Barcelona to Valencia

After a few days in Barcelona, I went to Valencia. I especially liked this move, because after the hustle and bustle of Barcelona, Valencia feels a little calmer, although you can't exactly call it sleepy. In general, it seemed to me that the cities of Spain are very different in mood, and that's why the route with several stops turned out to be much more interesting than just a week in one place.

The Gates of Valencia

In Valencia, the first thing I did was go to the Barrio del Carmen quarter to see the Gates that were built in Valencia in the 14th-15th centuries. I felt so small against their background, but I didn't care, I was admiring the attraction in person, not in a picture from some blogger. It's funny, it turns out that now I'm a blogger. 

Then I walked without a specific goal, and along the way I constantly came across beautiful, in my opinion, streets, old buildings, small cafes and those same orange trees that for some reason make you stop every five minutes and take pictures of the street.

I also liked the City of Arts and Sciences. After the old architecture of the center of Valencia, this place looks like someone decided to move a piece of the future right in the middle of the city. I walked around these white buildings for a long time, photographing reflections in the water and trying to make that perfect frame that I could then show my friends.

City of Arts and Sciences

Of course, the perfect shot didn't work out the first time. First, a random passerby got into the lens, then I somehow managed to press the wrong button myself, and then I discovered that I was standing on the wrong side from where I wanted to take pictures. As a result, there were a lot of photos, but the real victory was that among them there was one where everything finally looked like I had planned it that way on purpose.

Valencia is a city where you want to slow down

If Barcelona was associated with constant traffic, then Valencia seemed like a city where you want to slow down a little. Here, I allowed myself to sit in a cafe longer, didn't try to mark a new attraction on the map every hour, and could easily spend half the day just walking.

And, of course, you can't talk about Valencia and not remember paella. I decided in advance that I would definitely try it here, because I wanted to compare real Valencian paella with what is usually offered in tourist places. In the end, I chose a restaurant, studied the menu for a long time, confidently ordered a dish, and then sat and thought about why the portion was designed for about a small Spanish football team.

But these are the moments I love most when traveling. You can create a detailed route in advance, save dozens of places on the map and schedule every day by the hour, but then it's a random dinner, a lost street or an unexpected stop that turns out to be what you remember months later.