Searching for the Holy Grail in Valencia

 After another rainy night we woke up to bright sunshine which followed us all the way to Valencia. The lovely weather stayed with us!

We stayed at camping Coll Vert where there is a bus stop right outside the campsite and there is a frequent service which goes directly to Valencia. Apart from that, the site has little else to offer, outdated facilities and very cramped pitches.

We ventured into Valencia for the two days we stayed there. It is a wonderful city with beautiful buildings every corner you walk around has a surprise in store.

Valencia is one of the oldest and the third largest Cities of Spain it also has one of Europe’s largest markets. 

The Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper is believed to be kept in a chapel inside Valencia’s cathedral.

The heraldic symbol of Valencia is a bat. Legend has it that one night during the times of the Reconquista the Moors were planning a surprise attack. As they got closer to the Christian army, they disturbed a colony of bats. The bats then woke up the Christians, which ended up winning the battle. The bat is now the heraldic symbol of Valencia. You can see statues of bats in many places.

The Paella was born in Valencia we didn’t get to sample it on this visit. Or find the holy grail!

We have now revised our original itinerary (again) and have decided rather than heading north to France, to go along the coast via Sitges and Perpignan.

Looking forward to Sitges and hopefully visiting Barcelona 










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Supper in Sapa

Image
There are some very strange things on the menu in Sapa like porcupine, cervit cat, bamboo rat and horse you can have all of them stir fried. We settled for salmon and sturgeon hot pot one evening. So the bowl of stock is bought to the table and placed over a heater and you are given a basket of vegetables and a plate with the fish and tofu then you cook it all yourselves and eat with rice. We also ate street food at the night market, the menu also has some unappetising items such as sparrow, turtle dove and a frog. Everything is barbecued over hot charcoal. Not the best place for vegetarians. We tried a few bits Mr C pork, Mrs C fish then went for a pizza. Vendors in the street are roasting chestnuts in abundance and they are very moorish. They go down very well with the tiny tangerines and fresh pineapple you can buy very cheaply. Coffee is a bit hit and miss and the coffee that the hotel serves for breakfast is vile, luckily I have bought my own coffee bags - thank you Sainsbu...
Read more

Stormy Weather!

Image
 We said goodbye to Cabopino, Cliff and Irene and set off for Roquetas de Mar. It had rained all night and was very windy and the drive was a bit hairy due to high winds. However this was nothing to what was to come. . . . Camping Roquetas is quite basic but OK for a short stop over and we were very much in the minority and surrounded by Germans. It was very windy all night and dust storms arrived, we woke up to find Monica covered in a light film of dust.  On Thursday we walked into the nearest town looking for lunch and found a good tapas bar, loads of free tapas on the menu but we bought some too, we had a couple of glasses of wine which cost more than the tapas. More storms over night bought yet more dust and we woke up to a murky haze. Mr C did his best to clean the dust off Monica, we then set off on the 2 hour journey to Mazarron, close to Cartagena. We took the toll road which was practically empty! More rain en route.  After setting up at the campsite I did some ...
Read more