Valencia travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

The highlight of the annual fiesta in Buñol is the tomato battle where thousands of participants, dressed in their worst clothes, pelt each other with ripe tomatoes. The local town council provide lorry loads of ripe tomatoes for the crowds to hurl at one another. No one is safe.The battle starts at 11a.m. and lasts for one hour.
If you can’t have a laugh at La Tomatina, there is probably no hope for you. Every year, on the last Wednesday in August between 11am and 1pm, the little town of Bunol in the east of Spain is almost literally painted red – by over 125,000 kilos of tomatoes.
Continue reading “La Tomatina” in Province of Valencia

Valencia
All eyes will be on Valencia later this year when the Spanish city hosts the coveted America’s Cup, the world’s biggest and most prestigious yachting event. Valencia is the first city in Europe to stage the race, despite the event’s long history. Already a popular short break destination with savvy travellers, Valencia benefits from a great location a short hop from the resorts on the Costa Blanca and is well served by no-frills airlines. But it is a charming city in its own right, home to the original paella, and it offers an exciting mixture of old and new, with cutting edge modern architecture and traditional baroque barrios. Check out the futuristic looking Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (the City of Arts and Sciences) designed by local architect Santiago Calatrava, featuring Europe’s largest state-of-the-art marine park, complete with a 30m- (98ft-) long shark tunnel, a dolphinarium, huge fish tanks, a colony of Humboldt’s penguins, and a very surreal underwater restaurant . The harbour area, Europe’s largest urban regeneration project, will be at the centre of the action during the Cup.
Continue reading Top hot destinations 2007