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!

La Crema

Tuesday night was the final night of Fallas, and a good job it was too.  We were shattered!  Nonetheless we dragged ourselves out to see the smaller infantil fallas burnt at 10pm.  I wore my bluson and panuelo that I had bought for our school Fallas celebration on Thursday with quite a few layers underneath to keep warm!

We reached the end of our road and the first infantil was about to be lit.  Cue fireworks that made me jump a mile!

Another 100m along the road and the next one had just been lit.  

I couldn't believe how close people were standing to them. 

Although they're all supposed to be lit at 10pm, we saw 2 more on our way into town.  

It's really quite creepy seeing all these child like statues burn like this.

  
The next one we came to (somewhere in Canovas I think) was lit just as we were there and the firecrackers were so loud they nearly gave me a heart attack.  I suppose we were only about 6 feet away from them though.

We decided that we would head for the city centre, to Plaza de Ayuntamiento for the burning of the falla there.  It was one of the biggest, and there were fireworks too, though we had to wait until 1am for it to start.

  

  

After waiting almost 2 hours, it was finally time.  And it couldn't have been a more exciting end to the week.  Rich and I took videos but I'm having problems uploading them and so I'll have to try and do it another time. It's safe to say that the volume and intensity of everything to do with Fallas was just insane but this took the biscuit.  Incredible!

After such a adrenaline fuelled evening, walking home through quiet streets, with smouldering piles of rubble was eery.  In some places there was no sign of the falla or rubble at all because the street cleaning team had already been and washed the road.  It really felt like we'd had a surreal dream, not helped by the fact that there is no sign of Fallas on the streets today!

Fallas - A Mascleta

These photos are actually from last weekend, but I've just remembered I took them, and I haven't posted about a Mascleta yet so here we go.

These are held in Plaza Ayuntamiento every day at 2pm from the 1st of March until the 19th, the final day of Fallas.

They are incredibly loud and I advise you to go and look one up on You Tube, to experience the volume. By the end of it, the explosions come so thick and fast that the windows in the square shake and if you are close enough, as we were last Saturday, the rumble you get through your whole body is just amazing.

My little video is just the beginning of it, so you don't get the intense sound at the end, but it may give you an idea.

We went to 3 Mascletas during Fallas and they are great; definitely one of my highlights.

Nit de Foc - Night of Fire

Having been to the firework displays on Saturday and Sunday night, we popped out of the flat last night expecting a fairly similar experience.  This was not the case.  As soon as we left our flat, there were cars everywhere and people streaming down to the Palau de les Arts, at the end of our street.  This is not what it normally looks like at 1.15am on a Tuesday morning.

And I now see why so many people turn out for it.  The Nit de Foc is the big one, to start off the main celebrations on the 19th, that culminate in tonight's crema, which is the burning of all the fallas. 

I know that my pictures don't do any justice to these amazing displays, but here we go anyway. 

The fireworks have been one of my favourite parts of Fallas so I am a little sad that I won't be watching elaborate displays every night now, but I will be glad to get some sleep!

Fallas Day 4

We were flagging a bit today. After being woken up at 8am by fireworks that lasted an hour, we went back to sleep til 1pm so we didn't leave the house until 2pm but when we did, we were greeted by our local falleras and falleros, on their way to the flower ceremony in Plaza de la Virgin, exactly where we were heading!

The weather was a lot better today, perfect for wandering around the city and enjoying the flower ceremony.  We couldn't get a perfect view of the front and of the huge Virgin Mary statue made of flowers, but we enjoyed what we saw nonetheless.

The flowers that are offered, get put into a large display to the side of the square. 

It was so warm today!

 

Not a cloud in the sky!

Possibly my favourite part of the day- my frozen yogurt.

A very busy street in El Carmen.

Rich looking dapper in his panuelo, the traditional attire. You wear it like this, but turn it around and cover your mouth when the fallas burn tomorrow night, in the crema. 

 

There seemed to be more of a party atmosphere on the streets today, perhaps because the weather was so gorgeous, but there was a lot of dancing going on as everyone processed through town.

Tiny babies on their float!

Not bad at 5pm.

We've just had dinner and are going to watch a movie before heading out to watch tonight's fireworks.  We're debating a day out somewhere tomorrow, but I suppose that will depend on the time we wake up in the morning!