During our planning for this trip I’d made a list of sights and divided them roughly into three: things I knew we’d likely pass on the Saturday whilst doing what we needed to, places that would be closed on Monday, and everything else. These were all plotted onto a map I printed and sort-of-laminated using sellotape, so if we found ourselves close to anything and had time, we could visit the sights with some sort of order.
The people of Valencia start their day early, as we could hear with the people resuming the painting of the building across the road around 08:00. It was however a relaxed start to the day, and somehow we still made it out into the warm sun around 09:30 as we headed to the nearby bus stop. The first stop today was for Carmen to see the Pabellón Fuente de San Luis. The reason for her wanting to see this venue was her plan to enter the Gay Games XII Valencia 2026, so would be where she’d be dancing next June. Seeing the route from where we were, and the area immediately around the venue would be useful and help her with planning her next trip.
The Gay Games is a 10-day event celebrating sports and culture, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ identities and our allies.
Traditional thought is that dancing is a man leading, and a woman following; but it's a very misogynistic view of a sport that is essentially an art. It's not even accurate. For example, some dances such as the Argentine Tango would originally be danced by two men. When it comes to participation, at the beginner level the majority of people dancing are women, with few men taking part. Carmen wanted to be sure she could dance in the Gay Games next year, not just as an ally, but because the games challenge mainstream thinking.
The journey there was mostly uneventful, except for the bus driver suddenly stopping, and running out of the bus into a supermarket. We thought maybe he’d had a sudden need to rush to the loo, but it seemed he needed snacks. He was half blocking the road though, and a lorry driver wasn’t happy. He kept blaring his horn, even though the bus driver wasn’t around to hear it.
To save our legs when we could, we then took a bus from there to the Queen Sofia Palace of Arts. This area including the Hemisferic and the Science Museum, are situated in the City of Arts and Sciences on the edge of Turia Gardens. Before 1957, these gardens that run around part of the city had been the route of the Turia River until they decided to do something about the flooding it often caused, and redirected it. Seeing the area in person, we could now understand it had once been a very wide river.
I was eager to see the area that had been used in the filming of Star Wars: Andor when it had doubled as the exterior of the senate chamber on the city world of Coruscant. I could picture Andor ushering Senator Mon Mothma away to safety along the raised walkway to the steps. At every chance I got as we got closer, my eyes were darting around looking for good places to take photographs from, but we had to be methodical and start with where we were.
We walked along the Umbracle Terrace; apparently this was where the afterparty for the race had taken place last night. There wasn’t really any sign of this today, though there were people working on cleaning near the museum, and some areas were closed off this morning. There were certainly Eurasian collared doves flying around in the garden, but we were pretty sure there were parakeets too. The terrace is lined with trees, and does provide some shade. I wasn’t sure what the name of the terrace meant, but there was a film of the same name by a Catalan director in the 1970s, starring Sir Christopher Lee.
At the end of the walkway we took the spiral staircase down to the lower level, and walked along the edge of the water with a great view of the Science Museum. When we reached the stairs to the raised walkway, we found them to be roped off, so took photos from where we were before continuing on to the large letters spelling out VALENCIA. We’d known about their existence ahead of time, and had our race medals with us for a photograph in front of them. Sadly the person taking the photo for us managed to chop off a part of the V and A in the shot.
Once we’d passed the Queen Sofia Palace of Arts again, we were properly into the Turia Gardens and passed Gulliver Park which is like a giant version of Gulliver that has been turned into climbing frames and slides. I remembered some of this park from having watched the Travel Man episode that visited here where they’d used bikes to get around. Sure enough, there were plenty of bikes we needed to watch out for.
After passing the Palace of Music, we left the park at the Pont del Mar. It’s a fairly fancy looking footbridge so we took some photographs there before continuing to the Porta de la Mar. Whilst it looks very much like a city gate, it is not an original. The original ‘Gate of the Sea’ that had stood since 1356 was demolished along with the city walls in 1868 to make way for urban expansion. This replica was built in 1946 by dictator Francisco Franco as a memorial to the victims of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.
As we’d bought a 72-hour SUMA ticket on Saturday, I thought we might as well make use of it to save our legs for the journey to the next sight. We jumped on the metro at Alameda, and continued walking from Colón. From our exploring on Saturday we knew it’s only be a short walk to the Plaça de l'Ajuntament and City Hall. We stopped there have our packed lunch on a rainbow-coloured bench, and then passed the fountain on our way to find the Plaza Redonda.
We were trying to take everything in as we went, and this meant not getting too far before we got distracted by a building we could see down an alleyway, so we headed towards it to see what it was. It wasn't one I'd got on my sights list, so had no idea. We found the outdoor stalls, and then inside the large building, Central Market, was a massive indoor food market that sells pretty much any Spanish food you’d want, and more. There were many restaurants and cafes around here too, which would have been ideal yesterday.
We decided the Central Market could be a good place for lunch tomorrow, so we would look in more detail then. The nearby Silk Market had a long queue outside, so again would visit another day rather than cram everything into today. I wanted Carmen to feel relaxed.
Our meandering route from there eventually took us to the Church of Santa Catalina, which Carmen decided we may as well look inside of. I walked around the perimeter inside, ignoring the service taking place, and noticed we could go up the tower for €2. As we planned on going up the cathedral tower, we decided not to bother with this one.
Next to the church is the Plaza Redonda, which is a round square, with some food places, and a few souvenir places. When we left there we found ourselves on Plaça de la Reina. We’d wanted ice cream, and saw that Llinares had a very large selection to choose from, and for €3.50 a cone, you could have two different scoops. I went for a cheesecake one, and rum & raisin one. It was a chance to sit down and relax for a while too, as despite taking sightseeing casually, we were still spending a fair bit of time on our feet.
Ahead of us, we recognised Carrer de la Pau due to the strands of what we thought were Christmas lights suspended all the way down the road. They seemed to sparkle in the daylight now though so were perhaps combined with tinsel. We’d get a better look later.
First though, we headed to the Metropolitan Cathedral–Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady of Valencia, more easily referred to as Valencia Cathedral. They are one of numerous churches that claim to have the fabled Holy Grail. Out of the ones that hold this claim, the one in Valencia has the strongest claim, with the red agate cup part of it having been made somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE.
The queue to go inside was quite long, and was going to mean standing out in the sun. I thought maybe it’d be an idea to check out the bell tower first, so left Carmen in the queue whilst I checked out that queue. I could see this one was much shorter so we both joined that one instead.
A sign said the 14:15 slot was full, but it wasn’t even 14:00 yet, so we thought we’d join the queue anyway. Another couple joined behind us, and after that they closed off the queue. So it seemed like we were going to be able to ascend the tower! Eventually we made it to the kiosk, and bought a ticket for €3 each - much cheaper than the €9 for the actual cathedral entry.
They use a green light system for going up the stairs, something we’d seen when going up the Round Tower in Copenhagen previously. There’s a lot of stairs to reach the top, and the day after a half marathon it was harder work. The views made it worthwhile though. We could see the City of Arts and Sciences which we’d travelled from, but couldn’t make out where the train station and our apartment would have been. There were plenty of domed roofs, and we tried to pick out which one we thought was the central market we’d found, but couldn’t be certain of which at this point. To the north though we could look down into another courtyard and spotted a fountain we thought would be worth walking past.
As it was almost 14:00 we realised the bells would be going off soon, so we made our way down quickly before they did. Rather than join the queue to go back inside, it made more sense to come back another day. I suggested we should go and see the fountain round the back before continuing, not realising it was actually on our list of sights anyway.
Around the back of the cathedral is Plaça de la Verge, with a fountain representing the River Turia, and the Royal Basilica of Our Lady of the Forsaken. Through an archway from there is another square with the decorative Punt de Gantxo House built by architect Manuel Peris Ferrando. This area was much quieter than the other two squares, and also has an archaeological museum that was closed today. I wasn’t sure how worthwhile it would have been to visit anyway as I’d not researched what artefacts they have.
Before leaving this area we wanted to make sure that we saw the Christmas decorations on Carrer de la Pau. I’d been using Google Maps to help us get around for the most part, only using my paper map to see what was around us, and this was now used to take us to Palau de la Generalitat Valenciana. What we’d not realised was that it was adjacent to the Plaça de la Verge, and Google Maps was taking a long way round as it didn’t know we could walk straight across the squares. We also begun to realise the distances seemed very misleading on Google Maps at the scale we were viewing it. Maybe it meant more time on our feet, but it got us exploring more side streets - it’s where most hotels, hostels, and guest rooms seem to be hidden down.
We sat down outside the government building for a while, and noticed the occasional video camera being carried around with heavy-duty tripods. Having not seen much of the news about the protests, it hadn’t occurred to us that these cameras were there in the hope of getting to interview the president of Valencia about the recent protests.
Eventually we continued on to Portal de Valldigna, and from here on to the House of Cats as we’d still got plenty of time before we’d be meeting up with Carmen’s friend, Tom. He was in town to sort out the dance venue arrangements for EuroGames 2026. The House of Cats is something I’d learnt about whilst watching Travel Man, and knew that Carmen would want to see it.
This walk took us well into El Carmen, the old town. It was amusing that I got to take a photo of Carmen standing underneath a sign for Carmen square which is right next to the Virgin del Carmen church.
When we found the House of Cats, there was sadly no cats to be seen. They may have been ‘all people’d out’ for the day. There’s an inscription in Valencian there, that says (translated to English):
In memory of the four cats that remained in the Barri del Carme in the year MXCIV. You will never hear one meow louder than another.
This refers to the artists inspiration of the legend that El Cid banished cats from Valencia when conquering the city.
Wandering back from there we accidentally found the Serranos Towers, which is one of the two surviving gates of the old city wall. Rather than tick this off our list today too, we decided to leave it until tomorrow.
We came across a restaurant we thought would be a good choice for later with a three course meal and drink for €18.90 per person. We walked back to the Plaça de Manises, and sat there until Tom messaged to say he’d been delayed, and suggested we didn’t wait. So, we headed back to Mali Gastrobar - Serranos for our evening meal at an early 17:00.
The deal we’d seen earlier wasn’t available now, so must have just been for certain times of the day. Instead we decided to both have Paella Valencia for €15.90 each. When having paella, places usually state a minimum of two people ordering it due to the size of the dish it is cooked in. Paella Valencia is similar in concept to traditional seafood paella, but this one has chicken, rabbit, flat green beans, and Garrofón beans.
When we decided we wanted dessert it took a long time to find someone to ask as the place seemed deserted. I decided on a slice of banoffee cake which had a malteaser-like biscuit base, and caramel sauce on top of a layer of cream. Our meals, with drinks, came to €49.40, or €55 with tip.
We needed to get something for tomorrow's breakfast, but the supermarket closest to the restaurant didn't have anything suitable. From near the Serranos Towers we jumped on the number 6 bus that followed the Turia Gardens round, and eventually reached the stop in Russafa we caught the bus from this morning. If any of Carmen's dance friends eventually stay in a hotel or other near the towers, it'd be a handy bus route for them!
We then walked to the supermarket on the same block as the apartment, and got some mango juice and granola for the morning for just €3.20. It really is a much cheaper way of eating when travelling.