll probably look a bit different by the time people visit though, slightly calmer. 

And lastly the bathroom.  I absolutely love this shower with its 4 settings including a separate foot shower and jets out of the wall!  It's been up to 35c this week so a good shower is a must here.

So there you go, a little tour around our new place.  It still feels very new but hopefully we'll settle in soon and see lots of our friends and family for visits.  Rich's parents are our first and we can't wait to show it off!

I'll post about other things we've been getting up to at the weekend.  We may have been busy with flat hunting, paperwork and moving but we've still found time for some fun as well!

Tengo uno piso!

That means we have found a flat!  To be fair we only took a day and half to find somewhere but it's 35c and that  is pretty hot to spend long days traipsing around a city!

We sign the contract tomorrow and move in on Thursday when I will be able to pop some pictures up.

We both love it though which is the most important thing as it's our first flat together :)