Valencia

The best laid plans of mice and men, as the saying from the Robbie Burns poem goes. Valencia the port we stopped at today was one of the few destinations I had pre planned for. I had purchased online tickets from an excellent company called Viator.com purchased my ticket for the Hop on Hop off bus and included with it a ticket to the fabulous walk through Aquarium, having checked all my timings and dates I made the purchase from the comfort of my own home. Having caught the shuttle from the port where we had docked to the City centre and got there on the first bus at 9.30am ready to pick up my connection. I noticed lots of banners and cones about, and a distinct lack of traffic, spotting an Officer of the Guardia Civil we started to have a broken Spanish/English conversation about were does the HoHo bus go from,eventually I twigged that today it is not going, the whole centre is closed to traffic, today is the day of the bicycle!!!! Only cycles allowed in the centre today and as if on cue a phalanx of bikes of all types came down the road as far as the eye could see, with young and old riders,tandems, penny farthings,choppers,lay down bikes, bikes with trailers, bikes by the thousands, and an hour later still they came ringing bells and honking horns, Kings of the Highways for the day, woe betide anything that got in their way, they were even accompanied by Police on Segway's, and this scuppered any plans I had for Valencia. A good excuse to come back to this beautiful city again. Do you believe in coincidence? When I got back to the ship hot, frustrated and annoyed, wishing punctures on cyclists in general I sat down in the Atrium and ordered a Diet Coke, when a camera crew started to assemble to do some filming off ship, a blonde haired lady joined them, the star of the shoot, one Jenni Eclair who I had mentioned in my earlier piece, so it might not have been a look a like I spotted but the real deal. By the way I have not spotted Rob Brydon yet.

The beauty of Valencia from my Balcony

Bloody Cyclists

Cartahagna at its best