The good news is that the Fiorio women are FINALLY reunited. 🙂

The bad news is that my entire body hurts from our non-stop pace in Valencia. I don’t think my 8-hours-a-day-in-front-of-a-computer body was seasoned for this kind of walking. (To put it in perspective, Mom literally has to stretch every morning just to make it out of bed hahaha)

Originally, I thought that Valencia would be the true vacation of my trip to Spain. It is a smaller town and I am here for an entire week, which should be plenty of time to see all the requisite sights at a leisurely pace.

I was most definitely wrong about that. Oops.

Not that this is a bad thing of course – I like being busy and having the chance to see all the amazing parts of Valencia as well as spend time with Mara. All it means it that I really appreciate benches and my bed at night. 🙂

That being said, we have done some really awesome things in Valencia so far! Our first day that we arrived, Mom and I walked into the city center and climbed the tower adjacent to the cathedral. When I say climbed, I mean it was more like 10 straight minutes on a high-intense, narrow and extremely steep stair-stepper.

Not gonna lie, after 207 steps I could most definitely feel it. (Aka Andy we gotta start doing bleachers again…) However, the view from the top made it completely worth it! As the highest point in the city center, we were able to see a beautiful overlook of Valencia.

That afternoon, Mom, Mara, Molly (Mara’s roommate) and I went to one of the famous parks along the Rio. The park is famous because there is a life-size, playable Gulliver, which is the main character from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. (Moment of Truth: I have no idea who Gulliver is, but apparently it’s a pretty famous old book? For any one that has actually read the book, the Gulliver playground is from when he was tied down in Lilliput during Part 1 of the book. For any one that hasn’t, I recommend google.)

But seriously…how cool is it to have a playground that is someone’s body??

You can climb all over his arms, legs, chest, etc.

You can slide down various parts of his body as well!

(Please pay attention to this top notch action shot of us terrorizing the little child. I swear he was having a good time…maybe…well hopefully?)

It was great to be able to act like a kid again. Also, let’s keep in mind that this is DEF another amazing thing we need to bring back to the states. What kind of child (or almost adult) wouldn’t want to be active on a playground like this??

The next day, Mom and I made the trek to BioParc which may be the coolest zoo/animal holding place I have EVER seen. The concept of BioParc is based on an idea called zoo-immersion where you try to completely immerse the visitor in wild habitats.

To be clear the zoo-immersion worked for sure: I actually thought I went to Madagascar. How can you not feel like that when you see lemurs less than 2 inches away from you?

WHY ARE THEY SO CUTE?
(If you can’t tell, I was only slightly freaked out by being that close to them.)

And when we were eating lunch, there was an entire wild habitat not even 7 feet away!! (Please note: no zoom was used on the photo below)

We saw so many animals I honestly lost count. Flamingoes, Zebras, Gorillas, Hippos, just to name a few!

Of course, we also saw the cast of Lion King!!! This was probably my favorite part because who actually knew warthogs were REAL?!?! In case you were wondering, they are as ugly in real life as they were in the movie. Unfortunately, they did not sing Hakuna Matata to me which was quite disappointing.

I still can’t figure out why these hyenas did not look evil at all. I refuse to believe Disney lied to me.

As we arrived to the lion’s area Mom and I happened across an interesting situation. We saw the lions having sex. Now, I understand it is human nature and it happens, but I was not expecting to (1) watch it in general or (2) see everything is such vivid detail. I felt like some animal predator watching a strange version of porn…

Oh, and apparently lions don’t cuddle after indulging in sexual affairs? No love lost between them I guess – just a quickie and they move on. haha

Also – I’m pretty sure the male lion was quite angry at Mom and I for being the audience to his dirty business. YIKES.

Basically, if you ever make it to Valencia: GO TO BIOPARC. That is an order. You will not regret it.

After our adventures at BioParc, we met back up with Mara and went on a walking tour of Valencia. Although we were all completely exhausted, we learned some neat facts.

1. 300: When King James conquered Valencia, he kicked all the Muslims out of the city to make sure the city became solely Christian. The problem was by kicking out all the Muslims, there weren’t enough females to re-populate the city. King James made an agreement with the provenience of Cataluyna and 300 14-year old females were brought to Valencia. They married the men of Valencia and began to re-populate the city. This is why Valencia has their own dialect, Valenciano, which is VERY similar to Catalan, although no one from Valencia will ever admit that.

2. 5,000: During the time of the Black Plague, the rich people of Valencia prayed to the Holy Mary to save their city. They promised her that if she saved their city, they would build her a church. Since only 5,000 people died from the Black Plague (way less than other cities), the rich people tore down some of their homes and built a church dedicated to the Holy Mary in the center of the city. This church is now considered the most important church to the people of Valencia.

3. 8: This fountain is a depiction of the water system in Valencia. The man is a symbol of the river. The eight naked women (yeah who knows why the women always have to be naked…the struggs) represent the eight river channels. Each river channel has a door and these doors are used to equally split the water among the various farmers.

So here comes the interesting part: Apparently, to this day, the eight groups of farmers get together weekly to discuss water channel issues. Each farming group has a representative and every Thursday at noon they tell the judge whether they have any issues or not. The judge will then resolve any issues by making a decision and what he says goes. This is the oldest institution of justice in Europe.

Can you believe the oldest institution of justice in Europe is about water channel issues? Almost puts the Supreme Court to shame…smh. hahaha