Much of that produce is piled up on stalls at the city’s other art nouveau wonder, the Mercat Central in the Old Town. Here I wander past serried rows of still-glinting fish, piles of candied fruit, stacks of cheeses and charcuterie, pyramids of peaches, dried laurel leaves and prickly arms of aloe.
Unlike Barcelona’s Boqueria, this is still very much a working market and tourist group visits are deliberately limited. The Old Town can be overwhelmed when the cruise ships disgorge but I’ve been directed to a series of specially developed walking and public transport Green routes through the city, and I tick off the gothic cathedral, spiral-columned Silk Exchange and more without overwhelming anyone.
I’ve downloaded a local water app showing drinking fountains, so won’t be leaving plastic behind me, and I need to hydrate before clambering up the Torres de Serrano fortified medieval gatehouses (pay €2 to get in) in 37C heat. From the top, I look down on the jumble of baking roofs on one side and the green course of the Jardin del Turia on the other.
The Jardin del Turia was saved by Valencians who protested against plans to build a motorway along an old river bed (Visit Valencia)
The 9km-long gardens, along the old bed of the now redirected Turia river, which cataclysmically flooded in 1957, only exist because Valencians demonstrated against plans to build a motorway in the last years of the Franco regime.
I silently thank them when I return later after joining a bike tour and free-wheel down a ramp from the car-thronged Calle del Pintor López to emerge in a shaded green world of bird song and palms.
This cycleway through the park leads on to the City of Arts and Sciences, the dazzling sculptural complex created in large part by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava around the turn of the 21st century. From here I could pedal on to the fresh-water lagoon at Albufera National Park, 10km south of the city though, in fierce heat, it’s wiser to get the number 24 bus from Porta de la Mar, which takes 47 minutes and costs €2.
The bus stops at the village of El Palmar where many people still live in waterside barracas, cottages with steeply pitched thatched roofs and their own jetties. Once dependent on fishing and rice production, today locals benefit from the income brought by tourists taking paying trips on the lake.
The Torres de Serranos offer views over a jumble of baking rooftops (Visit Valencia)
I join a group of Valencian visitors on a traditional wooden Albuferenc boat, and we slip through high reed beds before emerging on the main body of water. There are supposedly more than 300 species of birds that visit the lagoon, but the heat has chased all but swifts and cormorants away.
At noon, the llebeig (pronounced jey-betch) wind arrives to bend the reeds and set the boat’s yellow-and-red-barred Valencian pennant flapping.
Remarkably, we are still in the city limits. To prove it the white profile of Calatrava’s L’Assut de l’Or bridge at the City of Science and Arts appears through a gap in the reeds. The lagoon, where rice, snails and foul are all available, is where paella originated, but there are many takes on the city’s signature dish.
I go upmarket and have the seafood version at the Las Arenas Hotel on the beach at Malvarrosa – a ritzy establishment that, nonetheless, helps protect the baby turtles that hatch on the beach.
The Plaza del Ayuntamiento is the city’s main square (Ivan Arlandis)
Here, a beaming Valencian waiter, keen that I enjoy his city’s patrimony to the full, cuts the crevettes, piles up the rice and gives me a special wooden spoon to eat with; an unusual but enjoyable experience in a five-star hotel.
Las Arenas was built on the remains of a neo-classical health spa that was partly destroyed in the 1936-39 Civil War. This Valencian need to recycle and make anew has reached an apogee at the Hortensia Herrero Art Centre in the old town.
Less than one year old, it is the creation of the billionaire Valencian businesswoman whose name it carries and who funded the $42m (£36m) conversion of the 16th-century Valeriola Palace on Calle del Mar into an outstanding contemporary art space with a world-class collection.
At the gallery’s heart, I find a work that is perhaps the greenest thing in the entire city, the Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 by David Hockney. One more Englishman who is very welcome in Valencia. Long may it last.
Source link : https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/spain/overtourism-spain-valencia-tourist-etiquette-b2584447.html
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Publish date : 2024-07-28 07:02:56
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