Time for a Day Trip

While it wasn’t a three-day weekend in Spain, it was a three-day weekend for Steven. Facing three whole days with no plans, I quickly came up with a few options for a day out of town. Within an hour or so of here, there are several atmospheric towns with hiking.

At first, I wanted to Buñol, which supposedly has a beautiful water hike including swimming holes and waterfalls. The town is mountainous and very close to the sea plus the requisite ancient (13th century) castle. It sounded great! Steven investigated rental cars, which were cheap and readily available at the train station. If you know me, you know I am not always the most cautious person when it comes to pushing myself physically; therefore, we will be surprised to know that upon further investigation, I decided that maybe we were (I was) biting off a little more than I could chew given my tender back and lack of hiking poles. Don’t worry, we’re going to go to Buñol; we just postponed it until the fall when it will be cooler and we’ll have our trusty sticks.

Instead, we headed to Chelva, which offered a much mellower hike without slippery slopes. It is also a town that calls itself the Chefchaouen, Morocco, of Spain and alleged offers examples of Muslim, Christian and Jewish culture. We made the 30-minute walk to the train with a stop at the market for snacks. Once we got the car, it was less than an hour’s easy drive to Chelva. Our great plan was to do the hike before it got TOO hot, but, of course, everything takes longer than you think it should. We got the car a little late and didn’t arrive until after 11 a.m.

Here’s another key understanding we’ve come to: Just because we haven’t heard of a place, doesn’t mean it isn’t popular with the locals (or the relatively local compared to us). Parking in Chelva was a bit tough, so we parked a few blocks away and began looking for the trail. After some confusion, we realized that the water trail encompassed the trail of three cultures, so we set out down the path through the Muslim area of town, which did resemble parts of Morocco. A few minutes in, Steven turned to me and said, “You realize we’re headed down toward the river (I changed this line from “we went down to the river” because that song’s been taken), which means we’ll have to come back up. Yes, I did, but thanks for pointing it out. (I like to climb first and then have the easier walk down when I am tired).

We finally arrived at the river, where we discovered the parking area we should have aimed for. If we had parked there we would have gone up and then down (because what goes up must come down), but such is life. We strolled along the river for a bit before heading back up 85 steps. We tried in vain to find the Jewish area, noted on the map but no where in reality. Hmmm, I wonder what happened there. The trail is a loop, so we ended back at the town square about an hour or so later and decided it was time for lunch. The options in Chelva were slim and all the tables in the shade at restaurants that weren’t meatful were full of lounging tourists.

At first, we thought we would just go to the grocery store or eat our snacks, but then I remembered that we had passed a sign for another recommended day trip from Valencia, Chulilla, known for rock climbing, a castle built into a mountain (of course) and a hiking trail including hanging bridges. I randomly chose a restaurant there and we set out again. Apparently Google doesn’t know that the route is closed to all but local traffic (although we saw people driving through), so we parked and checked out a couple of close restaurants. We were pleasantly surprised by our meal and the welcoming environment at La Cañadeta (sorry, Insta link). We had falafel for starters. I had grilled vegetables and Steven. had some kind of meat (Delicious lamb chops!). At first, we thought we might try the hanging bridges trail, but to complete the whole thing is pretty long (16km) and we decided, again, to save it for another day.

Sunday we were just going to relax after our semi-long march Saturday. As I’ve mentioned, there’s always a festival here and this weekend it was the sustainability festival in the Turia. I’m always curious about what’s on offer so we decided a short walk just to get out of the apartment was perfect. The vegan and veggie food booths looked delicious, but it was before 2 p.m., so not lunchtime yet. A band played and people danced and other people were selling clothes and crafts and whatever people sell at festivals all around the world.

We did spend some time just chilling and then, after lunch, naturally we were stir crazy, so we went for a walk to old town. We figured it would be nice to sit in a cafe for a bit, but we didn’t really want to be in touristville so we headed back toward home and realized that the main attraction of touristville on a Sunday is that the cafes stay open and ours was closed. Oh well. Back home we went. A relaxing 4 mile day.

Since everything is closed on Sunday, we definitely needed a trip to the market Monday morning. Our neighbor tells us it’s more expensive than the supermarket, but there’s a larger selection of fruits, veggies and assorted sundries, the quality is amazing and, most of all, it’s so much fun! We came back with a weird-looking cucumber, a melon that tastes like honeydew (it is a type of musk melon), strawberries called pajaros (birds) for some reason, a couple of those flat peaches, fennel, a zucchini-ish-looking squash, nuts and snack mix. And that was because we were being restrained.

After dropping off our take, we headed to the Oceanogràfic Valencia (the aquarium). It’s part of the City of Arts and Sciences, which contains an IMAX theater, a science museum, an arts venue (the Palau de les Arts) and a multipurpose space for concerts and other activities. The aquarium is the largest in Europe. We went for the regular tickets, so we didn’t get any of the special items on offer such as a behind-the-scenes tour. Steven missed getting his senior discount by 6 days, so we forked up the €40 and headed in. I’ve been to many aquariums. This one manages to combine all the main attractions of them all (the tunnel with fish swimming overhead, the jellies exhibit, penguins, and Beluga whales etc.). A lot of the exhibits are underground, which makes sense for keeping everything cool, especially during the peak summer hours.

I really enjoy watching the fish. Es muy tranquilo, but it was a lot to see in one day. Steven even said that he really wanted to go because it seemed crazy that we hadn’t been to anything at the amazing tourist attraction complex. By the time we headed back, it was getting late to start cooking lunch, so we decided to find a cafe. Of course, we were walking along the park and we finally realized that we were most of the way home. We ended up at Nera, a newly opened pizza place across the street from us. The chef was at the grocery store when we arrived. When he returned, he told us that he needed to prep to make the normal veggie pizza. He offered me various permutations of nonmeat pizza and we settled on pesto, mozzarella, stracciatella (which is vanilla ice cream with chocolate pieces to me, but apparently it is also some type of mozzarella), onions and mushrooms. Delicious! And apparently, that combo is now named after me, so I guess we’ll be going back. After eating (Steven got pizza with meat, of course, but the waiter forgot it amid the kerfuffle over the veggie pie. It arrived a few minutes after mine amid multiple apologies), the waiter came out with espresso martinis on the house. Who are we to turn away their hospitality? Plus, we got the neighbor discount of 5 percent. Yes, we’ll definitely be going back.

We were pretty tired, so we stumbled across the street with our leftovers and had a nice siesta. Do you think our day was over? No, not at all. I was running out of protein powder and there is a store on the other side of the Turia (about halfway to the aquarium, but it was closed from 2-5 p.m. so we couldn’t go right after our visit. We trudged back over there, bought some powder that I hope is decent and headed home for good, 7 miles later. That really was the end of our day. We couldn’t even be bothered to have dinner, so we noshed on some fruit instead.

We’ll tell you about the week leading up to Steven’s big birthday in the next installment.