Valencia - day two, of The City of Arts and Sciences, foodies and Floyd...(Pink not Keith)

8th November.

Having had a taste of Valencia's delights we planned a further visit. The idea was to check out the Market's Central Cafe for brunch, then walk down to the station which the guidebook mentioned as a bit of a modernists gem. From there, a long avenue cuts across the city towards the port area where the new developments around the City of Arts and Sciences can be found.

That was the plan, that's what we did, and here are some photos and the occasional video clip embellished with the usual pithy comments,  devastatingly insightful cultural analysis, and mildly racist prejudices....

It was around elevenish by the time we reached the Mercat Central. It was busy, animated and alive with colour and the smell of fresh food. The Central Bar was packed, but we bided our time and got a seat. Gill ordered two glasses of red wine while we looked at the menu, helpfully translated into English. I think it must be ten years or more since I had a drink this early, apart from the odd bucks fizz on Christmas morning. 

The market is as much a meeting place as somewhere to buy food.

No rushing about!

Breakfast - olives and a glass of local red... beats the usual Jordan's Crunchy

Our friendly and astonishingly efficient waitress - boy do these people know how to work hard...

great cortada!

but you do have to queue for a seat -  because it's worth it!

nearby.... serious fish buying

I googled the market afterwards. Since 1986 it has run as a cooperative, self managed by the stall-holders themselves. It is living proof of what a collective can achieve, an alternative method of mass food distribution and sale to Tesco's lamentable 'Every Little Helps'. Of course in the market you can only buy ingredients, so there is a presumption that people can, and have time to cook, and are not all tearing about to the next meeting with an iPhone in one hand and a Pot Noodle in the other.

The streets around the market a very foodie too.

and a bit arty too...

On to the station - It's Valencia, what are the ceramic decorative panels going to depict?  Yes, you've got it - Oranges

Some sort of  Police mounted display team was about to perform in the Bullring next to the station

The long (very) palm tree shaded avenue towards the port,

Eventually we reached Valencia's famous City of Arts and Sciences, Begun in the early 90s and completed in 2005 the collection of Neo-Brutalist 'signature' buildings is astonishing - containing a huge new performance space, an Imax cinema, a Science Museum and a Sealife Aquarium. It is conceived on a monumental scale, and saved from being simply overwhelming by the way Gaudieque organic forms and reflective pools have been utilised to soften the raw effect of so much unadorned concrete. Given today's release of Pink Floyd's latest album - a tribute to the late Richard Wright - it did strike me that the entire architectural assemblage is distinctly 'prog rock' in appearance. Indeed the main concert hall does look very 'Tarkus', if there's still anyone out there with a passing interest in the works of Emerson Lake and Palmer.

So, in tribute to the late great Richard Wright I have put a snippet of 'The Endless River' on this short video of The City of Art and Sciences....it will of course be nobbled by You Tube's mp3 police fairly smartly, but the intentions are noble, if not strictly speaking, legal,

see what I mean...Tarkus

the beauty of raw concrete

dramatic profiles

rhythmic arcades...

Sporting Bilbao's team bus parked up for good measure

...it ended in a 0 0 draw...

a conical stairwell cover

the figures give some sense of the gigantic scale of the place.

It is the giganticism of the place that has been criticised in some quarters. It does have the massive ambition associated with left wing inspired re-generation and social renewal projects. Conservative politicians called the development 'pharonic' - overblown and grandiose. I have some sympathy with that view; these buildings are designed to overwhelm; they are hardly built on a human scale - and at what point does the impressive become the be-littling? What is certainly true, however, is they have put Valencia on the map as a tourist destination, they catch the eye, and hopefully the visitors who come here also experience the older city's humane and engaging charms.