Expositions and a Garden

Tuesday, June 13, 2017--Valencia, Spain

We headed out this morning concentration on expositions we knew were in town and had not seen yesterday due to closures.  Our first stop was El Amudin one block from where we are staying.  It's an old building that once was a church and now houses exhibitions.  The one we saw was related to home, exploration, and museum.

This is the period of the Celebration of Corpus Christi.  The actual date for the local celebration is this Sunday.  It is far more of a celebration here than in other places.  Our next exposition was at the House of Rocks ("rocks" being floats) also known as The Corpus Museum.  It houses the "floats," which are really carriages, the costumes, and the other items that have been used in the celebration for centuries.  The oldest float is from the 1600s, and the newest was from the 2000s.  Most, however, are hundreds of years old and have been used over and over.  It was a fascinating museum with films of previous celebrations.  It's too bad we won't still be here Sunday to see it all live.

From there, we went to the Centre del Carme, an old monastery, which now houses contemporary art exhibitions.  It had several exhibitions.  One of the more interesting was by Txema Rodriguez named JOC about the Basque game of pilota/pelota. 

Our final stop for exhibitions was the Institute Valencia Arte Modern with several large exhibits.  Lost in the City was a huge exhibition that was interesting.   

From there, we entered a nice small garden called Jardins les Hesperides where we sat and relaxed for a while.  After that, we returned to our room by coming through the Torres de Quart, one of the huge entrance gates to the old city.

In the late afternoon, we went walking in the Jardi de Turia, the long linear park the city has made from the dry riverbed of the Turia River.  It goes around three sides of the old city and is very active with joggers, sunbathers, dog walkers, soccer players on fields, etc.  Then in the late evening, we strolled through the city one last time to see the beautiful old buildings lighted at night.