Wednesday, 2018 April 18
We got up a bit early today so we could get a jump on our day. We ate breakfast at the hotel, of course, then headed towards the nearest metro stop (less than a block away). We headed west towards the Bioparc (zoo). The metro took us almost all the way there but we had about a half-mile walk from the metro station to the main entrance.
The zoo was gorgeous, and had a lot of iconic animals. The gorillas, giraffes, and elephants were all really cool. The rhinos and hippos were, unfortunately, boring. Meerkats were entertaining. But the real highlight were the lemurs - they were hilarious. The zoo is structured such that you actually enter a very large enclosure with the lemurs, so you can see them up close and (to a limited degree) interact with them.
The zoo itself was quite shady, which was good - it was a very warm, sunny day. By the time we left the zoo (after about 2.5 hours) the walk back towards the metro was on the uncomfortable side of warm, but we took it easy.
The Valencia History Museum was on our way so we stopped there. It turns out that it's free on Wednesdays so we didn't need to pay an admission fee. It's built into an old underground reservoir, so it was wonderfully cool. It was a bit hard to follow - there were few English information cards, only Spanish and Catalan - but we managed to get the gist of things from the Spanish.
After leaving there we hopped back on the metro towards our hotel. We got off one stop early and went looking for some tapas. We found Alameda Beers a few blocks from the hotel and stopped there.
We were very hungry so we ordered five tapas; this turned out to be way more food than we expected but it was worth it. We ordered:
- A cheese plate - there were five or six cheeses, all of them solid, but no real knockouts. This was probably the least impressive dish of the bunch, but it was still respectable.
- Toast with some sort of cottage cheese/goat cheese hybrid on top. Krista absolutely adored this.
- Blood sausage - it was fried crisp, salted, nice and crunchy and delicious. Even Krista liked it (normally she probably wouldn't have even tried it, but she decided that she was going to be adventurous on this vacation).
- A red sausage with green peppers - this was phenomenal. While the sausage was red, it wasn't spicy. There was a nice sauce to go with it. The peppers were cooked perfectly soft and were so good.
- Eggs over Serrano ham over potatoes. This was definitely the standout dish, so good that I took detailed notes to try to replicate it. The bottom layer were potatoes sliced roughly a quarter inch (or less) thick, then cooked dry (I think) - cooked through, enough to get a nice color, but not to form a crust. That was covered with about two layers of Serrano ham. Then three eggs, cooked sunny-side-up until just a little runny, over that. It was absolutely an incredible dish.
We stumbled back to the room in a food coma. Krista had an appointment at 4 PM for a massage, so I was on my own for a bit. First I spent some time catching up these notes, then I went out looking for a pharmacy (Krista need contact lens solution - "solucion para lentes de contacto", according to Google Translate). Unfortunately I timed my trip out to coincide with the siesta that all of the pharmacies seem to observe, so none of them nearby were open (my understanding is that one in each neighborhood or region will stay open for emergencies, but I never located one of these near our hotel).
I took this opportunity to wander around the neighborhood. I found a nice park (I think this was the Jardi de Montfort, but I didn't really pay attention) and a shady street that was lined with shops and restaurants (I think this was Carrer de Misser Masco).
Eventually I ended up outside the Consum near our hotel, so I went in and got some groceries for a picnic supper (bread, meat, cheese, etc. - plus a bottle of wine, of course). On my way home from there I walked right by a pharmacy (Farmacia Comin Giner) and discovered that it was now open - the siesta had finished. I went in and purchased the contact lens solution (entirely in Spanish), then finally made it back to the hotel.
Krista got back to the room about the same time I did. She loved the massage. We relaxed for a bit, then (somehow) found the appetite for a little supper. I was pretty happy with the purchases I had made; it was a very pleasant meal out on our patio.
Our hotel was very close to Mestalla Stadium and there was a soccer game tonight. The game itself was fine - a dull roar, mostly, but after it ended there was a lot of traffic noise and honking. That actually didn't last as long as I had expected, then it was back to being peaceful.
Tuesday, 2018 April 17 Thursday, 2018 April 19