We decided to explore the city today as Colin did not see much when we last visited. We started at the Central Market - the largest covered market in Europe. It was very impressive but as usual left us feeling rather frustrated at the lack of anything vaguely similar to it in the UK. With stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables - meat and fish stalls with a vast range of produce - some I didn’t actually recognise, it is clear hw badly the UK is doing. Colin treated himself to yet more pans - this time four little enamel paella pans and I bought some strawberries to go with our breakfast fruit salads. We dropped them back to the apartment (advantage of being so central) before heading off out again, this time North stopping at the beautiful Art Nouveau train station to admire the tiles and then walking towards the old riverbed which has been diverted. This is now a green oasis around the city filled with trees, lakes and play parks.
We were walking towards the Science and Arts Park and the amazing modern architecture. On route we met a very nice man called Raffaelo who had a lovely German Shepherd. We attempted to chat with my dodgy Spanish and he told us all about the buildings and the best place to photograph them. We stopped for lunch in the science museum and then Colin sat with a coffee as I wandered around with the camera. The buildings are very impressive but the sky was not the best for photographing (not bright blue and with non-photographer clouds. However I managed a few shots and got so finally see one of the noisy parakeets which are more elusive than our Ring-necked parakeets.
We were feeling a little jaded at this point when I discovered that there is in fact a brand new metro line which took us back almost to the point we had alighted the day before from the airport.
We kept going! We walked to another market place which although it use to be more of a produce market, now is more of a food hall. We hadn’t yet tried the Valenciano drink of Horchata yet this trip. It is made form Tiger nuts, is very rich and I had forgotten, also very sweet. We ordered from a famous cafe - Danielle and also (for the amusement factor) ordered a ‘farton’ each - an equally sweet little bread finger which is meant to be dipped into the Horchata. That certainly gave us an energy rush for the walk back.
After a sit down we decided to head out a bit later to the tapas place we had visited last night but this time we wee able to do a little moire rustic to the menu which was very good. We had the same chap looking after our table and Colin went for the house speciality of rabbit and garlic - delicious.
