Beachin’ It

Yesterday, our first full day back in Valencia – and a beauty: sunny, high 25°C – we used our new Valenbisi cards to get bikes, and rode to the beach. Woohoo!

Valenbisi, the city-run bike rental service, is one of the best things about Valencia – along with the network of off-road bike paths. We pre-ordered one-year subscriptions to Valenbisi online, using our vacation rental address to prove our “residency.” Ines, our landlady, picked up the cards when they came in the mail and kept them for us. 

It’s a good deal, we think. We paid $45 each. It would have cost way more to get one-week passes for each of the six weeks we’re here, and orders of magnitude more to rent from a private rental company – of which, surprisingly, there are still a few in Valencia. We can take bikes from any of the 250-odd Valenbisi stations around the city anytime we want, and ride them for up to 30 minutes without extra charge. Being cheapskates, our practice is always to ride for less than 30 minutes, stop at another station and check the bikes in, then take them out again immediately. You’d wonder that they allow this, but they do.

The cards have a chip that the terminals at each station read to log you in, after you've entered your password. Renting a bike takes maybe four clicks. Sometimes the bike you choose won’t come free from its hitching post and you have to start over, but it’s generally a pretty simple system to use. And the terminals give instructions in English. Unlike in some European cities where the bike rental service is only for residents, Valencia encourages tourists to use it. Anybody can get a one-day or one-week pass.

On Sunday, we stopped twice on the six-kilometer ride to the beach to check our bikes into the system and out again. Then we ended up ditching them at a station a short walk from the sea. In the past, we often found that the stations at the beach didn’t have any spots free to park the bikes, because everybody wants to do the same thing, ride to the beach from the city and leave their bikes there while they sun bathe or promenade or sit at one of the many bars and restaurants. In that event, you have to ride back up into the city to find a bike station with free spots.

Karen at the beach

It was such a beautiful day that the beach was very crowded for early February. And, as often happened in the past, we found ourselves there right at Spanish weekend lunch time (1 to 4). Being Sunday, a big day for family lunches out, the bars and restaurants were chocker-block. We had planned to sit in the sun and have a beverage, but that was not to be. 

We walked the length of the main beach, drinking in all the familiar sights: the African sellers of knock-off purses and sunglasses, the beach volleyballers, the artful sand castle builders, the families still in their church clothes promenading, the skyline of Castellón de la Plana in the distance in one direction, the Valenciano container port cranes in the other. It was probably six kilometers in total. We walked to the end of the main beach and then part way back before taking bikes again and riding home. We stopped on the way at a big El Corte Ingles (posh Spanish department store) with a supermarket – the only grocery stores open on Sunday – and bought beer.

That was enough for the first day. I had a cold coming on in the evening – fully flowered today. Drat.

The apartment was still lift-less today. I went out mid-morning to do some shopping, leaving Karen at home to preserve her wonky knees and hips for pleasure walking later. It was quite a load I humped up the four flights to our apartment: beer and wine in my backpack, nine litres of water in Karen’s carry-on bag, plus, plus. Wore me out.

Street art near apartment by one of my favourites, Hero

We went walkabout in the late morning, over to the old town. We stopped first at MUVIM,  the Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y la Modernidad, one of the city’s many region-run museums. It’s devoted to illustrative arts and “the Age of Enlightenment,” an odd combination, it seems to me. There is or was a gimicky Disney-esque museum exhibit about the history of the Age of Enlightenment, complete with animatronics and costumed attendants. We saw it the last time we were here four years ago. We also saw a couple of really good shows on fabulous illustrators here. Illustrators appear to be more highly respected in the arts world here. Today, we just walked around the outside.

We worked our way over to the city hall square, a pretty place. There was a school trip at city hall, an impressive building. Teenagers were milling on the first floor terrace overlooking the square, where politicians have no doubt often made great pronouncements to throngs below in the past. The railing around it was so low, I was concerned that the young idiots would topple over, but none did while we were there. 

I forgot to mention that it was another gorgeous day today: sunny, high 24°C.  (Not that there weren’t still Valencianos out and about in parkas and winter boots! Mad people!) We sat on a bench in the square, baking in the sun.

Mercado Centrale

Then it was on to the Mercado Centrale, a huge modernista covered market, reputedly the largest in Europe, with luscious-looking displays of every kind of food imaginable. We wandered through, not shopping, just looking. Karen and I are flâneurs, observant wanderers. We carried on past the market into El Carmen, the bohemian, nightclub district. This is where I found most of the great street art I’ve photographed in Valencia in the past. It appears the street art scene is in decline, though. There's still lots around, but I didn’t see anything that really grabbed me. 

Mercado Centrale

El Carmen street art

El Carmen street art

We trekked back to the apartment and ate lunch, and I napped for a half an hour. (The cold is starting to wear on me.) Then it was out again, walking, across to the River Turia park system along a street of posh shops. The route took us by the lovely Mercado Colon, once a farmers’ market, now an architecturally interesting “mall” of restaurants and specialty shops. We crossed the river – not really a river anymore, it was diverted and drained years ago – at the Bridge of the Patriarchs, an old stone bridge with statues of clerics.

Karen on Bridge of Patriarchs, overshadowed

Karen wanted a paper map of all the Valenbisi bike stations and we remembered that when we were here before there was a Valenbisi office in an old tower down the river a way. We traipsed down there, but the office has evidently moved. So we walked back through the centre, down the main shopping street, Colon, and home. 

Fig tree near the river

My night to cook dinner. First episode of Narcos on Netflix: bloody good, emphasis on bloody.