Student Blogs/Phil in Spain
It's been a while since my last blog post and I have most certainly been busy with school, trips, museums, parks, dinners and lunches. The last blog post I did was about my visit to Altea, and I was lucky to have my parents come and visit me for a couple of weeks, which really helped ease the transition to life in Valencia.
While my parents were here we visited a ton of places around Valencia, including: Peñíscola, Benicarlo, Xativa, the City of Arts and Sciences, l’Almonia, and Bioparc. They were all easy to travel to by train and the tickets were affordable for day trips to all these places. However, you definitely need to pay attention to the train stops, because it’s easy to end up somewhere you hadn’t planned on visiting.
Peñíscola and Benicarlo are both beautiful beach towns in northern Spain. In Peñíscola, there’s an amazing Roman castle you can visit that really makes you experience the history of the area with its remains. During my visit, there was a festival going on that had bull fighting and a parade dedicated to Islamic and Christian conflicts; it was really neat to see this Spanish cultural event outside of Valenica. Xativa is another castle town that I’m obsessed with. Its castle was also built during Roman times and was built on top of a mountain and was really worth the visit.
The City of Arts and Sciences is one of the many architectural wonders in Valencia. Its buildings have a modern look and house a museum, IMAX theatre, opera house, another events space, and the largest oceanographic aquarium in Europe. I have a season pass now so I may be a little biased in saying that it’s awesome. The passes allow me to see an unlimited number of IMAX movies throughout the year. They’re great for doing something other than school work to learn Spanish when I’m not busy. The pass also allows unlimited visits to the museum and oceanographic aquarium.
Aside from spending my days with the sea lions, we’ve also visited l’Almonia Roman Museum. The museum is underneath the plaza de la Virgen and shows the original city of Valentia, which the Romans established over a thousand years ago. Although the museum is great and really interesting, I don’t believe it to be the best attraction in Valencia.
The Bioparc is absolutely incredible and to me, it’s one of the best places to visit in Valencia. The park has a wide range of animals all snuggled into amazing recreations of African habitats. The African world where giraffes graze and lion cubs pur makes it very easy to forget that you’re in a city. It’s a very relaxing place to visit and is great during the weekdays when it isn’t crowded with families.
One of my other trips was to Sagunto, a small town outside of Valencia surrounded by mountains, which was great for a hike up some nearby hills. The day trip to Sagunto was with the 3 other Carleton students also studying here. We all hopped on the train and arrived in the town and after crawling up the mountain and doing some exploring, we came across another Roman castle. The trip was honestly more than worth the visit because we saw some beautiful vistas and interesting history. There also happened to be another festival going on that was promoting Islamic and medieval history. The streets were filled with vendors and performers and I bought some delicious Vanilla tea.
Aside from visiting Sagunto I decided to visit some nearby mountains with Matt, another Carleton student studying here. We left early in the morning and hiked for nearly 4 hours and the adventure was an absolute blast. I got to see the natural area surrounding Valencia that I didn’t know existed before I came here. Before visiting the city I didn’t believe the area to be so mountainous and gorgeous.
My weekend trips have been a blast but the big trip so far this year was a weekend trip with Kami to see Venice and Bologna. We flew with the very affordable Ryanair, and although the company only allows you to bring a backpack as luggage, the prices can’t be beat. We booked hotels online before we left and googled where to go to when we arrived in Bologna and Venice.
When our flight arrived in Bologna, we took the bus to the central station, followed by another bus to where we thought our hotel was. However, we accidently took the bus heading in the completely wrong direction. We asked locals (in both Spanish and English) where the hotel was and figured out the direction we needed to go. After a walk that felt like a scene out of a horror movie, we found our hotel for the night.
The next morning we took the bus back into the center of Bologna and took a train to Venice. Venice is an incredible city! The city was definitely worth the visit. With the canals intertwining through the city and St. Mark’s square, an architectural wonder, it’s definitely a city you can fall in love with.
Venice also was the city where I tried my first coffee ever. After a few sips, I think it’s safe to say I am not a coffee guy. After my coffee, we visited the Gallerie dell’Accademia, where we toured through a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition. After a couple of James Bond-like poses around the city later, Venice was over. :(
The next trip to look forward to is Milan and Bergamo on Friday and I will try to give a blog update soon after. Hope you enjoyed my stories.