Las Cigüeñas

An interesting stat about our town is that there is a higher percentage of kids here than anywhere else in Spain apparently.  However, it doesn't seem to even comes close to Saratoga Springs. 

I asked the ladies that were telling me this, if it was because of all the storks (Cigüeñas) around and they said of course!  

These storks have built nests on nearly everything high here.

If it is tall there is likely a nest on it! 

These are the lights at the community sports center.

This is the cultural center across from the kids' school.

This is likely a radio tower.

In Spain, a town is not a town if it doesn't have an old cathedral and a crane.  The bigger cities are lucky enough to have several of these as part of their landscape. 

Just a close up of these storks and their nests.

I can't remember where this was, but it wasn't in our town. Obviously they don't just live here.

They also live on top of old castle ruins.

On top of this super tall tower just outside the city walls of Avila.

In trees on the side of the road on one of our road trips...

...and their nests are super grande!!

Sunday Drive

We went for a drive today after lunch and found numerous amazing picture opportunities with all the spring wildflowers.  The kids were bribed to smile and cooperate with a promise of yummy strawberry pastel ice cream sticks. 

Waterfall Hike

We've been wanting to take this walk/hike from our house since we moved here but just barely made it this past Saturday.  We tried this once before, but without Brent and there were cattle/bulls in our way so we just turned around and came home. 

We just had to get a picture on this perfect picture taking tree at the beginning of this hike.

Valencia, Spain

The Drive

We finally made it to Valencia Spain.  The kids and Brent had Wed-Fri off since Wed was Spain's labor day, and Thursday was a Madrid holiday Dos de Mayo which they celebrate the rebellion on the 2nd of May in 1808, by the people of Madrid against the occupation of the city by French troops, provoking a brutal repression by the French Imperial forces and triggering the Peninsular War.

     We left early Wednesday morning for a 4 hour drive and thought we would beat the traffic, but by the time we reached Madrid we realized we hadn't.  About 3 hours into the drive we had made it about an hour outside of the city of Madrid still in stop and go traffic.  It was unbelievable, and set us back several hours taking a total of about 7 hours.  The kids did fairly well, Kaiya read an entire book (Lemony Snickets) and we had time to catch some great shots along the way.

Just a shot of old castle ruins.  We were researching castles along our route to see if there was one we could see on the way and found out that there are over 2500 castles here in Spain.  We then knew our chances were good!

We took a close up of the castle on the right in the following photo.

We wish now that we would have stopped to explore this one, but didn't see how cool it was until we got home and looked at this close-up on the computer.

Here is a bunch of "bull".  It's hard to tell how big these are in the picture but if you look below the bull you can see the tops of the trees and maybe that will give you a better idea.  These large metal bulls are all over the sides of the highways reminding us we are in bull country I guess.

This is the Minglanilla castle which we did stop at and explore a little.  It didn't seem too old, and we haven't been able to find any information regarding it.

This was one of the stairways to the walls of the castle. 

This Embalse de Contreres lake was breathtaking which made me very glad I wasn't driving.

WARNING: There are 8 posts included in this trip. 

Old Town Valencia

The main place we wanted to see here was the  Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral built in 1262 since they claim to have the Holy Grail.

Although my family didn't appear too interested, I was excited.  The church alone was beautiful.

Just a close-up of the main entrance to show the amazing detail.

In the lighted case in the center is the chalice the Catholic church claims was used by Jesus at the Last Supper and then used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect Jesus' blood as it dripped from the cross.

 Here is a close-up of "the Holy Chalice", supposedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the 1st century, and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the 3rd century. According to legend, the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, located at the south-west of Jaca, in the province of Huesca, Spain, protected the chalice of the Last Supper from the Islamic invaders of the Iberian Peninsula. Archaeologists say the artifact is a 1st century Middle Eastern stone vessel, possibly from Antioch, Syria (now Turkey); its history can be traced to the 11th century, and it now rests atop an ornate stem and base, made in the Medieval era of alabaster, gold, and gemstones. It was the official papal chalice for many popes, and has been used by many others, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, in 2006.

Also noteworthy is martyred Saint Vincent's mummified hand.

We had to share a close up of this.

A shot of downtown Valencia.

We stopped at Burger King on our way back to the hotel and even Burger King doesn't quite do things the same here. The kids are eating ice cream sundaes with "Pop Rocks" that came with the kids meals!

Lake Albufera

This is a very shallow lake surrounded by rice fields just outside of Valencia.  It is popular for bird watching and we thought our kids would enjoy a nice quiet boat ride to rest after hours in the car.  I won't comment much about the pictures but just post some of our favorite shots.

 This is what my family looks like after 7 hours in the car.  Here we are just waiting to take off.

Since it took so long to get to Valencia fortunately we didn't get here until just before the sunset. 

We were starving by the time we were done so we went straight to the little town of Albufera to get some "Paella", which originated here in Valencia.  Paella is a rice, vegetable, and meat (most often seafood) dish flavored with saffron.  Since it was labor day most everything was closed except two restaurants, one being more of a pub and the other a nice sit down restaurant which is what we chose.  The paella was super yummy or it might have just been that we didn't get served until 10pm and we were starving.  We hadn't eaten a meal since 8:30 am before taking off from home and had just been eating snacks to get us by until we got to Valencia, but then everything was closed for the holiday.

City of the Arts and Sciences

This place was a nice contrast to all the history we have seen since we have lived here. The goal of this futuristic complex is to make learning fun. It includes an art museum, a science museum, IMAX and L'Oceanografic, which is one of Europe's largest aquariums.  We did not go in to any of the buildings but enjoyed walking around them.   This blog is just pictures of what we saw.

Gulliver's Travels Park

There was once a river which ran between the old and new cities.  The river was diverted and the river bed was converted into a series of parks, gardens, and exercise trails.  The following pictures are from these parks.

This was a place we knew we had to visit when we first researched Valencia.   It is a large statue of Gulliver lying in the sand with slides and stairs to climb up.  The kids had a great time playing on this as did Brent and I.

This is a  photo of the inside of Gulliver's giant size hat showing a small scale model of the actual 

play structure.

Kamree in front of the head with Morgan and Mason on a slide to the right.

. 

Kamree, Kaiya and I on his chest.

Too bad you couldn't enjoy the giant as much as we did!