A First Walk About Valencia

We went out for our first walk about Valencia and enjoy the relatively warm sunshine of Spain. Our first stop was the train station, Estació del Nord.



Here, we discovered a beautiful building built in 1917. Its beauty, combined with the residual Christmas decorations make for a captivating place to buy train tickets.

The Art Deco ceiling and clock give the place a warm, inviting space.

Off to one side of the main lobby is a room with wonderfully decorated tile walls.

At the other end of the lobby is a place to buy snacks. We picked up a couple drinks and a snack to head outside (!) and sit in plaza at the front of the station. Valencia is pretty, clean city. Did I mention it is warm? Temperatures seem to be in the mid-60's F and compared to London this is summertime.

The front of the Station is quite nice.

Immediately next ot the train station is the bull ring, Plaza de Toros de Valencia. This was built in a Romanesque style between 1850 and 1859. It appears that there are no more bullfights, but this is not entirely clear. Catalonia (Valencia is not in Catalonia) banned them but the supreme court struck down the ban. The mayor has been trying to talk folks into a gentler, kinder version of fighting in which the bull is not killed. It is not clear (to me) what the current state of things might be.

At any rate, there was no bullfighting going on there at the moment. Currently it is set up with the ring covered with a large tent under wich we find a market.

You can see from the curvature of the tent the rough size of the ring. it is much smaller than I imagined it to be.

And on a different topic altogether, for some reason this herbal vendor has the plaques that name and describe the contents of each bin designed to look like gravestones.