3 March 2008

Y Viva Espana - Oropesa Day 5

Valencia

I decided to park in an underground car park opposite the El Corte Ingles store. It makes it much easier when you can follow their signs as well to find where you have left the car! Getting into the city was straight forward with the GPS doing all the hard work for us, Although she did take us past the Valencia CF football ground twice as we had a problem deciphering the directions she was giving us.




The first pic I took was of the bullring at the end of Carrer Colon. Next door is the railway station but its ornate and early Edwardian facade was very hard to get a decent angle on with all the damned traffic!




From here it was a right turn towards the similarly ornate and hard to photograph Correos and then the Town Hall. This is easier to photograph,m even if the guide book is misleading when it says the city's coat of arms is left aloft by two naked females. Not quite what I had expected. The bat is there above the shield as this is in memory of the fact that a bat is supposed to have landed on the helmet of EL Cid before the city was recaptured from the Moorish invaders.




From here we managed not to go in either of the oldest horchateria in the country although we passed them and took a look in. Very austere with white tiled walls and stone floors, just like a few pie and mash shops I know in London!


From here it is a short walk to the cathedral and once again an opportunity for us to have lunch, yep, you guessed it, a boccadillo and cortado, but this time and opening course of a Coca-Light!


Circumnavigating the Cathedral lets you see the different architectural faces and the differences in the doors. Sadly, the cathedral was closed when we were there and so we were denied a chance to glimpse the Holy Grail. We saw the epic film with Monty Python actually looking for it, even Indiana Jones had a look and couldn't find it, and it was in the Cathedral all the time! Apparently, an eminent scientist has done a bit of work on it and to disprove the story that it is indeed the cup that Christ drank from at the last supper; he did various tests to prove that the goblet is pre-Christ's time. So what does that prove? The cafe he was in with the disciples was in fact very frugal and made sure their cutlery and glasses lasted as long as possible! Anyway, until Christ drank out of it is wasn't worth anything. How many million glasses are made each year in the UK, and then some celeb has their lips in the rim and it's suddenly worth a few quid. Why not the same with the Grail?

Once filled with a bit of Christian fervour we decided to make the 60 miles trip back. The car was in a car-park and there were no humans about. In the end to get the right change to fit in the machines I had to buy a couple of ice-creams to get the coins to go in the machine. An expensive day's parking at over €9 for about 4 hours in total.

The drive back was quite uneventful, sticking to the N340 through Vila-Real and all the massive porcelain and ceramics factories, the place where Spain's bogs and sinks are made!

Evening meal? The rest of the lentils and sausages.

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