Footloose Worldwide: Great friends from Glen Ellen are visiting us - Holly and Peter - Saturday, September 10th to Monday, September 19th

Our wonderful friends Holly and Peter visited us in Valencia, with their daughter Jenna. We were overjoyed to see friends from home. They arrived on Saturday, the 10th.

They missed their train and we got worried as we did not hear from them. Turns out they forgot their passports in the safe of their hotel in Barcelona, had to go back to get them and missed their train. They made it later in the day.

We loved catching up and showing them our town. While their visit to Valencia was a short they got a feel for it. We walked around the Plaza de Toros de Valencia, just 5 blocks from our apartment. Next door is the Estación del Norte, (North train Station) which is simply beautiful. While it is difficult to capture the beauty of it, here is a YouTube video to get a feel for it.

From here we walked to Modernisme Plaza of the City Hall of Valencia. Ayuntamento is where we have experienced, day time fireworks or 10:00 pm Karaoke to the movie Grease and many other events.

Then on to Plaza de la Reina, home to many tourists. I tried to get Peter to try the Fish Ice Cream but he wasn't about to go for it.

We then took them to the narrowest building in Europe. It is 105 centimeters or 43.3 inches wide!!!

Then on to the Plaza de la Virgen. One of the first places we ate and enjoyed to environment when we arrived in May. It is also where we experience our first festival on the second Sunday in May, known as, Virgen de los desmparados, or our Lady of the Abandoned or, the Lady of the Forsaken or Lady of the dispossessed. Quite a special place.

From here we walked down to the Torres de Serranos, one of 12 gates that once formed part of the ancient city wall. The Serranos Towers are considered to be the largest Gothic city gateway in all of Europe and were constructed at the end of the 14th century as part of the city's fortification. They provisionally housed prison cells and served as a triumphal arch on many festive and solemn occasions.

From Serranos Towers we caught cabs and went to the Marina Beach Club for a drink before dinner. We had hoped to have Paella but we mistakenly realized after the fact that the restaurant we had a reservation at Casa Montaña (Mountain House) was a Tapas place. Quite famous meeting point for politicians, intellectuals and artists, since its founding in 1836, today is internationally recognized for the best publications in gastronomy, wine and travel

Sunday, September 11th - We will always remember 9-11 no matter where we are!!!

Today we had lunch at our favorite Italian place Lambrusqueria. From here we all went to our first every fútbol game, Valencia CF. It was at Mestalla stadium. It has a capacity of 55,000. We had reserved seats under the over hang due to the fact that at game time 16:15 (4:15) it would be really hot, they were great seats. They played Real Betis of Sevilla, who won the league last year. Valencia got down 2 goals to none in the 1st half, and I think in fútbol this is almost a guarantee win. Just after the half time a Valencia player got a red card, so not only were they down 0-2 they had top play the rest of the game one man short. Amazingly Valencia tied the game BUT in the 3 minutes of extra time at the end of the game Real Betis scored a goal and everyone was devastated! Great day though!

One interesting thing though....when I went to by beer the woman told me it was sin alcohol, meaning without alcohol. I later learned that NO sports venues anywhere in Spain sell alcohol!!!

Monday, September 12th - we all flew to Mallorca. We were blown away by the size of the airport. In Valencia we have maybe 4 baggage claims areas...in Mallorca there were 26!!!! TONS of German's and British visitors....I guess we just did not expect this.

So we picked up the car, I am the designated driver and we went to our AirBnB. OMG I had never been in an AirBnB but this was a 1.8 million euro home AMAZING! Check it out!

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/11558862?checkin=09%2F12%2F2016&checkout=09%2F16%2F2016&guests=5&s=Lz81YN2o

It was SO nice that we didn't want to leave, and over the next 4 days were rarely did! One day Holly and I hiked down the cliff to the sea below to go snorkeling.

Mostly we hung around all day, read, ate, swam in the pool, watched INCREDIBLE sunsets and enjoyed relaxing!

One day we went into Palma.

Holly relaxing after lunch in Palma. Beth, Holly and Jenna went shopping. I walked around the town, found the old Jewish quarter, some graffiti and finished at the HUGE.

Some art deco buildings and images

I headed toward the Major Call (meaning ghetto - local word for the old Jewish Quarter). Starting in the Arab Epoch (901-1229) when the Moors pushed the Jews out of the main part of the city and forced them into a ghetto in poor living conditions.

After the Christian conquest in 1229, the Jews of Palma, Mallorca were given a new quarter with more space and better living conditions for their help in overthrowing the Moors.

This is an statue of Jehuda Cresques a famous Jewish cartographer. It is probable that he and his father are the authors of the Catalan Atlas, the most important map in the medieval period!

Some of the graffiti I liked:

I then walked to the Palma Cathedral

Friday, September 16 - We checked out of the AirBnB and brought Holly, Peter and Jenna to the airport. They were flying to Seville and we were staying another 3 nights. It was great having them and a sad departure, but we had a fantastic time!

We drove from the airport to the North part of the island to Alcanada. It was perfect, small, just across from the sea, quite. We stayed at the Som Far Hotel.

Saturday and Sunday, September 17 & 18 - Beth caught a cold so she had some down time in the hotel.

On Saturday, I went Scuba diving with Scuba Mallorca. We did two dives, the first one at The Pinnacle then Cala Murta and Perdo's Wall. Not very deep dives, but still nice to do some diving. I saw flounders, chuttlefish, red star fish, anaenomes a few different Octopus and a couple of Moray eel's one in Pedro's wall.

Sunday, September 18th - Beth was feeling better and it was a cool and a little rainy kind of day so we ask locals what was their most favorite town and most everyone said Valldemossa! So we drove there. Valldemossa is a beautiful town in the mountains and is also know for having Chopin's piano. He arrived in Valldemossa along with his piano in 1838 and it is said that he completed many works while in Valldemossa during what is considered one of the most productive periods in Chopin's life.