July 22 – Valencia
Valencia. The Oceanogràfic, Science Museum, Hemisfèric, “Among Dinosaurs” Exhibition and Centro Commercial.
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What a wild adventure. We rode a bus for like an hour to Valencia. Jacqueline, Nick and I were the only ones who wanted to go.
Once there we did a whirlwind experience of the Oceanogràfic, which by far, was the best part of the experience. I wish we could have stayed there longer. The museum has this RIDICULOUS rule that once you leave you can’t get back in. Well, we could have if we had our hand stamped or something, but at the time it didn’t seem important. We were more excited about the science museum part.
The shark exhibit was SPECTACULAR! It was just like in the movies where you walk through a giant glass tunnel and can see all the sealife swimming above you.
There was the biggest, ugliest, and goofiest looking fish I ever saw. It is called a Sunfish ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_sunfish ) and it looked so completely alien.
It had a fin on top and on bottom and a little itty bitty fin on its side. It was SO big, and frightful looking.. maybe not frightening, dopey.
Then they had sharks, and being underneath one you can see how angry they look all the time! It was so neat to be there. You really did feel like you were under the sea.
Afterward we visited the Walruses, Beluga whales, and Penguin exhibits. The penguin place had dirty glass walls, so it was difficult to see what was happening inside.
There were some other exhibits, but we wanted to make sure we got the chance to see everything so we skipped them.. *sniff* oh well, we had high hopes for the rest of the places.
We walked over to the Science Museum part and were dissapointed. Mostly this was due to the lack of upkeep. It seemed like half of the exhibits were broken, and few of them had signs on them telling you so, so you had to figure it out for yourself that a piece was missing, the buttons were jammed.
I was all excited about seeing the Star Trek exhibit opening that day. Unfortunately, the guy giving the opening speech took FOREVER so we had to skip it in order to get something to eat.
We went to a restaurant in the mall across the street. It was called the American Bar or something like that, but I ended up ordering the Greek hamburger. It had a very interesting sauce.
We went to the HEMISFÈRIC, which is this seashell shaped building that had an IMAX in it. Then we wore these futuristic contraptions and watched ARABIA. I fell asleep midway through so I don’t remember it all.. It was a very tiring day.
Then we saw the final thing, the “Among Dinosaurs” Exhibition that was advertised everywhere!
It had the cheesiest looking dinos I’d ever seen. I’m pretty sure I have had action figures with more detail than these guys. Nick and I had a lot of fun with that stuff though.
After the experience we still had some time. We visited the mall across the street and went into Carrefour, which is.. by FAR.. the WORST store. It was basically like Wal-mart in that they had everything from desks to yogurt. They had the most ridiculous signage and I tried buying a few things, and none of them rang up at the advertised price.. it was very frustrating. I walked away angry at the store.
Then we took the bus back to the bus depot and still had some more time, so we walked around. There was some sort of an art gallery opening, so I walked in and had a free glass of wine. Good times.
Oh, and on the bus there were these LOUD American girls.. think of the worst stereotype of Americans visiting another country, then add valley girl attitude.. that was these girls.
The entire trip as a whole was amazing though, and I loved even the terrible things because they make for a good story. = )