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!

My Last Visitors

I had another weekend of visitors, fun and frolics.  A spontaneous decision was made that Kat (my brother´s lovely girlfriend) and her parents would come over before I leave Valencia.  As Kat was returning for the second time and had seen most things last time, we relaxed for the weekend but her parents did a great job of seeing plenty of the city in just 2 days.

I was exhausted by the end of the week but managed to shake off a migraine just in time to enjoy some delicious food, scrummy cocktails and fabulous relaxed days on the beach. Sometimes you just need a couple of girlie days to chat and chill.  This really is the life...

Enjoying our Agua de Valencia.

Anyone for salmon ice cream? Anchovies? Tortilla?   Me neither!

 Just chilling.

 

The Umbracle, on our way over to Sorci e Morsi.

 

Mmm, limoncella. Not Kat´s favourite!

 

1am traffic jam at the beach.

 

 

 

Kat´s parents´first paella went down well.

Just another weekend in paradise!  I´m hoping that packing and cleaning won´t take up all of my last weekend here, and that I can find a bit of time to head back down to the beach to carry on topping up my tan.  It won´t be the same without Kat to chat to though, I don´t think we stopped talking for more than 5 minutes all weekend- I was even talking to her in my sleep!

Thanks so much for coming over Kat, it was a great weekend!

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!