Valencia is a city of diverse architecture.  The oldest part of the city is dotted with slightly decaying brick buildings, spectacular churches with beautifully carved arches and turrets, tiny shops with hand carved wooden doors of every size and shape and ancient walls that at one time kept back the walls of the Turia River.  Set all that against the beautiful new ultra-modern buildings that house the three-story Museo de las Ciencias (Science Centre),  the Hemisferic (IMAX), and the Oceanografic (Europe’s largest aquarium). Today we spent 3 1/2 hours at the Science Centre and it was worth every moment.  Each floor was filled with hands-on displays teaching about the earth, health, dinosaurs, the human body, flight, sound, forests and everything to do with our world.  Beautiful, life-size displays of animals and flying machines sat nestled amid the towering metal arches and glass windows that form the roof of this enormous, gleaming white building.  We couldn’t possibly see and touch every display that was there…it was a bit overwhelming at times.  One could live here and never visit every display.

Stepping outside was, once again, like a furnace but we had to stop and watch the children play in the round plastic “bubbles” that they step into, are pushed out onto the water, and they can play inside a safe environment while rolling around on the water.  It looked like lots of fun.  Lunch was next on our agenda but we couldn’t bring ourselves to pay 9 dollars for a hot dog so we jumped on our bus and headed home to enjoy all the great delicacies that we’ve picked up on our trips to the market.  Pate, guacamole, cheeses and meats and wonderful fresh fruits fill our plates each day. We do eat well!

We did have one more mishap today.  After dinner we were sitting watching one of our few English speaking channels on TV, enjoying a glass of wine when Joey got up from the couch to start the dishes and knocked over her wine glass.  Glass flew everywhere and she spent the next short while washing floors instead of dishes.  After it was all cleaned up I offered her a bowl of fruit salad that I had made for dessert and I served hers in a plastic bowl.  Much safer that way. At least she laughed about it by then.  We are going to have to wire home for more money if we keep breaking things.

Oh!  One more thing.  I’m always talking about how we are always getting lost? Or at least, disoriented?  Well, here is something we saw today that we had a good laugh about.  See if you can figure out why. It reminded us of US!