I celebrated my birthday in Valencia

26 years old! I finally had a sunny hot summer day to celebrate my birthday. We enjoyed our day with a nice relaxing morning on the Beach followed by a traditional Valencian dish of rabbit and chicken paella for lunch yum yum. After siesta Leah went to do some shopping for a picnic at night. We had the pleasure of prawns and snacks in the Turia river over looking the Fira Juliol a carnival / fair. After dinner, Leah surprised me with a 'birthday cake' made up of two heart biscuits, custard, smarties and chocolate brownies. Perfect day.

Birthday Paella

Birthday night

Leah put this together with love and lots of custard.

The beaches were very similar in Valencia to Barcelona just less touristy and lots more space for activities. There were several bring-your-own-net courts for anyone and play volleyball or 'foot volleyball', where you can't use your hands, awesome to watch. Along the board walk you could see massive sand castles that people would build for tips. Several were in the building stages and a lot of hard work goes into it.

Just a little sandcastle on the beach of Valencia. 

Valencia is a beautiful charming city considering its the 3rd biggest in Spain behind Madrid and Barcelona. We walked around the city for several hours stopping to look at the Towers of Serranos, El Miquelete, Mercado central and Graffiti lanes, as well as all the cool things we found in random streets when we got lost. We even saw the Estonian Embassy.

Tiles everywhere.

marble flooring and fountains everywhere

During our mandatory run around 11:30pm in the evening, it was a bit more bearable being only a sticky 27 degrees not 37 like during the day. We ran down and through the Turia Park, which is an 11km dried/filled river bed with all sorts of cool stuff going on in there. There is a massive fibreglass playground of Gulliver from Gulliver's travels, football, rugby and tennis courts, parks, walking and running tracks and at the end, The City of Arts and Sciences. That night in the park there was a beauty/ 'little Miss Valencia' type pageant. A couple of hundred people were watching and cheering on the girls in their traditional Spanish dresses decorated with glitter.

Miss Valencia

Fira Juliol in the Turia Park 

We've really been enjoying the beaches and knew that we had to get a good fix of them before our next two stops that are inland. So we caught a bus a little south of town and soaked in the rays and chilled out in the shallow waters of the Mediterranean sea.

day on the beach.