Valencia

Yes we finally made it out of Granada and onto Valencia, home of oranges and paella. Another town seriously steeped in history, we have managed to explore quite a lot in our few days here. Mostly that involves getting lost as the maps are all written in Castilian (normal Spanish) but all the street signs are in Catalan, a local dialect not very much like normal Spanish at all. After this was explained to us on day 3 it made things a lot easier! (Thanks to Johnny, who revealed this and many other interesting facts about Valencia on his walking tour, then proceeded to run the tapas tour and a pubcrawl all in the one day).

Another Spanish city, another giant Cathedral. But this one is special, it holds the only Holy Grail recognised by the Vatican. It took us about 10 seconds to decide the 5 Euro entrance fee wasn't worth it and we climbed the bell tower for 2 Euro instead. As usual wikipedia has a great article and picture for free! Otherwise is is a city full of interesting things to do and see for free. The city of arts and sciences, see photo, is worth visiting just for the stunning archtecture. And of course the food and drink are suitably inpressive. The "food and wine tour" of the Mediterranean is really getting going now and most days it seems the bigest decisions revolve around food. Will post something soon purely devoted to food and wine as it will increasingly become a major part of the trip (especially as we move on to France).