We slept in the next morning, and then headed south again, this time with Valencia as our destination. But we took a slight detour inland from the coastal flats up through limestone hills covered with dry scrub brush. After a long winding drive up and up in elevation, the incredible walled city of Morella came into view. A small fortress atop the hill, with city buildings surrounding it down the hillside, all enclosed within a fully-intact stone wall that has been perfectly maintained since medieval times. Apparently this is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in Spain. It was amazing to see, and also a nice drive through the sparse countryside. We stopped at the viewpoints and took a lot of photos, but then had to move on to reach Valencia before dark. So our next route took us back down through the winding hills, and we soon emerged into a sea of orange trees, and then a sea of buildings - Valencia is a huge, spralling city.

Valencia proved to be the most difficult city to navigate yet! We spent an hour or so driving around the old town through a maze of even-more-than-impossibly-narrow streets trying to find our hotel. We finally gave up and parked, and walked into the lobby of the first hotel we saw and asked for directions. Turns out we were way off, but at least had our bearings now. We moved the car to a more central car park, and finally found the Hostal Antigua Morellana, a good value with "cheerful, tastefully-appointed rooms" that only revealed its back-alley location after we had shed the car and gotten more directions on foot from a homeless man in the street. And so it was time to relax and scope out the old town of Valencia a bit. The city is much more friendly on foot, and we enjoyed a wonderful walk to a restaurant recommended by the hotel for some paella valenciana. I especially enjoyed twisting the snails out of their shells - it all tasted like a nice home-cooked meal, and the waiter threw in some yummy lemon-ice slush drinks for dessert.

We slept in again the next morning (do you sense a theme here?), and I ran out to pick up some fresh pastries and coffee which we ate back at the hotel. Checked out, fetched our car (16.40 euros for one night of parking! Space is a premium in the old city center, so I guess it's worth whatever they charge), and had a much easier time getting out of the craziness than we did coming in. It wasn't a picnic, but soon we were cruising along the greenbelt towards the arts and sciences center. This is what we were here to see: recently built by the city (and designed by local architect Santiago Calatrava), this amazing series of buildings, plazas, and walkways is a site to behold. Never mind the "arts and sciences" that the buildings might contain, the structures themselves are the real attraction. The buildings are very organic in appearance, one looking like the belly of an upside-down whale, another like a bizarre mollusk, and another like a skeletal rib cage. And they are technically fantastic, especially the huge fin that arched improbably over the entire hemisphere of the arts palace - it looks like its only anchored at one end, but we suspect it's attached somewhere else just beyond your field of vision.

The buildings are surrounded by shallow pools of turquoise water, giving the whole complex a very cool impression. But the temperature was far from cool, so we had to take matters into our own hands and purchase some cold drinks from the vendors conveniently located in shady spots around the buildings. We read that this complex draws over 4 million visitors each year, second in Spain only to the Prado! I can see how the city's investment in eye-popping architecture has paid off, and it isn't even completed yet. It was truly unique and very fun to experience. We watched a couple of guys beginning the long monotonous task of sweeping the bottom of the long, wide pools, and were thankful to be on vacation!