The Australian Way April < valencia> - Qantas · With its worn ceramic tiling and paella pans serried in obedient ranks above the ... JOHNNY MARACAS Calle Caballeros 39. (96)

Hosting the 2007 America’s Cup has put the

wind back in Valencia’s sails.

CAMPAIGN SPAIN

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WORDS SALLY HOWARD

PHOTOGRAPHY NICOLE ROWNTREE

VALENCIA SPAIN

FOR MANY, VALENCIA is the Spain of fable. On a broad plain, patch-worked with orange groves and rice paddies, is the city where El Cid faced the Moors and communists battled Franco, the birthplace of paella and those ambassadorial Spanish citrus fruits. Valencia wears this rich history on its back like a multicoloured coat, from its battle-scarred walls to its wealth of well-preserved gothic architecture, with elements of baroque, Romanesque, renaissance, art deco and Moorish building styles.

Yet it’s increasingly difficult to view Spain’s mercantile third city solely through the haze of Spanish history. Valencia is also a Mediterranean port and in June this year hosts the 32nd America’s Cup sailing challenge. The Louis Vuitton challenger series starts this month, an event hailed as Valencia’s global coming-out party. As Barcelona and Bilbao before it,

La Ciudad de las Artes y de las Cièncias (City of

Arts and Sciences)

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Museo de las Cièncias PrÍncipe FelipeCity of Arts

and Sciences

Spain is the playground of Europe – life is about having paella pan-sized

helpings of fun... they call it la movida, a renaissance of life‘‘

VALENCIA SPAIN

Port America’s Cup

Valencia is in the grip of a cultural renaissance – answering Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and Barcelona’s Olympic Port with the futurist white curves of the City of Arts and Sciences and angular new builds of the Port America’s Cup, which scallop the deep blue waters and bruised magenta sunsets of the Med.

In Spain, Valencia is celebrated as a gracious host. Dubbed the “beach of Madrid” due to its popularity as a summertime getaway for the landlocked residents of the Spanish capital, Valencia is a notable Euro clubbing destination and the home of March’s Las Fallas – a five-day festival featuring fireworks and wax puppets.

The biggest annual party in a party-loving nation, Las Fallas is said to date from the 12th century, when Valencian furniture makers (still a key industry, along with ceramics and agriculture) set fire to wood shavings as an offering to patron saint Joseph, the “greatest carpenter of all”. These days the incendiary antics are of epic proportions, with two weeks of brass bands, feasting, corridas (bullfights), pyrotechnics and free-flowing beer.

Floods and war have been cruel to Valencia, but the city routinely picks itself up with enviable panache. In 1957 the Turia River burst its banks and flooded the city. General Franco’s subsequent – and brutal – flood management plan dammed the river mouth and left the city carved in two by an arid valley. The Valencians were determined to reclaim the space in style.

Today the remarkable Turia Gardens run the length of the city. With their squat olive groves, misting fountains, exotic flowerbeds and children’s playgrounds, the gardens are where Valencians come to play and exercise, and tourists, in their ever-increasing numbers, to stroll and gaze enviously on.

This country is the playground of Europe. In post-millennial Spain, with the iron rule of former dictator Franco receding into the dark annals of history, life is about having fun – and paella pan-sized helpings of it. Perhaps nowhere encapsulates this rebirth more than Valencia. Here they call it la movida, a renaissance of life. It would be hard to sum it up any better.

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SPAIN VALENCIA

RacÓ del Turia (below)

Restaurant Submarino de l’Oceanografic

EATLocal favourite dishes include: all I pebre (eels in a piquant sauce); impossibly more-ish papas (fried potato chips); horchata (a milk-like drink made from ground tigernut); arròs negre (a rice dish blackened with squid ink); and the divine agua de Valencia, an alcoholic cocktail of the freshly squeezed juice of local oranges with cava (Spanish sparkling wine) and Cointreau. But, of course, Valencia’s main culinary export is paella. Served with an emphasis on meat – chicken, rabbit or fish – the aromatic rice dish is the Valencian Sunday lunch and every Valencian mama whips up her own not-to-be-bettered recipe. Eat it in the middle of the day (the late Valencian lunch between 2pm and 5pm). Avoid paella joints with gaudy photography outside (these bespeak inferior frozen paella).

LA PEPICAEl Paseo Neptuno 6-8, La Playa de las Arenas. (96) 371 0366. lapepica.comWith its worn ceramic tiling and paella pans serried in

obedient ranks above the scurrying waiters, La Pepica remains as it was when Ernest Hemingway was a regular in the 1930s. Paella in all its forms, including fresh lobster.

RACÓ DEL TURIACarrier Ciscar 10.(96) 395 1525. Authentic, intimate and good for fresh seafood paella.

LA SUCURSALGuillém de Castro 118. (96) 374 6665.With its razor-sharp minimalist decor and innovative cuisine,

La Sucursal is perfectly suited to its location within the Instituto Valencia de Arte Moderno (IVAM). Typical dishes include cauliflower mousse with shellfish air and carpaccio of deer. Also a degustation menu.

RESTAURANT SUBMARINO DE L’OCEANOGRAFICCity of Arts and Sciences, Junta de Murs I Valls. (96) 197 5565.Fish is the main draw at this slick concept restaurant at the Arts and Sciences aquarium. Shoals of shiny silver sardines swim in a 360º fish tank/

wallpaper feature as you dine on their marine friends, from fresh oysters dressed with olive oil to octopus mosaic.

LOS PATOSCalle del Mar 28. (96) 392 1522.Lunch on a hearty menu del dia (menu of the day) in this tiny townhouse with the ambience of a ship galley. Fresh salad and catch of the day for €12 ($20).

CA’SENTOCalle Méndez Nuñes 17. (96) 330 1775.

La Pepica

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VALENCIA SPAIN

Las Animas

Catedral Seu, Plaza de la Reina

Horchata

The family operation of Ferran Adrià-trained superchef Raúl Aleixandre, Ca’Sento’s seven tables are the most sought-after in the city. Dishes use the highest quality ingredients with a focus on rice and delicate fish stews. The restaurant’s remote spot belies its popularity. Take a taxi (and your credit card).

HORCHATERIASNo trip to Valencia would be complete without sampling an early-evening horchata. Made from ground tigernut seasoned with cinnamon, horchata has its roots in Moorish Valencia. Drink it with the traditional accompaniment of doughy fried fartons (elongated doughnuts) in one of Valencia’s famous horchaterias. Avenida de la Horchata is a street of horchaterias in the suburbs.

HORCHATERIA EL SIGLO 11 Plaça Santa Catalina.(96) 391 8466.If you like it strong, sweet and served with a side of horchata ice-cream.

HORCHATERIA DE SANTA CATALINA Plaza Santa Catalina.(96) 391 2379.For a less intense flavour.

NIGHTLIFEValencians, as all Spaniards, are passionate advocates of a sleepless night out on the town and la marcha (nightlife) in Valencia is particularly notorious – although it has calmed since its 1980s heyday, when revellers would club for

48 continuous hours every weekend. Misbehaviour begins late, so don’t even think of walking into a bar before 10pm or a club before 2am. In the cooler months, head first to the bohemian bars of Barrio del Carmen; in summer to the beachfront bars of Playa de la Malvarrosa.

CAFE DE BOUSCalle Xativa 1, Plaza de Toros de Valencia. (96) 351 1850.Valencians remain resolutely pro-bullfighting, despite the vocal disapproval of nearby Barcelona. Wrestle with your own ethics over a beer in this trendy chill-out bar, located on the second floor of the

fabulous 19th-century Plaza de Toros (bullring) with a view over its caramel dust. The phone number given is for the bullring’s museum nearby.

CAFE DE LAS HORASCalle del Conde de Almódovar 1. (96) 391 7336. A baroque bar dripping with ornaments and wall hangings, offering a relaxed soundtrack and one of the best agua de Valencias in town.

LA INDIANACalle San Vicente Martir 95. (96) 384 5051.No-punches-pulled Spanish nightclubbing at its best. Funky and commercial house music and Latino-tinged beats served up to scantily-clad Spaniards from 12am-6am.

CAFÉ MADRIDCalle de la Abadía de San Martín 10.(96) 385 0330.For two generations, Café Madrid has fed and watered Valencia’s artists and poets. It’s said the first agua de Valencia was mixed here. Now a favourite with 20- and 30-somethings, but its louche spirit endures.

JOHNNY MARACASCalle Caballeros 39. (96) 395 266.Salsa, flamenco, mojitos, a fish-tank bar and a novelty toilet, this quirky bar is a big draw for a glamorous crowd.

LAS ANIMASPizarro 31. (96) 394 2948.This power-cut dark, modern bar enlivens its clientele with a nautical-cum-spaceship decor and a healthy array of whiskies and sherries.



VALENCIA SPAIN

The modernist Estacio del Nord railway station is next to the Plaza de Toros

Go Gregorian at Iglesia del Patriarca

DO NEW VALENCIALA CIUDAD DE LAS ARTES Y DE LAS CIÈNCIASAutopista de Saler. (90) 210 0031.www.cac.esThe City of Arts and Sciences was billed as the largest urban complex in Europe for cultural, educational and leisure expansion – and the PR puff isn’t too far off the mark. Set in a 38ha site to the south of the city (in the former mouth of the Turia River), La Ciudad consists of four centres: the eye-shaped L’Hèmisferic, which is devoted to space exploration, with a laser show and IMAX screen; the Museo de Las Cièncias Príncipe Felipe, a science museum with exhibits as diverse as stuffed Siamese pigs, egg incubators

and the Spanish America’s Cup boat; l’Oceanogràfic’s lagoons and aquariums with exotic fish and waterfowl; and the latest addition, the Palau de les Artes Reina Sofía, an auditorium complex with an organic/futuristic Santiago Calatrava design that is reminiscent of an ocean liner.

PORT AMERICA’S CUP Valencia won the bid to host the 2007 America’s Cup, the world’s most prestigious sailing regatta, in 2003. The America’s Cup has brought the city to the sea with a complete transformation of the inner harbour of the Port of Valencia. Formerly a desolate industrial strip, the area now boasts new restaurants, sharp office blocks, harbourside bars and a fleet of spectator boats.

DO OLD VALENCIACATEDRAL SEUPlaza de la Reina. (96) 391 8127.Built on the site of a destroyed mosque in 1262, for centuries Valencia’s cathedral was famous for its claim to possess the Holy Grail. With this summer’s unveiling of a rediscovered renaissance fresco (hidden for centuries beneath a baroque altarpiece and recently rediscovered thanks to a trapped pigeon’s cooing), there’s even more for the cathedral to crow about. Trace the history of the city through the many styles evident here: mainly gothic but also romanesque and baroque.

PLAZA DE LA ALMOINAPlaza de la Almoina.(96) 394 1417.When San Vicente Jail was demolished in 1985, this plaza began turning up its secrets, from a Roman city forum to a Visigoth funeral chapel and Arab baths. A new archaeology museum exhibits the finds to startling effect, re-erecting Roman columns on their original sites (stretching up above street level in glass

cases) and creating a transparent pool in the centre of the plaza with views down to the public square.

EL MUSEO DE LAS FALLASPlaza de Monteolivete 4. (96) 352 5478.Each year since 1934, the Valencians have voted to spare one of their intricately worked wax puppets from the Fallas festival flames. This endearing museum is the result, a remarkable record of the country’s changing preoccupations – from the buckled working men of the 1940s to the exaggerated fantasy figures of the newly liberated 1970s.

MUSEO NACIONAL DE CERÁMICACalle Poeta Querol 2. (96) 351 6392.With its fabulously cake-like baroque exterior, the handsome 18th-century former Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas now houses the National Ceramic Museum, Spain’s leading collection of ceramics, behind Ignacio Vergara’s sumptuously decorated alabaster doorway.



VALENCIA SPAIN

TIPSAll of Valencia’s museums and galleries are free on Saturday evenings and Sundays. Make sure you visit Iglesia del Patriarca for the Gregorian chant, sung daily, as it has been for 400 years, by monks clad in 16th-century-style robes.

SHOPThe grand 1920s Mercado Central on the Plaza del Mercado in the heart of Valencia makes shopping for basic foodstuffs a real treat. Domed by a stained-glass ceiling, the market is a riot of stalls punting wares as various as fruits, saffron, strung-up chickens and suitcase-sized packs of paella rice to haggling locals. Another market, the Mercado de Colón, is a modern extravaganza

housing cafes and fine food shops; or try the quirky open-air lace, silver and ceramics market in Plaza Redonda, where women sit knitting in the lazy summer heat. Seekout more of Valencia’s famous pottery and handicrafts at Nela (Calle San Vicente 2, 96 392 3023) and Taller Artesania Yuste (Plaza del Miracle del Mocadoret 5, 96 371 8713). For mainstream, visit Spanish department store El Corte Inglés, Callé Colon, Calle Don Juan de Austria and Plaza de Ayuntamiento. For cutting-edge fashion, Tonuca (Calle Felix Pizcueta 20, 96 394 0555) is the ready-to-wear brand of celebrated local designer Tonuca Belloch-Burguera. For something a little different, Maison Parfum (Carrer Conde de Salvatierra

25, 96 394 0692) is a funky perfume shop with an interior reminiscent of a high-class spa offering daring scents such as essence of cut grass; and the fine chocolate shop Xocoa (San Vicente 7, 96 351 7739) sells devilry such as thyme-flavoured chocolate bonbons and candied, chocolate-dipped Valencia orange slices.

STAYHOLIDAY INN VALENCIAAlameda 38. (96) 303 2100. www.valencia.holiday-inn.comIdeally placed for both La Ciudad de las Artes y de las Cièncias and Valencia’s Old Town centre, Holiday Inn Valencia is the brand at its best, with crisp modern

interiors and no-nonsense service. Double rooms from €136 ($226).

LAS ARENAS BALNEARIO RESORTCalle Eugenia Vines 22-24.(96) 312 0600. www.hotel-lasarenas.comThis kitsch megalith of a beach hotel is just the ticket for the travelling jetset. Palm trees decorate a vast foyer, super-efficient staff sweep around in communications headsets and a new spa offers primping and prodding with a wraparound sea view. Double rooms from €316 ($525).

HOTEL NEPTUNOPaseo de Neptuno 2. (96) 356 7777. www.hotelneptunovalencia.comA boutique hotel with bags of character – pop art in the foyer, oatmeal soft furnishings, and suits with private jacuzzi decks. Double rooms from €120 ($200). �

For more information about Valencia visit www.turisvalencia.es

ELEVEN of the world’s fastest sailing boats compete in the America’s Cup preliminaries, the Louis Vuitton Cup

round robins (April 16-May 7), for four semifinal places (May 14-25). Two teams make the final phase (June 1-12). The winner then takes on defending champion Alinghi (Switzerland) in the 32nd America’s Cup. The LV Cup winner has won four out of six challenges since the trophy was awarded. Previously, the defender had been unbeaten in America’s Cup racing for 132 years. America’s Cup, June 23-July 7. www.louisvuitton.com; americascup.com

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2007 AMERICA’S CUP

Maison Parfum

Xocoa

Valencians out with the lights,

Calle de San Fernando


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The Australian Way April < valencia> - Qantas · With its worn ceramic tiling and paella pans serried in obedient ranks above the ... JOHNNY MARACAS Calle Caballeros 39. (96)