Valencia

We had already docked in Valencia when we woke and with no excursions booked we had a leisurely start to the day with coffee and fruit on the balcony, well when I say fruit what we actually got was three different kinds of melon plus one bit of pineapple so Vikki didn’t eat much of it!

We enjoyed the coffee and view for a bit before discovering that the apparently not cancelled flight home was most definitely cancelled so Steve contacted the travel agent to sort it out for us.

We went to the main dining buffet for breakfast and the choice was pretty immense! After breakfast we headed to guest relations to sort out the credit card issue and while we were there discovered that our ‘Anytime’ dining package meant we didn’t have to honour the bookings we’d made so we could have dinner anywhere, anytime which was a bonus.

Valencia is an industrial port so there was a shuttle bus provided to take cruise passengers in to Valencia (about 30mins), as we got off the ship there was a bus leaving, it was the port bus so not the one we wanted, we queued for the bus for ages and while we were waiting we decided we wanted to go to the aquarium. Turns out to get to the aquarium we should have got on the first bus!

We eventually got the bus to the far side of the city and despite the rain and thunder decided to walk all the way back down to the aquarium. Turns out the old riverbed through the city is now a lovely park walk which we went all the way down – very picturesque and the sun came out too although we weren’t really sure which path we should be walking on and got quite a few dirty looks from grumpy runners!

We decided to stop at the museum en route for a light lunch only to stand in the queue for about 15mins and the person in front took the last item available with no cheese! So we carried on to the aquarium and lunch was the first port of call. Eventually we got burgers ordered, despite the most ridiculously complicated ordering system and Vikki somehow ended up with a double burger for no extra cost than Steve’s single one!

After lunch we wandered round seeing sharks, stingrays, jellyfish, octopus, sea lion, turtles and many many fish.

Oceanographic was fantastic but the long hot walk back to get the port bus to the ship was less so! A slushy drink kept us vaguely cool but it didn’t stop the hot irritation and inevitable disagreement over directions! However, we made it to the bus and got back to the ship, where once again we were greeted with iced water and cold towels.

While out the travel agents had confirmed we had been put on a late flight home so we headed to guest relations to change our transfer time. Apparently that’s not an option so we had to go back later to shore excursions to see if there were any excursion options with airport transfer (turned out there weren’t any with spaces!).

We headed to the martini bar but the drinks were way to strong so we dropped the bags in the room, headed up to play Quirkle on the Edge with bubbles (and beer) – turned out to be pretty windy and windy Quirkle is quite the memory test!

Back at the room to get ready for dinner and Steve polished off the pastries we hadn’t eaten while out – just as well as it turned out we had a 30min wait for dinner, but it was worth the wait.

After dinner we had a windy walk around the deck before watching a bit of the outdoor film in the rooftop garden, Vikki was feeling the chill a bit but some towels soon sorted that right out, before heading into the late night show and finishing the night in the club with a bit of dodgy dancing!