Bob:

After breakfast we did another Walk-A-Mile for two more Ship Shape dollars; we had our two rucksacks but now we were closing in on enough dollars for the genuine Royal Caribbean T-shirts! The sailboats competing for the America's Cup were just across the road from us in an inner harbor, and we had originally planned to watch them race or at least put out to sea if they were racing. Unfortunately, the winds were so low that they weren't racing that day, so we decided to use our shuttle tickets to get into Valencia and walk around the city. By the end of the day we were quite happy we had made that decision.

The shuttle let us off just across the street from the train station, which was right beside a rather large bullfighting ring. The bullfighting ring had layers of nicely arched doorways and resembled a smaller version of the Coliseum in Rome. We had been told that whereas in Spain the bullfights end in the death of the bull, in Portugal the bulls live to fight again another day, which to me is a significant difference, and probably even more important to the bull!

Monika:

Bob:

From the shuttle stop we walked north on the Avenue Marquis de Sotello to the Plaza Ayuntamiento, one of the many pretty plazas in Valencia. As usual, the plaza, or more accurately, the buildings around the plaza, were home to a flock of pigeons, and, as usual, the young children were enthusiastically if unsuccessfully chasing the pigeons. The plaza had beautiful Baroque-style buildings bordering it, and the one to the West was a museum of history, I think.

Although the museum was tempting, we continued walking to the Mercado Central, a huge indoor marketplace thronged by local folks with their wheeled shopping bags. Fresh fruit, fresh and cured meat of all kinds, and seafood of all kinds (including octopus!) were all available in the many stalls in the Mercado. Curiously, the set of buildings making up the Mercado Central had some interesting stained glass panels and domed ceilings, which gave the bustling commercial scene an oddly church-like flavor. We had brought sandwiches from the Brilliance for lunch, and we augmented that will a pound of large fresh strawberries, which played a surprisingly large role in the rest of the day's activities.

Monika:

Bob:

Wandering out past the church next to the Mercado Central, we wound our way through the narrow, twisting streets of the old city past the Iglesia y Torre de Santa Catalina, a church with a really, really tall bell tower, fetching up in the Plaza de la Reina for lunch. The plaza had benches where we could sit and eat, and being surrounded by orange trees was very pleasant. The orange trees were already bearing fruit, and although I didn't know the genus or species of any of the trees I was absolutely certain that they were VALENCIA oranges! (ta-dum-bum)

Monika went off to buy a soft drink while I guarded all our material on the bench, and somehow I nudged the carton of strawberries too close to the edge and they slowly slid off in front of me. Grabbing for them, I missed and only succeeded in kicking them with my foot so that they scattered into the sandy soil beneath the bench. I was pretty upset as we just been able to eat one apiece and they were really tasty and sweet strawberries! Then I noticed a guy across the plaza using the water fountain to wash out his mouth, and I thought well, maybe the water was good enough for washing off strawberries. So we washed them all off and had quite a few with our sandwiches, which was all together a satisfactory lunch. Not being able to eat them all, I put the remaining ones in a paper sack and placed that at the top of my rucksack before we continued on our way.

Monika:

Bob:

At the end of the plaza was the Cathedral, so we stopped in there to take a peek as we passed by. It was a nice church with some pretty side chapels or shrines, but nothing super special. The curious thing was the cluster of old women dressed in black sitting just outside the cathedral, shaking paper cups filled with change at us and mumbling something whining mumbo-jumbo under their breath. It suddenly struck me that I had seen exactly the same old women doing the exactly the same thing in Venice during Wanderung 10! Their ability to move from Venice to Barcelona with the tides of tourists belied their appearance of extreme poverty and suggested to me that it was all a carefully orchestrated begging act. But who exactly were they?

Across a narrow alleyway from the cathedral was a basilica where we also stopped in to sit and rest a minute. The decoration above the altar was an astonishingly brilliant concoction of gold and silver, so I quietly pulled out my trusty camera and tried to take a picture of it. I didn't want to use a flash and disturbed the folks there for religious reasons, but taking it in the dim interior light required a time exposure and holding the camera steady was quite a challenge. But suddenly the lights came up, a priest entered from stage right, and it looked like a church service was going to shortly be underway. Not wanting to be sacrilegious, I quickly finished taking pictures and we quietly sidled over to the exit, which led to the Plaza de la Virgin where we continued on our walk.

Monika:

Bob:

We angled West to see an imposing building that seemed to be some kind of palace or official residence, after which we turned North on the Calle Seranos. That lead us directly to the Plaza Fueros, where we found that the Torres de Serranos, which was a large old city gate built like a small fortress. The overall structure of it reminded me of the fortified city gates we had seen in Luebeck, Germany, during Wanderung 5, except that the gate in Luebeck were built of thousands of small brown bricks while the gate in Valencia was built of larger blocks of sandstone.

At that point we had cut directly through the heart of the old city and we consulted our map about where to walk next. The nice tourist map that Monika had snagged at the port's Tourist Information Center showed a perfect arc of parks that had apparently been built on the streambed of the river running through Valencia, and we decided to follow that arc counter-clockwise until we reached the University Botanical Gardens. Just as indicated on our map, the parks were a very pleasant series of green walkways and bicycle paths, which kind of wound around among gardens, soccer fields and open parkland. Walking in a big park like that was very pleasant. When we stopped to look at an intricate fountain, however, I discovered much to my disgust that the strawberries in my rucksack had squished into a pulp and the juice had soaked down into my sweater stored just underneath them. So the last of the strawberries were finally discarded and we continued walking along the park.

Our city map did not, however, warn us about a huge Gypsy encampment underneath one of the bridges spanning the park. Their encampment stretched from one side of the park to the other underneath the bridge itself and it must have held several hundred people at the very least. All of a sudden I put two and two together and figured out that the old women begging in front of the cathedral were in fact Gypsies. Rick and Brigitte later told us they had seen Gypsy boys on bicycles with special hooks shaped like shepherd's crooks that they apparently used to snag purses from passing women.

Combining that with the signs in several stores warning us about thieves, some parts of the economic life cycle of the Gypsies became clear. First, the young children are taught the "surround and grab" tactic for snatching things from old women like Monika's mother in Paris. Next, the preteen boys are taught to use bicycles or mopeds for purse snatching. Next, older teens are taught the fine art of pickpocketing in crowds or on trams such as I had experienced in Lisbon. That kind of petty theft would probably be viable only until middle age when decreasing flexibility and mobility would make it too chancy, at which time the men probably turn to more sophisticated scams. For the women I am not sure what economic activities the young ones do, but the middle aged Gypsy women who surrounded me in Prague during Wanderung 12 were selling scarves and the old, decrepit-looking women such as those I saw in Venice and Barcelona appear to be sent out to beg. I read that the Spanish King Juan Carlos was trying to integrate Gypsies into the mainstream culture, but if Gypsy culture has really integrated these economic activities and their corresponding beliefs and values, he's going to need a lot of luck to change it.

Monika:

Bob:

From the Gypsy encampment we walked around high wall surrounding the Jardin Botanical (botanical gardens) of the University until we found the entrance, which was of course on the other side. The entrance fee was 60 cents but we felt that wandering among the exotic plants collected inside was well worth the price of admission. The gardens consisted of everything from huge trees of every description to small, delicate flowers. Everything was precisely labeled with both common and scientific names, so I had the satisfaction of knowing exactly what I was looking at, even if just for a brief moment.

The growing season in Valencia must be much more advanced than back in Virginia because the roses were already bloomed out there whereas at home our roses had just come out of their winter hibernation. We also passed a Lilly pond with one Lilly plant in full blossom, which was very pretty. A large iron cage looked as if it had once been some kind of aviary but was currently just housing exotic plants, and right in the middle was an intriguing stainless steel sculpture that looked like a brilliant butterfly in the sunlight, a very pleasant effect.

I was reluctant to leave the gardens because they were really pretty and I hadn't explored every corner of them by any means, but Monika's back started to hurt and we decided it was time to head back to the ship. After a brief stop for a beer (Monika) and a coke (Bob) near the bathrooms, we walked East to another of the old city gates and then followed the Calle Guillem de Castro back to the shuttle bus stop. After the short hop back to the ship, I walked another Walk-A-Mile to get one last Ship Shape dollar while Monika washed the strawberry stains out of my sweater and hung it up to dry. Then I started packing while Monika went up to the golf center and exchanged our 38 Ship Shape dollars for the two T-shirts we had coveted.

Packing up was rather sad after the nice time we had experienced on board the Brilliance, but at least I could knock off to have dinner with Monika, Dave, Rick, and Brigitte. Unfortunately, the klutziness I had exhibited with the strawberries earlier in the day once again came to the fore and I knocked over my water glass, which in turn knocked over the huge bowl of Caesar salad that had been put in the center of the table. Fortunately we had a real cloth on the table that soaked up all the water before it reached Dave, who was sitting across from me, and we had all previously served ourselves salad so losing the rest was no great tragedy. Still, it was embarrassing as all get out for me although possibly funny for the others. I did regret making extra work for Nisha and Sueda, though, because they both had been really nice to us throughout our cruise. After dinner we finished packing and collapsed into bed.

Monika: