Valencia- Tom and Nancy's Final Port

Our journey with Nancy and Tom came to a close with a visit to Valencia on Spain's eastern coast. We happily returned the rental car after one of Chad's greatest navigational successes... returning the car to the train station in a big city with no map and no signage.


Just a few steps from the station is the main plaza. It´s different and more modern than the other cities we visited. This is the view of the plaza from our hotel window... Not bad!!

The buildings everywhere were beautiful, even this market, though the goods here weren´t quite as entertaining as those in Salamanca.

Yet another impressive building...

Valencia is famous for its paella, so we were sure not to miss any. We headed to the beach to some of the world´s best paella restaurants.

Paella can be made of many different sorts of ingredients. Rice is the base ingredient, and it can include different types of meat, such as sausage and chicken, or seafood (clams, shrimp, octopus, you name it!) and also some veggies such as peppers and peas. We decided to try two different types... chicken for Chad and Nancy and seafood for Kari and Tom.

After the delicious paella lunch, we walked over to the docks to look at the sailboats.

The boats were beautiful.

Between the boats and the paella, we were blown away- literally!!

It was one windy day!

We had lots of fun out on the town with Tom and Nancy. They were such fantastic traveling partners throughout the whole trip. I´m not just saying that because they´re my in-laws. Since we´ve traveled a bit more now, we´ve found that it can be hard to travel with certain people, but it was so easy and lots of fun exploring new places with Nancy and Tom.

Here we our on our last excursion together :(-- to the train station in Valencia. The station itself is quite beautiful, and it´s decorated with fruits, including oranges, since Valencian oranges are also famous.

Nancy and Tom caught the AVE fast train to Madrid to catch a flight back to Atlanta, and the next day Chad and I took a bus up the coast to Barcelona and Cadaques for some more exploring.