So, we’ll do these in order.
The biking here is great. We hopped on the bikes and peddled our way towards La Malva-Rosa beach which is the main one here in the city. A good 25 km trek there and back and all of it on bike paths, none of it through traffic whatsoever. The bike lanes are integrated into the wide city sidewalks and not the roads. You reading this Gregor? They didn’t chop off a lane on the road and make it narrower, they just used the existing sidewalk. So much nicer not having cars whizzing right by you.
We got to the beach midday, and the sun was just starting to come out. It had been cloudy earlier and the night before we had a torrential downpour and a real wicked thunderstorm. Lots of leftover water pooling about and someone’s huge sandcastle sculpture didn’t fare well with the rain. He was not happy. It didn’t take long to get hot though. The beach, about 3 km long, is wide and very picturesque. This is not a tourist destination beach as such, although there are lots of those here. This is more a local Spanish beach and the road that fronts it is lined with restaurants, a few hotels, and some of the usual souvenir shacks. There are other beaches of course, north and south of the city, but you need to drive to them. And further along the coast are the destination beaches, the whole of the Costa del Sol is a beach actually and it is lined with condo after condo after condo. The Malvarosa is right in the city, a nice attraction, easy to get to, and that makes it a very busy place when the sun is out.
On the way to and from the beach, we rode past the Arts and Sciences sci-fi set again. This is where the bitchy part begins. We did a little research on the whole thing and apparently, it’s not worth spending money on seeing whatever is inside. The consensus seems to be that sure, wander around and marvel at the buildings…from the outside. There’s not much going on inside and we’ve already seen the large aquarium in Lisbon. When we mentioned Valencia to some of our hosts along the way on this trip, they often rolled their eyes and mumbled something about a waste of money. It seems that a lot of people and the national government is not all that happy with the Valencian city government about spending a lot of money on fancy ‘projects’ and nothing to show for it. Valencia built all these structures and aerodynamic bridges when there was some prosperity here but the ‘projects’ have turned into a 1.3 billion Euro boondoggle and as Wiki states:
The complex has also become a symbol of profligate spending, financial mismanagement and waste, due to large cost overruns and a large debt burden that the region is struggling under.
So, while they look beautifully fantastic, it’s a sore spot with the Spanish.
It was the condo after condo part that disappointed me when we toured both south and east coasts of Spain but we never spent enough time in one place to get beyond that. I’ll be looking forward to tips from you two over a glass or more of wine. And I’m willing to bet you know some good Spanish wines!
You bet Karen.