Indiana Dettering and the Temple of… Paella

Today was our only full day in Valencia, and we wanted to experience a day as typical as possible.  After a light breakfast, we headed into Valencia's central park area, the Curso de Turia.  Valencia used to have a river running through it, but after a major flood in 1957 that devastated the town (according to one of the cab drivers), the river was rerouted to another area, and the dried up river was turned into a park.  (This is also where the Citio de Sciencias is built.)  The Curso de Turia winds about six miles through town, and has everything you'd find in a typical park: playgrounds, lots of grass, playing fields and more. 

First, the kids found Gulliver's Playground, an ingeniously designed play area with slides, ropes and other features built into a huge Gulliver-like human figure lying on the ground.  Very cool.

 

 

Next, we rented a four-seater bike, which was a little more of an adventure than we bargained for.  Designing such a contraption for a family like ours is nearly impossible, as the pedals were slightly too short for me, and slightly too long for the rest of the family.  We managed to power it along nonetheless, and Bryce insisted on steering, which he did a good job with as long as he was paying attention.  When we turned around, Bryce pushed our bike backwards, and the petal caught Sue's foot in an unusual way, and so she was limping around for a while and being very valiant about the obvious pain she was in.  I went to help Laurel find a bathroom, and in our absence Bryce somehow managed to break the pedal chain.  Nevertheless, we limped back to the rental station, having had enough biking for the day.

 

Bill trying to fix a broken chain with no tools. Yeah, right.

Back to the safety of walking, we returned to the Cito de Sciencias to see their Indiana Jones exhibit.  This was really well done - tying the Indiana Jones movies to the study of Archaeology, and explaining how the various relics in the film were created, including their relation to actual relics and past civilizations.  (I thought it interesting that in 1000 years, the fake relics in the Indiana Jones movies would actually be historical relics in their own right.) We spent a couple of hours learning all about archaeology and movie making.  Everyone enjoyed the exhibit.

After Indiana Jones, I was ready for an only-in-Valencia food adventure: Paella.  Paella was invented in Valencia, and is one of my favorite dishes. This was the time and place to get a real authentic Paella meal.  I did my research, and chose Pepita's, a hundred-year-old Paella restaurant on Valencia's beach. Ernest Hemingway was said to have frequented this place.  In fact, Valencia's beach is lined with Paella restaurants, so we couldn't go wrong.  However, when we arrived, Pepita's was closed, and the other places were all doing Sunday "First Communion" private parties.  We discovered that the entire Paella scene doesn't really happen in Sunday, and not a single beach restaurant was open for us.  And… it was about to rain.  So we returned by taxi to our hotel. 

Later, we found a place near our hotel that offered a decent Paella, and it was very good, but somehow it didn't seem to have the magic I was hoping for at a place like Pepita's.