Julie

### Our City Trip in Valencia We’ve been looking forward to this! Tineke and Jeroen, very good friends of ours, have flown all the way from Belgium to visit us. We really needed some familiar faces around; morale was quite low. Valencia is huge! What looked like a nearby Airbnb on the map turned out to be a 50-minute bike ride. But the reunion was wonderful. We relaxed on the boat, went to the beach, swam, walked around, and ate out. By evening, our marina, located in the nightlife district, was bustling. Nightclubs played various music. Time for earplugs. The next day is Tineke’s birthday. We meet at the Mercat Central de Valencia, a giant indoor market with dozens of stalls. We marvel at the amount of ham, cheese, and the largest vegetables we’ve ever seen. A feast for the eyes and taste buds. Next, we make a cultural visit to the Valencia Cathedral. We pay 9 euros per person for the audio tour. The cathedral is beautiful, and they even claim to have the Holy Grail (or so they are 99.9% sure). We continue exploring the city, rent Valenbisi bikes to go for tapas, and then head to the park, where we stumble upon the pre-selection of the fallera mayor. The fallera mayor is a key figure in the annual Fallas festival held in March. The festival celebrates the arrival of spring with monumental papier-mâché constructions, fireworks, parades, and other cultural activities. There are two fallera majors: the Fallera Mayor and the Fallera Mayor Infantil (for the youth). Both are seen as the queens of the festival and have a representative role during the festivities. The Fallera Mayor is chosen from young women active in the fallas associations. She must be beautiful and elegant, well-informed about the traditions and history of the Fallas, and able to present these charmingly and convincingly. And so we watch women parading on a catwalk in traditional Valencian costumes. The next day, we visit the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a science museum. We learn all about the moon, Mars, and space travel. In the evening, we watch the Fiesta de Moros y Cristianos, a parade commemorating the historical battles between the Moors and Christians during the Reconquista. The costumes are highly detailed and ornate. Various groups parade and dance through the streets, accompanied by traditional music. A feast for the eyes and ears! Afterwards, we head to the square by the town hall for a fireworks show. For the next two days, we take it easier. We walk and bike a lot (Valencia is big!), picnic in Túria Park, drink Agua de Valencia, stroll through the historic center, laugh, talk, and eat out frequently. On the last day, we visit the botanical garden. Then it’s time to say goodbye. If only we could stop time... It was a fantastic city trip with our friends, and I enjoyed it immensely. We both feel a bit lost afterwards. We do the laundry, go shopping, refuel with diesel, and sail on. The typical tasks that are also part of life on a boat.