Turia Park
About a hundred metres from the flat and just beyond the Serrano Gate is the course of the Turia river. The river would regularly and disastrously flood, so in 1957 the city authorities decided to divert the river away from the city centre. The river bed was turned into a nine kilometre linear park that goes out most of the way to the coast. It has walking, cycling and running tracks, and is a mixture of sports fields and parkland, a great asset to the city and a green lung at its centre.
We walked west through the park to the Valencia History Museum. It is housed in a converted Victorian water cistern, constructed with a vaulted brick roof and brick columns, similar to Byzantine cisterns I had seen in Istanbul. The museum is divided into about fifty sections, some containing artifacts and others contain screens where short films are projected. The films have a small cast in costume who act out stories about historical events in Valencian history. The whole museum is dark, and the signs are only in Spanish and Valencian, so I didn’t find it as accessible as the Madrid history museum.
It was Sunday, so we couldn’t find a cafe that was open for lunch. Using trusty old Google Maps I found a vast Carrefour hypermarket with a cafe, so we had lunch with the shoppers. and bought some food chorizo sausages for our dinner.
Our afternoon was spent relaxing on our lovely terrace in the sunshine, where the only thing higher than us were tourists on the Serrano towers taking pictures. I’m probably in someone’s album by now. I cooked the sausages with salad and potatoes, washed down with Carrefour beer and white wine.
After dinner, we walked through the lovely old town to the Cafe de Lisboa, which our host Francisco recommended for a local cocktail called Agua de Valencia. It should be Orange juice, Cava, gin and vodka. What we were given by the weasels tasted just like orange juice, so I complained. Their second try had some booze in it but was suspiciously unfizzy considering it should have Cava in it. DON’T GO TO THE CAFE DE LISBOA.
timharnesstravels 
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