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!

Feria de la Tapa - Valencia's Tapas Fair

We are always on the look out for things to do that we can't do at home, so that we make the most of our time in Valencia, however long that might be.  So when we saw large green buses roaming around the city plastered in details about the Feria de la Tapa, I knew that we had to make a trip to the port.

The event is in its thrird year and was certainly popular.  We arrived at around 10.15pm and queued with hundreds of people to be let in.  Luckily the queue moved quickly and we only waited around 5 minutes.  This would probably be the busiest time as Spanish people tend to eat between 10pm and midnight before going out but I wanted to go when it was busy.  It had a great buzz, the music was loud and made you want to dance and the views over the marina were great.

On arriving you exchange cash for tokens which you then exchange for beer and tapas.  Each token cost just €1.20 and each tapa and beer was  token so an absolute bargain.  There were 24 restaurants from Valencia and the surrounding area offering a wide variety of tapas; each restaurant had 3 on a mini menu.

It was packed and difficult to choose but we were very impressed with all of our selections.  I meant to take more photos of the food but you know how it is when you're hungry!

Helpfully each restaurant was clearly marked and it also said where it was.  We have a good handle to hunt down now and go for a full meal.

So many people!  It was a good sign that so many Spanish people were there eating, there were obviously some very popular restaurants represented there based on the queues!

My favourite tapa- a brushetta of brown read with goats cheese and onion relish.

I had to queue for ages so they remade these melt in the middle chocolate puddings but OH. MY. GOD. so worth it.

WE found ourselves thoroughly stuffed and watered for only 12 tokens between us, costing €14.40.  Not bad for a Saturday night dinner.

The Feria de la Tapa is on until tonight and I am genuinely wondering if Rich will be up for a lunchtime visit today.

For more information, pop over here.