Thursday October 2, Moraira to… Valencia!
We arrived at Victoria parking in Valencia at 10 am and we’re told that our booking was in fact from Friday, October 3 but obviously they had no problems in changing it: David thought there was a logical explanation for this as he had had trouble booking with them in the first place this time. We then went to check in at Turkish Airlines at the airport and found that our flight to Istanbul, Delhi and on to Calcutta was actually booked for the 3rd as well. The girl on the desk said she would see if she could change it, if there was availability, and returned 10 minutes later with a manager Who explained that yes there was availability and that we could change it for the price the sum of approximately €1500!. Not surprisingly we declined this and went away to this side.
What to do with our spare 24 hours? David eventually decided to book a hotel in the centre of Valencia And we got an Uber there. We had to kill about an hour walking round the town. and we were allowed into the room at the Venicia Plaza soon after 13.00. We went out for another wander at about 15.00 for 90 minutes and ended up having a very pleasant ice cream just before we got back to the hotel. Then we wandered out again just before 18.30 and went to La Pizza where David had booked a table and had a very pleasant meal of an excellent pizza and a cannelloni as desert.
Then back to the room which was perfectly adequate and charming in its way even though this was only a two star hotel. We had a coffee there with the remaining slice of pizza that we had not been able to eat earlier. David blamed me for the mistake of travelling on Thursday as he had previously asked me what day we were taken off and I had replied Thursday, thinking this was what I had in my diary and also on the year planner but he did not hold it against me, he never does!.
During our daytime walk around Valencia we came across a large protest March supporting the Palestinians and shouting that they did not like the US. In the evening when we were back in the hotel, we could look down on the plaza and again there was a vociferous protest going on there over a long period. The lights of the fountain were very magical.
Fri October 3 Valencia to Delhi
We walked to the market area at 8 am and had breakfast there: the orange juice was not fresh and there was nothing spectacular about any of the rest of it. We watched a large beer lorry servicing several cafés during this time. When we had finished our breakfast, we walked around the market for five minutes or so, and then back to the hotel and packed up and got an Uber back to the airport about 9:15 am. This time there was a large queue to check in at Turkish Airlines and we overheard that the flight was completely full and they were paying people to delay their travels: they should’ve accepted us for nothing the day before and it would probably save them quite a lot of money!
The flight to Istanbul was without incident and we then had about a four hour wait before the onward flight to Delhi. We had a contra temps with the man on guard outside one of the special lounges in Istanbul there who said that we should sit on the floor if there were no chairs available for Turkish airline passengers. But we did eventually find some seats and whiled away the time. We stopped at a coffee shop for an iced latte and some buns but it transpired that they had not registered the fact that we wanted the buns, very odd.
The flight to Delhi took off about 20.30 and only took 5 1/half hours so the meal took up quite a large part of this Then I watched some National Geographic videos, two of them on so Ralph Fiennes and a younger cousin retracing his trip as a 27-year-old across all the rivers of British Columbia. By the time I had finished watching these I only got about an hour sleep before we landed in Delhi at 4:30 am.
To get a larger photo, click on a thumbnail below
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| Our hotel | View from our window by day | View from our window by night with demonstration | |
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| Valencia Market | |||
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| Icecream | Pizza |