Where are the Turtles… and the Pegs?

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It’s our last full day with access to a washing machine for at least a week so we decide to make use of it while we still can. As I think I might have mentioned previously the washing machine is in a cupboard on the very much smaller of our two balconies, as is the fold out contraption that we need to hang the clothes on to dry. We quickly discover that if we try to fold out the contraption before we do the washing, we can’t get past it to get to the cupboard where the washing machine is …. unless we only half fold out the contraption….. and also bring the fold out ironing board inside so that it doesn’t get in the way too…. And then there’s the pegs issue. We’ve noticed that the apartment renters of the world don’t seem to like leaving a large supply of pegs for their tenants to use. We’ve only got enough to hang up three tops and a sock, which suggests that either the tenants steal most of the pegs, or the owner assumes that the tenants aren’t here on vacation; they’ve instead come here to spend their days hanging up wet clothes three tops and a sock at a time and waiting for them to dry so they can then move onto the next lot. I think I might be missing something here.

Issy’s happy to watch the washing machine spin around so I set off to La Lonja de la Seda, or The Silk Exchange. We read that this is Valencia’s only UNESCO World Heritage Listed building. It was built in the late fifteenth century as a symbol of money and power by wealthy silk merchants. They saw hard times ahead; the Americas had been discovered which had moved a lot of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic coasts, and they wanted to make sure the silk merchants stayed loyal to Valencia. The silk weaving industry was apparently Valencia’s most powerful from the fourteenth right up to the eighteenth centuries. The building is very impressive. The main Columnary Hall is nearly twenty metres high, with a ceiling supported on eight slender columns. The ceiling of the Consulate of the Sea room is a spectacular wooden structure inlaid with metal, and the whole complex has been built around an orange garden. The tower’s not accessible to the public (something about the spiral staircase being a bit dodgy), but we read that this is where they locked up any merchants who got a bit behind in their payments; at least these days they only repossess your house.

I collect Issy and we set off for the City’s iconic Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences). As I mentioned in a previous post, this was developed in the late 1990s with the aim of encouraging tourists to Valencia. It is beyond spectacular. It comprises four main buildings - the Opera House, the “Hemispheric”, the Museum of Sciences, and the Caixa Forum. We’re no architects, but these all look like architectural masterpieces to our untrained eyes. There are shallow pools of water around most of them which visitors can get around in in canoes and other floating contraptions.

Beyond the four main buildings is the also spectacular L’Oceanografic. This was completed in 2003 and is the largest aquarium complex in Europe. The displays are seemingly endless; most are underground and connected by a series of tunnels, some of which are glass with aquariums above and around them. Highlights for us are a gigantic sea lion obeying every command of its much smaller trainer (that could get ugly if Mr Sea Lion ever decided he was having a bad day), and two Baluga whales in the “Arctic” display - these ridiculously cute near-white creatures seem very curious about the visitors peering in at them, and don’t seem to mind whether they swim around right way up or upside down… and for that matter who are we to say which is which, just because one looks right to us and the other doesn’t, well it doesn’t look wrong, it just looks upside down. The whole complex markets itself both inside and all over the city as somewhere you can see turtles, and they look gigantic in the posters. And I’m sure they are, but after three hours of wandering we haven’t been able to find even a single specimen. We think we’ve hit the jackpot, well mini jackpot, with some small turtles on a log next to a pond, but after staring at them for ten minutes we haven’t seen them move, and there’s a very permanent looking sign right next to them which says ”real or fake” - if they were real wouldn’t someone need to keep moving the sign around whenever the turtles moved. I think I might again be missing something here. There are plenty of other signs pointing to the “Giant Turtles”, but they never seem to lead anywhere. Anyway the whole complex is excellent, and the disappointment of not seeing a turtle is more than offset by the other spectacular displays. I wonder who came up with the turtle marketing thing and why. I hope thinking about this issue doesn’t interrupt tonight’s sleep.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Valencia
We enjoyed our time in Valencia last fall. This piece of architecture is stunning. Great photos.

[DaveandIssy]

Valencia
Thx for reading! Agree that architecture of the City of Arts and Sciences complex is indeed absolutely stunning. We didn’t know much about it all until we went.