Adios and gracias my beautiful Valencia....

Imagine this as cannon ball fodder!

The return to Valencia with my lovely friend Trish was not without incident, in my infinite spirit of adventure I had decided it might be nice to try another area,this in it's self was a great idea and would have come off a treat if they had given us the whole apartment (as booked ) rather than just half for the first three days....

Needless to say we found ourselves somewhere else...eventually...(which, and I possibly should not admit to this fact, it had a TV that you could change to English! We watched Bones it was awesome! Sadly it couldn't translate the three local Tarot channels (Vitch TV)... 

After extolling the virtues of Valencianas style and grace I discovered there is a whole other bit... the actual ACTUAL El Carme...the Old City even though it is only 15 minutes away from my old digs, I discovered I had been living in the "white bread" end of town, we have come to the wholemeal, actually the grainy and full of nuts end....

However, its COOL!

Filled with street art, fabulous clubs and restaurants and lot's of "local identities"...

                                            Here we find the only remaining part of the original gates to the city, the Quart Towers. If you look high up the walls you can see the "dinks" made by cannonballs, fired by someone (or other) who fancied getting their hands on this lovely place...

you never know where a car will come from!

We found Radio City where they have some rather fabulous hot sweaty stampy Flamenco. Although it's not for the faint hearted it doesn't start until 11ish...

A much easier option was to swing by the Central Mercado Markets again and watch a crowd bust a few Tango moves at around lunch time, how gorgeous!

Tango in the Aisle of Hams, why on earth not!

We have eaten (and eaten) We have enjoyed the joys of Paella de Valencia, done our very best with the three course lunch Menu Del Dias, we have drunk Horchetta and eaten a Farton :0) and we have washed it all down with the very refreshing Tinto de Verano...

I took Trish to my final Happy Mercioles, which once again made me a touch teary, as it really was good bye to some amazing people who are now firmly a part of my "adventure"...

Finally! Take THAT bollard!

Thank you Valencia for so many things, at the risk of sounding like an ABBA song, thank you for the music which has been one of the absolute themes here, fittingly, one of the last songs I heard was Chiquitita played on the pan pipes...

Will I leave my heart in Valencia? No way, there are many more adventures to be had. 

Will there always be a place in my heart for this beautiful, warm and gracious city that has given me so much? Absolutely! 


Off to The South of France for a couple of days to catch up with friends in their  Château, and then to Madrid (the city that has more bars per inhabitant than any other city in the world) for some Culture :0)


Thank you for sharing xxx