La Cuidad de las Artes y las Ciencias

Day 3: The honour of our presence today was awarded to the City of Arts and Sciences, a large development near our hotel in the South of the city of Valencia. We walked there. The sky was still overcast as you can see from the photos.

In this picture, on the left in the distance is the massive Palace of the Arts, still under construction. On the right is the much smaller L'Hemisferic, a combined planetarium, imax and laserium dome. We will visit this tomorrow, meanwhile we had a glass of horchata (aka orxata), a milk-like drink made from chufas (tiger nuts) which is delicious accompanied by some fartons (steady now) which are straightened doughnuts. Who needs holes in doughnuts. There are Orxata stalls throughout the city. Link: Horchata.

Also in this part of the 'city' are the L'Umbracle, a garden promenade with a car park underneath, and the Prince Philip Science Museum (Museu de les Ciencies), but today, as the sun came out and we started getting roasted, our goal was the Oceanographic (L'Oceanogràfic as I'm sure you have worked out!), the largest marine park in Europe.

Of course this had the largest queue in Europe too, so it was two hours later that we got in. We discovered why the line was slow at the ticket booth where you have to choose there and then which film showing you will see at the Hemispheric. Ay ay ay. If only they had given us leaflets or put up posters two hours back along the queue so people knew which film was which... so I would say: get your tickets in another part of the City.

We settled down in the Delfinario for a spectacular show, with young people in tight latex using fish and whistles to get dolphins to do things they normally wouldn't.

Half of the L'Oceanografic is underground where extensive aquaria link weird buildings, including water tunnels where the fish and sharks swim above and around the visitor, or giant glass tanks housing whales(!) and hundreds of tons of water.

My favourite animal was the walrus, whose comical galumphing about, expert lounging around and skilful swimming all made for an enviable lifestyle. Walruses are very big!

The penguins had a very nice enclosure, on a natural looking terrain, but were the least animated creatures I have ever seen, at least while I was there. Some London Zoo penguins could show this lot a thing or two.

The submarine restaurant and most of the other places to eat inside L'Oceanografic were packed, so we got something fast in a corner of the site amongst litter and bad architecture. Wha-hey!

So, L'Oceanografic: get there early.

You find us later in nearby El Saler shopping centre: notable for not including a branch of El Corte Ingles. On maps you see C.C. which is Centro Commercial. This is either a group of different stores in a galleria or a single large El Corte Ingles. Centro Commercial El Saler is a small indoor shopping centre on three levels. The publicity for their rebajas (sale) was "Crisis Existencial?" printed everywhere in large yellow letters which was quite worrying. The shops here include a huge Carrefour hipermercado (supermarket) and to make me feel at home: a branch of C&A and an ABC cinema. Actually C&A have closed all their shops in the UK. There are also two branches of MacDonald's, to end on a downbeat note.