Main square

The next place we travel to was Pamplona. It was a nice city, but not as nice as the other. It was also kinda too rainy. Also the hostel was a little shitty. The receptionist told us that the hostel has a home feel, of course when we think that the he was living there. It’s also worth to mention that it’s not price savvy to stay at the hostels anymore. In San Sebastian we stayed in some pension in the very city centre and we paid less than for hostel! What a difference! Anyway, enjoy photos.

She was waiting for us… Maybe not…

This seems to be the town hall

A ruin of the house

View from the town walls

Prototype of the modern homeless

In the market

Nice heads!

Doors to nowhere

A sculpture of the famous bull run

They are attacking!

Kamča

Kamča

The town walls. From the other side

Fortress

Exit from the fortress

A gallery we weren’t to

Structure of the building – a department store this time.

Expo is usually a big deal. Countries want to show themselves in the best, and they send there the best architects and artists to make great expositions. I believe this was the case of Zaragoza which held expo in 2008. Really beautiful architecture even though the Expo areal seems to be like a city of ghosts now. Who knows if the Spaniards didn’t have too big eyes again…

One of the bridges to the Expo

A detail of the walkway

A detail of the walkway

Another bridge – this one is from Zaha Hadid

Some hotel

Walkway

View to the city centre

Italia!

Entrance to the bridge. Open just on weekends.

Inside the bridge

A statue in-front the bridge

Window in the bridge

Let’s go down!

Kamča

Some pavilion

Entrance to the water

Hieroglyphs

Sunken boat

A museum

Here are some pictures from a beautiful, but very windy Spanish city Zaragoza. Actually one more thing – this city has the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen. Really interesting inside with about 16 or 20 chapels.

Inside Puerta de Atocha in Madrid

A waterfall on the main square

Waterfall

Isn’t this Czech Lion?!

Main square

Some museum on the main square

Really a high speed train (-;

Almost summer

Coming close to Zaragoza

A small village in the mountains

Front of the train

Zaragoza train station. Empty, but beautiful place. Spaniards have big eyes (=a typical megalomania in everything)

Chairs

Inside fish market

For sale!

Cutting our cheese. Actually this was the place (town market) with the best cheese and ham we had in Spain.

Cheese

Sausages

Seafood

Bikes? In Spain? A wonder!

Roof of some church

Detail of the cathedral

Detail of decorations on the cathedral

Roof of the cathedral

A decoration? (-;

A typical Spanish bar

Newspapers in the shop’s window

Some shop street

Kamilka shopping

Once – the most popular thing to do after sleeping, eating, f*, and TV

Air conditioning

Marble is everywhere in Spain. Looks like somewhere near chemical factory, right?

The main square at night

One of the cathedrals

Front of some church

A water fountain

Closed market at night

Roof of one of the cathedrals at night

In La Latina quarter are even normal shops. Closed on Sunday..

Rastro is a Madrid’s open sky market where you can buy literally anything. Heaps of people are coming there, probably not some much to buy anything, but more to hang around.

Thousands of people

Green shoes

Some people come and try to sell any old garbage they find in their homes

Even paintings can be bought here

But these paintings will probably be of low quality

Artistic street

Throne

Sometimes you ask: What are these things good for?

African masks

Sometimes there is a large group people watching something…

(-;

Army shop

Kamča selecting some clothes

Necklaces

Grannies

I like this shop for sailors

Wanna cow?

A sensational machine!

Plaza de España

These are some pictures from a walk around Madrid. Temple of Debod is an old Egyptian temple relocated to Madrid – wikipeadia.

Temple of Debod

Temple of Debod

View to El Campo

Royal Palace

The sky looks like in El Greco’s paintings, right?

One of the buildings in Gran Vía

Some army thing we saw

Battle horses. Must be protected from public. (-;

A lamp in Royal Palace

Kamča

One of the houses in front of the Royal Palace

View through a gate in Plaza Mayor

I love those!

This doesn’t look like Sunday evening in Olomouc (-;

Tío Pepe – actually, I don’t like that drink…

Madrid town hall

Centre of Spain (for Spaniards = centre of the Universe)

And this is a proof Kamča was there

Kamča

Town hall

Sol

Atomic prices! (-;

Cobeña

These are the first pictures from the vacation in Spain. There are pictures at first from Barajas airport and then from Cobeña, a small village outside of Madrid where lives my cousin with her boyfriend Natty. During the time we were there, there was a fiesta of the village, basically a week when nobody works and just does party. Well, actually, do you really expect anybody to work in Spain? (-;

Access to the terminal

Ceiling

Corner

Kamča, the traveller

View to the check-out area

Kamča

A public tractor cannot be missed on any village event

Feria de pueblo

Feria de pueblo

A stork nest on the roof of the church

(-;

Rain

A mess from the trees

Rainbow

Natty and Dita

Train

The another day we had to leave Morroco and Spain. We left Fes really early in the morning to Tangier. From Tangier, we took a ferry to Tarifa. From Tarifa we took a bus to Algeciras. From Algeciras we took a bus to Málaga. We left Fes at 6 AM, and arrived to Málaga at 9 PM. Quite a long journey.

The ferry from Tangier to Tarifa

In Málaga we took one day off just haging out. And the next day we took a bullet train to Madrid, and plane to Prague.

Leaving the ferry

These Spaniards have indeed nice villages

Inside the train

Train station Puerta de Atocha in Madrid

In a cafeteria in Madrid

Mp3 powered music instrument in metro.

Línea 1 de metro in Madrid

Línea 8 de metro in Madrid

Airport Barajas

Does anybody know how to handle this machine? (dashboard of tunnel to plain)

Panorama of Málaga

So the next few pictures are from the old Moorish castle.

Bellow the castle at the old Roman theatre.

View on the main promenade

The main promenade

Corrida de torros de Málaga. Bull fighting arena.

Going up to the castle

Walls

Paradise inside

Roofs

An old boat in the port

After Madrid we continued in the bullet train to Málaga. We went 340km/h which is an unbelievable speed for somebody who is used to czech railways, a company who thinks that Italian shit Pendolino is a train from heaven. In the speed well over 300km/h the train even didn’t move. If we wouldn’t have windows, we wouldn’t think that we are on the way. Even the speed didn’t look that fast until you passed something that was really close. Like a station, there you could see what’s going on. Just great.

The bullet train. Kačenka…

The speed was just unbelievable!

Some pictures are shot by Tomáš (http://mocicka.net/ – he should make some web site, I tell it all the time! [-; ), usually those who start with underscore. Have a look at his small gallery at flickr.

The place where lives my cousin

Cousin’s house. We were on the very top barrels one night… [-;

Spaniards are really crazy. They don’t even have more constructions than France, UK and Germany together, but they also gut everything inside the buildings, keep the walls, and rebuild it from new.

On sunday we were watching formula 1

We were watching formula1. And Hamilton won! Yes! F*** Ferrari

Waiting for chestnut.

Port

Typical Spanish cities nowadays are surprisingly quite clean. However, mostly their houses are just rubbish. I’m not talking only about the quality, but also the facades are dirty, but you know what? It doesn’t matter in some situations. Like in the next picture.

Near my cousin’s house

Do you think that he helps you?

Very African. Or did I say Spanish? [-;

Typical Spanish

Yes, month is gone, so it’s the right time for new pictures. Me, and Tomáš went to Spain and Morocco last month, so this is the series that will show where we were.

Thomas making drinks. He is really good in partying.

The first stop was Madrid. We stayed at Thomas’ place. Yes, at the party man! At the piece of French house furniture! We saw each other after a half year when we met in Paris, and stayed together at Patrick’s parents.

Thomas and Zoya

But sadly, Thomas had to go to Germany, so we just met, and made one small party in his flat. But wait, it was something! There was some Absinth. Thomas’ favourite drink. Again! That was a fun! We sad lot of bad things about Spaniards, we complained about them a lot… [-; We drunk quite a few drinks… Nice evening…

I was also pouring and drinking this evil drink

Two witches in metro!

Metro Madrid, un mundo differente. We caught 3 witches now!

Metro Madrid

I also met my cousin Dita who almost moved from sunny Andalucia to Madrid.

A small lunch (maybe breakfast). Bocadillo de calamares. And beer, of course. Me and Dita (she looks like a Spanish girl now…). Both hangovered…

Ahhh, reminds me the old times. El Tigre completely, but completely full

This post is little bit late, but I just wanted to put some pictures here. So it will be all about my birthday party which was also the last party. It was bit small one, but because of not that many people come, I enjoyed it even more. So thanks to everyone who came!

Apparently Fillipa likes smoking shisha! She bought one in Marocco as well

The main thing in the party was smoking my new shisha.

My new shisha

Also Thorsten was smoking

Marcin smoking

We (me and Filippa) were cooking enchiladas.

Enchiladas

Thorsten and Marcin

Carmen and Thorsten

Casandra came when the party was almost over

But she gave me great present!

League cups at Edificio de Telecomunicacion

After long years, Real Madrid finally has won the title in la liga. The previous titles went to Catalunya to Barça. I have to say that I’m not really fan of Real, but I think it’s good that they won the league when I’m here. Good thing was that the decision was made in the last game of the season. Bit more tension in the air…

Crowd going in Calle de Alcala to Plaza de Cibeles

We went to watch the game to O’Neill, Irish bar in the centre. Most of the game I even didn’t think that Real will gain the game, and thus the league title. Mallorca was playing really good. Mallorca’s defense was really good, and Real’s one was quite bad. But they put all the energy to attack the opponent’s gate. Mallorca didn’t show much in the game forward, but when they were attacking, they were really dangerous. But finally 10 minutes before the end shot some goals, and won. Final score 3:1.

Plaza de Cibeles from distance

Marcin

After the game we went to Plaza de Cibeles to see the players. When I was there, I was thinking that it will be a little bit wilder. You know, Spanish are supposed to have hot blood… [-; But it turned out, that we were not in the center. But Petr told me next day that there were bottles flying in the air, and pissed police, and that they had to run to escape them… [-; (Read very aggressive police…). Maybe they called some additional troops from Barcelona. [-; Me and Marcin, we have seen only crows pushing, and bit of panic in the crowd. We also have seen just few players on the fountain. Among them Raúl dressing up the statue of Cybele to the scarf of Real.

Raul dressing up the statue of Cibeles

Camera and the crowd

Some people were SOOOO happy

My brother visited me for about a week in Madrid, and I have to put here some pictures. Also if you were looking at TV – channel TVE1 – I was there! On sunday 20.5. we randomly met Thorsten, and his sister Bettina at Plaza Mayor, and we made a small picnic there – just sandwiches with calamares. At that time there was some celebration of Madrid pork, so some guys did an interview with us, and also gave us this cerdo madrileño. Anyway there are some pictures here:

Puerta del Sol

Picnic on Plaza Mayor

Thorsten with Cerdo Madrileño con garbanzos

Bettina with Thorsten

Royal’s palace

Main cathedral in Madrid

Pepa, me, and Thorsten

Gran Vía – the main street in Madrid

Edificio de Metropolis

Thorsten, me, and Pepa on Calle de Alcalá in front of the Bank of Spain

The main post office in Madrid

Thorsten was cheating, so must be beaten! [-;

If you don’t know what tapas are, you are missing a lot! They are snacks served with drinks in Spanish bars. It’s really nice food, usually some small sandwiches, pieces of seafood, croquettes, potatoes with some sauce, olives, tortilla de patatas, and many more. Tapas are usually served between 9PM and midnight, and sometimes free, sometimes not. But they are usually quite cheap dinner (and sometimes free [-;). Sometimes you can also see the name reción which are tapas, but in bigger amount, and they are paid.

I also have to say, that I quite like food in Spain. There is lot of sea products which I can eat every day at every occasion. Also we have free food in school as encouragement for all Erasmus students to come to school, and I cannot complain in cafeteria in school since it’s free. The only complain is that Spanish food is swimming in the oil. I like that they use lot of olive oil; however not all the time. And I really don’t understand why do they pour so much oil to foods. Maybe they think that it’s such healthy thing, as my Portuguese friend was trying to explain me. I don’t trust it. It’s just oil…

Well, why am I talking about food now? Last week visited me my brother Pepa, and also Thorsten’s sister Bettina, so we went couple of times to eat in the city which is really nice experience. I post pictures from tapas restaurant close to Calle de Huertas, but I cannot recommend it since they tried to rip us off. I also include pictures from Galician restaurant which is excellent, and is located also in Calle de Huertas. Also one more thing not common for me as person from the central Europe is that in Madrid you have to wait sometimes before restaurant before you can come in, and get the food. Once we were waiting about one hour to get food. Well, we were drinking beer, so it didn’t matter so much, but you should be prepared anyway. But anyway as we say en Madrid se come de puta madre… [-;

Bettina, Pepa, and me in front of this Galician restaurant

Mussels I

Mussels II.

Me, Pepa, and Bettina

Tapas – fish at the bottom, and small sendwiches on the right side, and some salad.

My brother is on vacations in Madrid, so we went to small trip to Aranjuez.

Palacio Real de Aranjuez supposed to be the spanish Versailles. But this attempt has failed. Not because of spanish king didn’t want to, but because of lack of money. Link to English wikipedia and Spanish wikipedia. The best thing about the palace are the gardens, and the fountains. The palace itself is little bit under reconstruction, and not many of its rooms are accessible to the public.

There is really lot of beautiful fountains

But only some of them have water, not like the previous one…

Queen’s bed. You should know that she was nymphomaniac, so you can imagine…

So me, my brother, and my friend Martina, we took the cercanías train on saturday, and headed south. After one hour we got off, and could enjoy the place. There is not much to see except the palace, and the gardens, but we took it easy after a bit wilder Friday’s night…

It was so hot, so some of us had to keep cooling heads…

And to saturday belongs also Saturday’s lunch…

And god of wine at the end…

The rest of the pictures is here

San Isidro is patron of Madrid, and this tuesday (15.5.) we celebrated him here. Me, and some friends, we went to Parque de San Isidro to hang out. Some pictures are bellow, the rest HERE.

Botellón

Shoppiiiiiing

Somebody always need to make new make-up… [-;

In Metro

Cuenca is small regional capital about two hours on the south-east of Madrid. This city is small, but really impressionable. I was planning this trip long time. Most of Spaniards would tell you that it’s too small to go there… Well, we had something to do whole afternoon, so I can’t complain that it’s small town… And I have to say I liked it more than for example Toledo. Cuenca has also been declared as a part of UNESCO world heritage.

Finally I went there last weekend with Caroline, Thorsten, and Carmen. We departed at 12 from Madrid. Bit late because me, and Caroline, we of course couldn’t wake up after Friday. Thorsten with Carmen were supposed to go one hour sooner, but they couldn’t fit to the bus, so that was a bad luck. (and good for us, so we could go together).

The most spectacular in Cuenca are hanging houses (casas congeladas). They are several, up to seven floor tall housing growing up directly from the rock. They are not that impressionante if you don’t think about them in the context of surrounding nature, and the rock, and that’s really great. These houses were built in the 14th century. Some of them were used as the summer residence for the royal family.

So photos as usually:

Our crew – Thorsten, Carmen, and Caroline

Town hall

Cafe – Thorsten’s favourite thing to do [-;

Did you know that they don’t have ants in France?

There was lot of cats

Cathedral

Like Japanese photographers…

Roof in some church

All the pictures are HERE on stromecek.

I forget to mention it. For everybody who knows Czech, there is my article about Easter in Málaga at net magazine Hedvábná stezka.

Yesterday we went to Kapital, one of the biggest discos in Madrid. I’m not really disco fan, but this was really cool, and I enjoyed it. 7-floor building full of tuc-tuc-tuc… [-; Ok, so better some photos…

Me and Kristin (party girl… [-;)

Dreaming Esteban….

The rest of the pictures are HERE

Let’s celebrate, we have new roommate! French girl Caroline. And also we will make an invitation party this Friday, so if you are coming over, drop me few lines…

So Caroline is coming from Marseilles, and will spend two months in Madrid doing her internship in Eurocopter. She wakes up very, very early in the morning, so she doesn’t want to party during the week, but she has promised to hang out the whole weekends… [-;

This Tuesday left my roommate Sophie. She came back to Paris to work on her thesis. We miss her so much! You know, it’s really sad when somebody is leaving. Just the process when you see the person, and you don’t know when you see her again. So I wish her good luck, and hope to see her soon!

So on Monday we made goodbye party in Calle de Huertas. At first I went to visit Sophie how is she doing (sleeping) in library in Museo de Arte de Reina Sofia, and also I went to read some books about Schiele and Kokoschka. This library is really excellent for the art books. I even found one book about Czech arts from twentieth and thirties (Sophie even has it at home). And what more. When we were about to leave the library, I randomly met one Czech girl, or better said she met me – her name is Maruška, and she studies arts at Universidad Complutense. The thing was that I was speaking Spanish with really Czech accent, so she recognized me. So this time it was good to have some accent! [-;

Then we continued to eat tapas, and also to drink some cañas. We got really lucky, since we found new bar which had really excelent tapas. Bread with something – cheese, ham, and seafood. And seafood is what I really love. I know that some people, specially Maruška couldn’t look at it, but that’s not my case, and I can eat anything from sea anytime! Maruška also got very lucky with seafood, because when she asked for some more tapas, she got calamares, but at least she got to know them. At the end of evening we even got some cañas for free. And even later gin and tonic at home finished everything… So very good one…

And this time enjoy only one picture:

It had to happen once. Party in school. Lot of drunkards from computer science went to school, even those who usually won’t come, and all of us came to enjoy Sun, paella, beer, sangria, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol…

All of us 1 – me, Tobias, Frank, Daniel, Birgit, Casandra

All of us 2 – Tobias, Frank, Thorsten, Birgit, and Daniel

Even some Spaniards came. That’s right, not only Erasmus students do party!

Tobias and Frank

Frank excited from techno music.

Casandra was smoking so much that she forgot to light the cigarette…
Poor girl…

Me with some random Spanish guy who wanted to have photo with me (Gustavo)
I’m so popular here!!! [-;

School didn’t trust us, they don’t think we are nice people, so they better hired guards. Looks like next year there will be army around.

But maybe they knew what they were doing. What would happen without guards if this nice drunk couple would do something unexpected?

Anyway all pictures are as usually here on stromecek.

On sunday we made a small picnic in the “forest” (in summer desert) Casa de Campo.

So enjoy the photos. The rest is here on stromecek as usually.

All girls together – Birgit, Carmen, Ciel, Jessica, and Steffi

Marcin and Thorsten

From left: Marcin, Birgit, Thorsten, and Carmen

On monday I rushed from Saarbrucken directly to Málaga to visit my cousin Dita. The flight actually was horrible. All the time it was ok, but I have never experienced such steep landing. The pilot went really straight down. We were landing thru mountains – this is not usual direction of landing in Málaga. I experienced many fall downs, and shaking which is not really nice. But the worst was when probably some passenger tried to stand up, and steward shouted to us that we should stay seated, that it’s gonna be dangerous. Well, at this moment, I just imagined what the hell is gonna happen? I was glad to be on the land.

Anyway – all the bad things were already over, and I met with my cousin Dita, and his boyfriend Nat. I have seen lot of things, but what more – I enjoyed doing nothing. And this is important! Sometimes you just have to do nothing. Dunno how to explain it, but you will hopefully understand. When man just can wake up whenever he wants. When I can slowly move out of my bed. When I don’t have to rush anywhere. When everything what I am doing is being done slowly, and without that stress which follows us at home. This is nice face of Spain. Even busy capital Madrid is like that. (Translation for all born in central europe: people don’t care about anything, you just have to wait like idiot everywhere on everything, and it takes ages, people are very slow, buses are going whenever driver wakes up to start the bus, and indeed, there much more!!! [[-; )

Dita and Nat

Nat gave me great guided tour around Málaga center. I have seen all the important things there – old Moorish castle Alcazaba and Gibralfaro. Alcazaba is the older Moorish castle, but because it was not strong enough, they built a new one little bit higher which is called Gibralfaro. Very nice, and very different from Czech castles. The inside part is full of gardens, and places where you can rest. Just have a look at pics.

Paradise inside the fortress

View from Gibralfago to Alcazaba

Gardens in Gibralfaro

Water channel in the castle

More info at English wikipedia and even more at Spanish wikipedia

Pictures HERE

I have to say I really enjoyed Málaga.

Some pictures

Sea side of Málaga

Dita and Nat

This park is famous sunday walking place in Madrid. So this sunday we finally made a short walk to there. Retiro the biggest park in Madrid. It covers area about 1.4 km², and is right behind Museo del Prado. It was founded between year 1630 and 1640 as a garden for monastery. Later it has been converted to the public park. In the middle of the park, there is interesting artificial lake – Estanque de las Campanillas You can also hire boat there, but with that many people there it can’t be fun.

All pictures can be found :: HERE ::

Well, so you might think that I just travel here in Spain. Not true, not true [-;

This was waiting for us… [-;

Me and Zuzka

Some random girls [-;

Marcin (my roommate, and he usually doesn’t smoke neither… [-; ) with Zuzana

Marcin a Hanka

On the way home – me waiting on Metro in Tribunal

All pictures :: HERE ::

Ok, so another quick catch-up. Pavla visited me in Madrid, and there are some pictures from El Escorial – monastery couple of kilometers behind Madrid. El Escorial is really beautiful place, specially when you count the surrounding mountains. So there are some pics.

I haven’t written anything long time, so I have to catch up. The first will be few pictures from bull fight. I visited with Pavla and Marcin Corrida de torros in Ventas in Madrid. This was the first time I saw it, and before I had had quite bad opinion on this. Specially because I have seen some really ugly things what Spaniards are doing with bulls. I better don’t talk about that, but I have to say that my negative point of view changed a little bit.

This change was specially because of one old afficionado. We met this old guy in the stadium, and he explained us all the stuff about corrida. I really liked the way he was talking about the fighting. It was talk of a man who is real enthusiast. He explained us all from how the bulls are grown to their death. The feeling is just unexplainable.

Interesting thing is that bulls are being grown in the free nature, they don’t have any special training. They are fed by just natural grass, and they should run a lot to be strong. The decision if the bull is good enough for corrida is being made according to mother, and bulls she gave birth to before. There are also referees who can disqualify the bull to be too weak. This might happen, and actually it happened once, but the bull was not disqualified.

In every fight act 6 bulls and 6 torreros. Torrero is the main protagonist, and he is also dancing with bulls. At the end he kills the bull. He is supposed to kill him with sword through hole in backbone to hearth (here he is called matador). There are also banderilleros who plays with the bulls, guys on the horses.

Anyway corrida is very popular, but depends on who is the torrero. I was in the game where was no famous or really good torrero. So the stadium was quite empty, but when there is somebody famous, the game is sold out. Also I should note that corrida is no competition. It’s only performance, so everybody is trying to be elegant.

The old guy also admited that lot of people might not like it. Even king’s family is divided. King and his daughter like corrida, but his wife and son don’t. He told us that king come always three times a year (maybe more, but three times for sure), and he sits in his part of auditorium once, and twice in the first row.

So some pictures as always.

This weekend I accidentally got to Valencia once more. But this one it was little bit different than my previous visit last week. This time I went to Valencia with bus from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. They are unlike UPM doing some trips for the students. The trip was just for one day just to see las Fallas.

We were about to meet at 7:00 at Real Madrid stadium Santiago Barnabeu to leave Madrid, but the bus finally left at 8:00. Well, delays are Spanish way of life, but normally it doesn’t exceed half hour. Maybe it was because 7:00 in the morning is really cruel time in Madrid, like 5:00 in Prague.

We arrived at 1:00 to Valencia a with group of friends we headed directly to mascleta. Mascleta was bit disapointment this time because Valencia was so crowded that we couldn’t make it to the town hall square, but just to the beginning. So we saw almost nothing, and what more, we haven’t heard anything. Too bad, we should have been faster. A lot. This is the rule.

Anyway then we decided to go to beach, because Marcin and Michal wanted to swim. Well, why not, but I still think that it was too cold for it. So we continued to some bus stop. On the way we saw some Fallas.

Then surprise happened. Pepe called me. Pepe is from Valencia, and was last year in Prague as Erasmus student. I was really excited, because I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and I couldn’t see him last weekend. Really great to see old friends. So I left the group from Madrid, and continued with Pepe and his girlfriend Paula.

Pepe wanted to show me the centre, but I think he was a little bit disappointed that I saw almost everything last weekend. But anyway it was better to see him than the town [-; We saw some of the best, and most important Fallas. We went to beach (so I missed only swimming), to the port. Then we went to eat tapas to one bar. And then to hang out in the town…

We have seen some other Fallas. We saw one more mascleta with fireworks at one of the Fallas.

And at the end one more surprise. There were all Spaniards who went to Prague last year to Erasmus. That was really nice. We have spent some time talking at the bank of Turia around botellon. At the end of the night there was great final fireworks. Then we walked around night town.

During the day we have also seen ofrenda which is bringing flowers to virgin. There is lot of traditionally dressed ladies around the town, which bring flowers in front of the catedral.

I should give you small lesson about some Spanish terms: un botellon is when people are going to drink in the street. You just buy a bottle (botella) of some alcohol, and if you want, you can buy some soft drink to mix it. However, soft drink is voluntary.. [-; And of course, this is illegal by the law here, but everybody does it.

So there is finally the final part of my trip to Valencia. So what was I excited so much about? It was Ciudad de los artes y de la ciencia. This is just amazing complex of buildings in the Ciudad de les artes y de la ciencia. This is the complex of modern buildings where are situated museum of arts, museum of science, cinema, and sea aquarium. Some buildings are still under construction, but when it will be finished, it will be really great. I would say so far that this is the most impressible building I have ever seen. Really beautiful. The only place with such a modern architecture I have seen so far, and is similar to the size is museum in Los Angeles – Getty Center, but this is 100% better. I don’t say that Getty Center is bad, but this is much nicer.

The whole complex has been designed by Spanish architects Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela. Beutiful is not only the complex, but also dried river bed Turia which has been converted to one nice park.

I should provide also traditionally links to my photos: Ciudad de les Artes y Ciencia

So I should provide some link if you want to know some more:

• Official site
• English wikipedia – but there is almost nothing
• Spanish wikipedia – much better, but still not much

L’Hemisfèric is currently IMAX cinema

El Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe is science museum mostly for the kids, but I had a lot of fun there [-;

L'Oceanogràfic is the oceanographic musum, and aquarium. I was not inside - I don't really want to pay €20 for entry...

El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía is the opera house and arts centre.

L'Umbracle is really nice walkway

Some bridge

So that was Ciudad de les Artes y Ciencia. Not move on a little bit to the next day. There was interesting thing - mascleta - fireworks. Valencians are a little bit crazy. They make fireworks during the day. The whole world makes it at night, so colours are better, but they don't. They enjoy lot of noise. Well, not a lot, you cannot hear after it. This event happens every day at 14:00 in the townhall square before las Fallas. I better show some pictures. Also link to wikipedia site, and some links to youtube: [1], [2], [3].