These items of total delight did not fall from the sky. They were brought by Inge, my best friend for more than 15 years now.
She left us earlier this week, after a stay of 5 days.

She arrived on the last day of Las Fallas and therefore had the great chance to see a glimpse of this pretty unique yearly festival. A pretty important glimpse at that, because the last day is the day of the cremas, the public burning of all the puppet structures that have been set up in more than 300 locations in the city! Earlier I already put photos online of the fallas tour we made.

Below I have added a video impression of the fireworks show that rang in the crema of the last falla on Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

We did quite a bunch of nice things together with Inge and because she already had visited Valencia before, we also could do some things that are most of the times not included in a first visit.

On Friday we took her to the Museo del Carmen to see the same exhibition of drawings we saw with Pam. In the evening I cooked her favorite Chinese dish: coca-cola chicken.

The next day we took the train to X‚àö‚Ćtiva to see the castle on the top of the hill there. I already visited in November 2008, but for Mia and Inge it was a first timer and because the last time we didn’t have time for the Moorish part of the castle, for me this time was again very nice and interesting!

Back in Valencia we had a great tapas dinner at a restaurant that Inge went to on her first visit: the extremely popular Bodeguilla del Gato.

On Sunday we had a long walk up and down the Turia and visited the Oceanografico that is part of the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. We saw a great dolphin show and we saw two walruses mating, which was quite funny to watch. The only part that left us not impressed was the penguin area, where we immediately had to think of the not so happy zoo-scene in the movie Happy Feet.

In the evening we had dinner at Sagardi where we ate a whole bunch of the most delicious pinxtos! Especially Inge loved the strong cider there too, a combination that ensures that many people return to that restaurant after their first visit.

The days were flying by with so many things to do and Monday was Inge’s last day already. Mia had to go to school and because the weather was absolutely gorgeous we went to the beach, where we sat on a terrace enjoying the sun and each other’s company the whole afternoon.

All in all we enjoyed Inge’s visit very much and in a couple of months it is our turn to go visit The Netherlands…

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PS yesterday I had a go with Google’s Picasa 3 and I am using the great Shashin plugin to show the photos above that I uploaded earlier.

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