Luxury Travel Guide Valencia Spain

VALENCIA GUIDE

Valencia
Luxury Travel Guide
An open city where gunpowder, colour, modernism, art, culture and exquisite dining merge.

A MODERNIST CITY WITH MEDITERRANEAN FLAVOURE

Valencia, as well as been a magnificent historic city, with its baroque and modernist buildings is a futuristic city that entered the 3rd millennium with a wide offer of spaces and content at the forefront of the arts, architecture, science and business.

The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, which is located in the spectacular City of Arts and Sciences, designed by the Valencian architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, whose architecture stands out for its majesty and beauty. The Prince Felipe Science Museum, L’Hemisfèric, the Agora, L’Umbracle and L’Oceanogràfic, designed by Felix Candela, complete this unique complex.

The Valencia Institute of Modern Art, IVAM, opened its doors in 1989, becoming the second most important contemporary art museum in the country, behind the Reina Sofia in Madrid, while the Valencian Museum of Illustration and Modernity, MUVIM, the work of Seville architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, was opened in 2001. Other buildings that stand out for their impressive architecture are the Valencia Conference Centre, designed by British architect Norman Foster, the Valencia Exhibition Center & Events Center designed by José María Tomás Llavador and the Veles e Vents building, created by Britain’s David Chipperfield and Spain’s Fermín Vázquez and located in the Royal Juan Carlos I Marina.

The Royal Marina and the beaches of Valencia

With the celebration of the America’s Cup in 2007 and 2010, Valencia recovered one of the city’s most important tourism assets, the Royal Juan Carlos I Marina, one of the most spectacular marinas in Europe. It has an inner basin with moorings for 620 boats from 10 to 150 meters in length and is located near the beaches of Las Arenas and Malvarrosa.

The beaches’ promenade offers numerous restaurants, bars and clubs, and is just 15 minutes from the city center. Valencia has 7 km of Blue Flag beaches that are well-connected by a network of buses, trams and bike lanes. The seafront can also be reached by car and there are numerous parking facilities in the area. The seafront promenade connects the Arenas, Malvarrosa and Patacona beaches and is perfect for outdoor sports or enjoying Valencian cuisine whilst contemplating the sea.

It is also possible to see the city from another perspective by having a pleasant sail along the Mediterranean seafront in one of the various recreational boats moored in the marina.

A city surrounded by a 10 km traffic free green park

Valencia has a green carpet covering more than two million square meters. The Cabecera Park, the largest in Europe, crowns the old Turia riverbed to the west of the city. It is here that we find the start of the Turia Gardens, a large, traffic-free green space measuring some 10 km in length that enables visitors to cross the city on foot or bike almost to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

To the east, the Oceanogràfic, the largest aquarium in Europe housing more than 500 different species that make up a huge family of more than 45,000 examples, including dolphins, beluga whales, sharks and sea lions. Just 10 km to the south of Valencia lies the Albufera Natural Park, a beautiful landscape of rice fields that surround one of the largest lakes in Europe. Migrating birds can be observed in winter from one of the albuferencs, small boats used by the inhabitants of the small fishing village El Palmar to fish the different species found in the lake.

The Dehesa de El Saler forms part of the Albufera Natural Park, consisting of a Mediterranean forest and the El Saler beach, whose dunes are protected by a European directive.

The city has a network composed of 130 km of bicycle routes that enable visitors to discover Valencia on two wheels. The most recommended area is to be found in the Turia Gardens, an ample, traffic-free natural reserve that allows visitors to cross the city from east to west.

This area, which follows the former River Turia riverbed, is full of life and culture, containing everything from football and rugby pitches to athletics tracks and museums. Furthermore, some 17 bridges from different periods and styles cross from one side of the city to the other. The recently launched bicycle rental system, Valenbisi, provides more than 2,500 bikes distributed among 250 docking stations and makes for a comfortable, healthy form of transport. There are various companies renting segways, bicycles and providing private guided bicycle tours.

The Oceanografic, the biggest aquarium in Europe.

The largest marine complex in Europe offers a journey through the seas and oceans, taking visitors to the most unique marine ecosystems. Its modern architecture, the distribution of the different aquariums and scientific, recreational and educational vocation bring the underwater world to the entire population and raise awareness on the protection of flora and fauna, serving also as a platform for scientific research.

Over 14 million people have visited since its opening in 2003. It has an area of 110,000 square meters and houses over 45,000 specimens of 500 species. It is the only European center where you can observe belugas and walruses. The volume of the aquarium is more than 42 million cubic meters of seawater, where all oceans and seas of the planet are represented.

It has one of the largest dolphinariums in the world with 26 million cubic meters of water and a depth of 10.5 meters. It has 6,761 square meters of methacrylate panels of up to 33 centimeters thick and its construction consists of more than 150,000 cubic meters of concrete, 15,000 tons of steel and over 25 kilometers of pipes with diameters of 1.4 centimeters to 1.3 meters. There are 101 filters for purifying water for the aquariums, with an overall filtering volume exceeding 14,000 cubic meters.

The Oceanographic is composed of different buildings that contain representations of the most important ecosystems of the seas and oceans. The space devoted to oceans has a volume of 7,000,000 cubic meters, is the largest aquarium in the Oceanographic and one of the largest in the world. It represents a journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Bermuda, through a tunnel where you can see species such as the bull shark, grey shark and the sunfish, amongst others.

The Underwater Restaurant, located in the center of the complex, is the most emblematic building of the Oceanografic, due to the peculiarity of its cover, designed by Felix Candela. The provision of a large aquarium on the ground floor offers a more uniqueness to this building.

Also the Dolphinarium, with a total of five swimming pools, can accommodate thirty dolphins. In front of them, a public grandstand with capacity for 1,500 spectators highlight.

Valencia excellence.

Valencia has a wide choice for the most demanding tourist. For relaxation, the city has more than 25 spas, including Balneario la Alameda, the first urban spa in Spain and located in the former Maternity Hospital, a modernist palace dating from the beginning of the 20th century.

Other restored historic buildings include the Westin Valencia hotel, which offers a ver y healthy experience in the Caroli Health Club, while Las Arenas Resort, which was renewed in 2006, recalls the old spa resort founded in 1898 in the same building.

Other hotels in which to enjoy a few hours of relaxation are the Hospes Palau de la Mar, Barceló and La Calderona. Further true enchanting hotels, due to their location in the middle of the huerta (the market gardens around Valencia) are the Hotel La Mozaira and Más de Canicatí.

The city has more than 8000 bars, cafes and restaurants that offer a gastronomic variety that unites the perfection of traditional gastronomy with the nouvelle-cuisine. Valencia boasts the origin of the paella valenciana and the restaurants of the Paseo Marítimo or those of El Palmar, are the most popular to enjoy tasting. Four restaurants have been awarded with a Michelín Star: Riff, La Sucursal, Ricard Camarena and Vertical. In addition to these restaurants, there are many others offering exquisite culinary options. El Alto de Colón not only offers sensational culinary creations, but it is also located in a very unique setting, the Colón Market.

To enjoy a delicious Valencian paella, Les Graelles, La Marcelina and La Pepica are also good options. Other restaurants with excellent cooking are Samsha, La Mozaira and SeuXerea. And should you wish to buy delicatessen products, stop by Las Añadas de España or Bueno para Comer.

Festivals and traditions.

Popular celebrations take place in Valencia throughout the year. Whether religious or secular in nature, several elements are common to them all: wit, fireworks, music and fire, whose most audible, visual and olfactory expression are fireworks, with Valencia having with an excellent and renowned pyrotechnics sector. The most international of the Valencia’s festivities are Las Fallas, which take place from 15 to 19 March and during which local, national and international current affairs are satirized in the form of the more than 700 monuments that take over the city’s streets.

For five intense days, the city lives through a sensory explosion. The most emotional event of the festival is the offering of flowers to Our Lady of the Forsaken, the patron saint of the city, whose mantle is formed with the bouquets of red, white and pink carnations that the more than 100,000 “Falleras” and “Falleros” deliver to the Virgin, dressed in their rich costumes made of pure silk.

Valencia shopping.

Travel is not only synonymous of visiting museums and monuments, you can also discover the city walking through the streets, tasting its gastronomy, sitting to enjoy a drink in many of its relaxing plazas. But you can't complete your visit without some shopping. Souvenirs, gastronomic products, high fashion, ceramics…

In Valencia you can find all kind of products and caprices: old shops, interior design studios, high fashion, fallas costumes, basket shops, luxury shops, art galleries, bookshops, eco friendly shops, food shops and herbalists. Also, many of the shops of the main tourist areas of the city are open everyday including weekends to offer a better service to the visitors of Valencia.