We stayed at the Malcom & Barret Hotel, a couple of kms from the city centre and excellent value at 39 euros. If we wanted to camp, we would have had to be right on the outskirts of town or even further away, so the hotel was a great option. And we were lucky enough to get a free, unlimited park almost outside the hotel entrance.

We drove to the City of Arts and Science at around 6pm and got another miracle park right across the road from the Arts Centre. Apparently this precinct has been full of controversy and complaints about the expense and various design flaws requiring costly repairs, but (in the words of our Lonely Planet Guide) as it wasn’t our taxes paying for it, we thought it was all pretty good. There was a free concert of music by Brahms, Ravel and a couple of others, but we didn’t even bother to ask about tickets – from the large crowd, I’m sure all the seats were sold out months ago. We were just happy to wander around the precinct, which included an Imax theatre, an aquarium and several large pools of water. It was possible to hire rowboats, pedal boats and clear inflatable balls that one got into and self-propelled in one of the pools. Another looked like a huge wading pool, but there were only a couple of adults having a paddle. We agreed that if it was anywhere in Australia, it would be full of kids! I couldn’t work out why the local kids weren’t in there getting wet.

This morning we headed into the Central Market to find breakfast and buy food. The one and only coffee stall in the market was full, so we wandered outside and found a busy, popular cafe hidden by more market stalls. We ordered el especial de la casa the house special of bocadillos con lomo al horno, patatas y all i oli sandwiches with roast pork, potatos and mayonaisse.  Delicious! So then we went for a long walk around the city, looking at some of Valencia’s gorgeous Modernista buildings, including the incredible leadlight glass dome of the main post office. Our final stop was at a stall just outside the market which sold orxata horchata and xurros con xocolate churros with chocolate. Horchata is a cold, sweet non-dairy milky drink made from tiger nuts, a small tuber,  and served with fartons, finger buns.

It seems like the countryside around Valencia is Spain’s fruit bowl – endless kilometres of orchards, olive groves and citrus trees. Tonight we’re camping just north of Murcia,  in a village which has thermal banyos baths. According to the English guy who runs this campground, Las Palmeras, the busy time is during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, with … er … older people visiting from Northern Europe to ‘take the waters’. And to get away from sub-zero temperatures. Today it was 33C here, a bit warmer than usual for this time of the year.

Following on from our afternoon of watching human tower-building, we once again pointed the car in the direction of Valencia, and once again found something else to distract us along the way. The delta of the River Ebre is about 90kms south of Tarragona and looked like an interesting place to visit. Lots of birds especially in autumn. We found a campground near the delta and headed there. Along the way we noticed fields full of stubble that also had a lot of groundwater. But why? It hadn’t rained much in the last few days. Took us a while to realised that this is a rice-growing area and what we were seeing were the remains of the last crop. As we got further along, we also saw newly planted areas and crops that looked almost ready to harvest.

We camped under eucalyptus trees, which went against a lifetime of not camping under them at home in case one dropped a limb on the tent, but these trees weren’t all that big and there were no big limbs over our tent. It was lovely to see a little piece of home, though.

As we drove down to the beach the next morning, we stopped at another festival of some sort. Lots of cars, marquees, people. We didn’t realise what it was until we got to the main entrance – the last day of the 3-day Delta birding Festival. Not having the slightest clue about birds, we decided against going in, but it all looked very well organised and from the lengths of some of the camera lenses, I’m sure a lot of excellent bird pics were taken.

And then on to Valencia.