Valencia Travel Guide

The Valencian Community consists of 518km of Mediterranean coastline and includes the capital and largest city in the region, Valencia. Valencia's charms are much debated. Some claim that the city where El Cid faced the Moors is one of the most beautiful on the Mediterranean. Others write it off as drab, provincial, and industrial. The truth lies somewhere in between. This Mediterranean port is in the midst of a Bilbao-type renewal. Valencia's answer to Bilbao's Guggenheim is the jaw-dropping City of Arts and Sciences. Set amid orange trees and rice paddies, Valencia's reputation as a romantic city seems more justified by its past than by its present. Hidden between modern office buildings and monotonous apartment houses, remnants of an illustrious past do remain. However, floods and war have been cruel to Valencia, forcing Valencianos to tear down buildings that today would be architectural treasures. If you want to get down and dirty, go to Buñol on the last Wednesday of August for the annual La Tomatina, a city-wide food fight that focuses on, you guessed it, the tomato. On that day, tens of metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets in exactly one hour.