We’ve just returned from a mother-daughter trip to Valencia and it was wonderful. It’s feels like such a privilege that she still wants to go away on holiday with me and I feel very lucky to be in that situation. It may well have something to do with the fact that she works for the NHS and therefore doesn’t have a lot of spare money, so sharing a room with me is a relatively cheap option – but still, I don’t think she’d come if we didn’t get on as well as we do. She’s currently going through a lot work wise and whilst of course I invited my younger son to join us (my older son has recently got married and is therefore doing his own thing), he declined on account of the fact that there was possibly going to be a lot of browsing the shops involved. He might have reconsidered had he realised that Ukraine were playing Sweden in the playoffs at the Ciutat de Valencia Stadium whilst we were there, but we didn’t find that out until we were there and spotted all the hordes of supporters.
There’s something magical (for me anyway) about spending quality time with your grown up daughter. I know it’s not going to last forever, so I want to make the most of it whilst we still can. She’s exactly half my age and whilst I can just about keep up with her walking pace – as long as I’m practically jogging alongside her, I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m too slow. On one of our days out and about I did 20,000 steps to her 18,000, such is the greater length of her stride. We walked, talked, ate, drank, wandered around the shops and chilled. It might end up being too boring for her to go to bed at midnight after a last drink in the hotel bar, but currently we are pretty in sync with what we want to do.
Valencia is a lovely city to mooch around. Lots of fabulous old buildings and some great restaurants. She tends to do all the research on the best eating and drinking establishments to visit and I’m very happy just to go with the flow.
We stayed at the newly renovated INNSiDE by Melia Hotel which is located between the Turia Park and next to the City of Arts and Sciences. We chose it because it had a pool that was open and whilst it was typically windy, we had a lot of sunshine. From the hotel it was a half hour walk into the old town and about the same to the beach, so perfectly located for us. We took a couple of Uber’s later at night, but apart from that we walked everywhere.
I’m going to share some of the photos, easier to see where we’ve been and what we got up to.
The Arts Centre:-
The Opera House:-
All wonderfully futuristic:-
The walk into the old town from our hotel:-
Climbed the bell tower of the church, which has 207 steps to get some gorgeous city views:-
The main food market:-
The Beach club:-
Casa Montana – an excellent restaurant:-
El Rodamon O de Ruffassa – another excellent restaurant choice, with a different take on Patatas Bravas:-
Amoramargo was also very good:-
This is apparently the oldest paella restaurant in Spain. It’s a massive restaurant and was packed!
We went for the classic rabbit and chicken paella and it was delicious:-
The smell of orange blossom was in the air:-
The wonderfully old fig trees:-
We found a new favourite drink – Agua de Valencia, made with fresh orange juice, Cava, gin and vodka and served in dangerous jugs!:-
In one of the town squares:-
We found a wonderful rooftop bar for our sundowners:-
The market in Russafa was a smaller version of the one in town, but very interesting. Lots of stalls selling vintage clothes outside the day we went:-
