It has been a long time since my girlfriend and I wanted to visit Spain. As follow, we report our trip experience indicating what is worth visiting and a description of the best 4 restaurants we tried during our holidays according to different criteria (location, menu, service, and price).
Three Days in Valencia:
Day 1 - Overview of the City (Old Town)
Our adventure in Spain starts with our direct flight from Zurich to Valencia. We arrived around 2 p.m. on a Saturday. Reaching the city is quite easy thanks to the metro connections. Our accommodation was not far from the old town, at Carrer de Campoamor, València.
An interesting feature for tourists interested to visit the city is to have the Valencia touristic card. There are 4 ticket options: 24, 48, and 72 hours or a 7 days ticket. We found the 72 hours touristic tickets quite good for us, about 25 Eur per person for traveling 3 days, with any public transport and several discounts or free entries to the main touristic attractions.
Since we arrived in the afternoon, we decided to have an overview of the old Town. Stopping from the metro station Colón, we walked through (Barrio) El Carmen, appreciating the view of Plaza del Ayuntamiento, Plaza de la Reina, Plaza de la Virgen. Valencia is a very vivid city with a nice atmosphere. In any corner, you can enjoy people playing music, with several shops and restaurants around.
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| Dinner at Haus - Restaurante/Tapas |
Restaurant 1: Haus - Restaurant/Tapas
In this restaurant we enjoyed glasses of red wine, grilled calmer, paella marisco. We had a very warm welcome in Spain, a delicious starter for free.
Location 7: modern, young, well located (close to Plaza de la Vergen), fresh, curated restaurant.
Menù 7.5: Rich choice, good food (a little salty) rich appetizer, good wine, abundant paelia.
Service 8: Very friendly service and the free starter was a smart idea
Price 8.5: Given the quality of the food, not too expensive.
One thing to keep in mind is that on Sundays most shops and tourist attractions close much earlier, with few nice exceptions. For instance "City of Arts and Sciences" and the Oceanographic.
Tickets for the whole visit is around 38-39 EUR if you have the tourist card.
We opted for visiting only the Oceanographic, where we spent most of the day, reserving the evening to a nice dinner in the old town.
Oceanographic. The park has a lot of different pavilions representing the many environments on Earth, like the tropical, Mediterranean, arctic, antarctic, and many others. The Oceanographic offers a unique opportunity to see different types of animals ranging from sharks (white, bonnethead, etc.), seals, birds, sea lions, dolphins, crocodiles, walruses, penguins, flamingos, giant turtles, etc.
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| Oceanographic |
Another impressive attraction is the "Shark tunnel": a glass tunnel where it is possible to walk and see around different kinds of aquatic friends. While walking this long tunnel, you can literally feel immersed in the ocean water and be part of that aquatic ecosystem. Recommended.
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| Umbracle, Hemispheric Palase de les Arts, Science Museum, Agora |
We decided not to visit the Umbracle, Hemispheric Palase de les Arts, Science Museum, Palau de la Musica, Agora. These structures represent a perfect example of modern architecture. The park is also surrounded by water to increase the evocative atmosphere.
Finally, we went back to the old town and had dinner in a little restaurant, near the Longia De la Seta.
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| Dinner at Escalones de la Lonia |
In this restaurant, we enjoyed different tapas, with sangria. In our opinion, one of the best places to get tapas in Valencia.
Location 7: Well placed, tables outside, simple, but suitable for the type of restaurant.
Menù 8.5: Top place for tapas. Delicious dishes, abundant, variegated, well cooked. We had pleasant sangria.
Service 8: Very popular restaurant, with fast service and a nice welcome.
Price 8.5: Given the quality of the food, it was very good. We paid for two people 40 EUR in total.
Day 3 - Old Town - Cultural Visit
The Spanish adventure continues with the visit of the old town. It is amazing how walking there you can sort transported to the old history of the city. The old town is beautiful and it is nice to learn the main roads and little streets while visiting it.
Among the various things, you can also see the "Holy Grail",
fascinating monsters, with old, but well-maintained architectures
Day 4 - Relaxing day at the Sea..
Valencia offers also a very nice and romantic sea where it is possible to eat while hearing the "Voice of the Sea", why do not do it, right?
Valencia offers also a very nice and romantic sea where it is possible to eat while hearing the "Voice of the Sea", why do not do it, right?
5 Days in Maiorca:
Our adventure continues in Palma de Maiorca...
We got a flight from Valencia to Palma De Maiorca to a super cheap price (50 for both of us). Apparently, it costs very little to go from Valencia to Palma De Maiorca, instead of taking a direct flight from other countries. This also pushed us to start visiting beautiful Valencia first and then continue with Palma De Maiorca. We mostly needed a car to travel the island, we recommend you to do so with the good and very organized rental car services (not so expensive in the end).
As you can imagine "Palma De Maiorca" offers several things to visit and see...
With our car, we took the chance to visit the Palma De Maiorca's caves, the palace, and the beautiful sea.
We had our apartment rented at Porto Cristo, a very beautiful, little town, with people dancing also late in the evening during most of the evening. As you can see from the following picture, the town is nice also in the evening time. We got an apartment very nice, very close to the sea.
Porto Cristo, Illes
Balears 07680, Spagna
There we had the possibility to have some nice rest as well as good dinners and nice restaurants. In particular, we had the chance to try two nice restaurants in town: "Trenta-1" and "Vintasty".
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| Dinner at Trenta-1 |
Location 7.5: Consistent style with restaurants seen previously, restrictive closure, vintage style, popular wines offer, and view at the entrance of the restaurant, open to welcome customers even at the last minute.
Menù 7.5: We observed a more limited choice, focused on tapas with a good mix of Spanish aspects, good (not salty) courses. In general, precious quality and abundance with a beautiful aesthetic presentation.
Service 9: Very familiar, olives offered in a welcoming way, very friendly in communication. Best so far in terms of service.
Price 7.5: Given the quality of the food, it was very good.
Location 9: Modern, youthful, nice view from the harbor, well maintained.
More refined for lights and position, friendly and mixes vintage and modern style.
Menù 7.5: Good food. Food offers were varied and typical of a tourist place, food presented well.
Service 7.5: Efficient, quickly found a place for having dinner for us.
Menù 7.5: Good food. Food offers were varied and typical of a tourist place, food presented well.
Service 7.5: Efficient, quickly found a place for having dinner for us.
Despite many waiters, there is a lot of people coming to the restaurant, thus, it is possible to lose contact with the customer compared to other restaurants (given the food quality it was fine).
Price 7.5: Given the quality of the food, it was very good.
Price 7.5: Given the quality of the food, it was very good.
It has arrived at the moment to come back to Switzerland, but we are happy about the vacation we had in Spain. In general, it is a very friendly country, with nice weather, good food, and interesting tourist places to visit. The concept of "tapas" is just great and allows tourists to try different things at the same dinner. We plan to come back to Spain in the future, to visit other parts of it, which offer other views of the country.
Thanks for reading our blog post about Spain - Sebastiano & Cristiana.
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