Weekend in Valencia

This past weekend almost all of the kids on the trip decided to visit Valencia together! The others stayed in a hostel both nights of the weekend, but Lindsey and I decided to wake up early Saturday to catch a train, and leave Sunday evening. Two of my roommates were a couple from Australia who dropped everything at home and have been backpacking through Europe for the past few months. Valencia is beautiful, as per usual for Spain. Also typical of Spain, there was a lot of walking involved with it. Some people visited the aquarium in the 'City of Arts and Sciences,' but mostly I just walked around to see the sights. Unfortunately the ratio between time spent sleeping and time spent on activities has been way off this weekend, so I apologize for the generic tone of my post tonight. Valencia really is an amazing city--I'll just let my pictures say it for me!

 This was the street right near our hostel.

 A nice-looking building in the Plaza de la Virgen.

 A fountain in the Plaza de la Virgen. I assume the female statues are the virgins the name refers to.

 The type of street we were walking through this weekend.

 A view of the city visible from the top of one of the grand entrance ways to Valencia left over from older times. I only know that because we briefly hijacked a tour group.

 This was one of the first buildings we saw while walking to the City of Arts and Sciences. This is the music building.

 This seemed to be some sort of halfway enclosed garden.

 This is only part of a giant shallow pool in the 'City.' In another part they had big plastic hamster balls people could rent.

 Another view of the pools.

 This was our room, complete with a tired Lindsey. All the rooms had the birdcage decals on the walls. It was clean and cheap!

 People standing around.

 I'm not sure what this building was. There were buildings aesthetically similar to this one all over the place.

This is one of Valencia's train stations (the one we used, of course).