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!

Visitors!

Last Friday saw the arrival of Rich's parents for 6 days, all of which absolutely flew by, and also the arrival of our summer weather.

We spent a lot of time in the sunshine, at the beach, in the park and in town and even more time eating and drinking.  It was a great trip!

I took a few pictures so here we are...

We went to Xativa on the Saturday in glorious sunshine .

The walk up to the castle is such a beautiful one but it was hot so we took our time and enjoyed the churches on the way.  They have some statutes set up for their local celebrations through the summer.

The huge G&T was very welcome after such a long walk!

We visited in October for the first time but I was thrilled to be back, it's such a lovely town and the view from the top of the castle is stunning. 

After a siesta we headed to dinner at Bacco (an Italian restaurant that sort of looks like a beautiful cave) and then for G&Ts at doce Gin Club where Jan, Les and I had to choose from a menu of 250 gins.  Tough work I'm sure you'll agree!

On Sunday we headed to the Bioparc for Jan and Les' first visit.  We managed to be there in time to see the gorillas being fed, which in all our 10 or so visits, Rich and I hadn't seen before.

I'm always fascinated to see what's new and the baby gorilla is certainly an adorable addition to the park!

I think they both really enjoyed the visit.  We  then headed to the beach for paella where I forgot to take any pictures and then in the evening (after another much needed siesta) we headed to the international Festival in the park for mojitos and a light dinner.

After our mojitos, pizza, crepes and sausages (not all together) we enjoyed the dancers from around the world.

It seems I only took pictures of the weekend, but we saw out the week by eating at some delicious restaurants and drinking more mojitos.  They really were the drink of the holiday!

I absolutely love planning for when people come to stay and then seeing how much they enjoy all of the great things we have here.  I'm so glad they enjoyed their week and now I'm starting to think of the things that we can do with my parents in 2 weeks and my friends Lucy and Olly in 3 weeks.  There's always something going on here!

A Warm Weekend

The weather's warming up nicely so this weekend was all about getting outside and making the most of the sunshine.

Friday evening saw us taking Rich's family to the Metro before heading into town for an ice cream and popping up to the cinema and having the most intense massage chair experience ever.

 

Saturday was just glorious so we packed up a picnic and headed out to find a spot in the park.  This one, alongside the Palau de las Arts, the stream in the park and under a shady tree seems perfect for us.

We don't do things by halves, it's blankets and cushions all the way for us!

 

On Sunday we went out for a walk and stumbled across a flamenco and equestrian display in the park.  As you do. 

And then after 5 minutes we ran into a group of people who were participating in a Lindy Hop demonstration.  As you do.  Seriously, this park is always packed with things going on!

We stopped for lunch at one of my favourite places to hit on a Sunday, 100 Montaditos.  Everything's €1 including drinks so we ordered a selection of montaditos (little sandwiches), nachos and tinto verano (like sangria) and scoffed the lot all for just €11!

We then wandered up to the Bioparc for what I think is our 7th visit.  The animals were all really close, unlike it often is in the middle of the day so I definitely recommend a late afternoon visit. 

The new baby giraffe is just adorable!

And the gorillas had also welcomed a new baby.

So all in all, a lovely relaxed weekend which seemed very quiet after a wonderfully busy week with Rich's family.  We have a couple of Rich's friends arriving on Thursday for a weekend visit which will be fantastic, but a chilled out weekend was definitely in order.  

I'm sure there'll be lots more pictures to go up next week, possibly including my 8th visit to the Bioparc.  I do like to get my money's worth!