Oranges Are The Only Fruit

Before I came to Valencia in January, I had visions of wandering through scented orange groves and eating a healthy diet of tomato salad, fish, locally-produced extra-virgin olive oil, cheap wine and the occasional tapas.

So far I have managed to do the first, as you can see from the photo below:

Orange trees are everywhere in this region - we passed groves of them on the train to Gandia; they line the city streets and squares, and the markets are full of their fruit.

Last weekend I went to stay with a Spanish friend in Valencia, and she squeezed local oranges to make juice for breakfast.

I'm still waiting to have my tomato salad, although at least there was some raw tomato mixed with oregano and olive oil to spread over the toast with local ham that we ate with the orange juice..
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For lunch, we decided to try a tapas bar near the market. Great, I thought, some nice little nibbles.

This was our first starter, a sharing plate of calamares (squid).

After that came this dish of pork with potatoes:

followed by a plate of Morcilla de Burgos with onion and honey. Morcilla is a type of black pudding from the North of Spain. To be fair, we couldn't finish this.

In the evening we drove to watch the sun set over a beautiful lake called La Albufera. It's a very popular spot and the atmosphere was magical, with lots of people standing, sitting by the lake and just watching the sun go down.

After that we rounded the evening off with a typical Spanish drink called Horchata, which is made with tiger nuts and is drunk cold, accompanied by a type of doughnut called churros.

The next day the temperature reached 24 degrees, so we drove to the beach. I must say that I had found the beaches around Gandia and Valencia very built-up and rather soulless, so my friend took me to a quieter spot called Almarda, where we paddled. I had intended to go in the sea but it was just too cold.

Before I caught my train back to Gandia on Sunday evening, we stopped for a quick supper, which proved tricky as we were outside normal restaurant opening times. Luckily we found a chain called The Gourmet Burger and managed to order an Eco Burger each, served with sweet potato fries. It was so delicious that I didn't want to stop eating it long enough to take a photo, though I did manage to photograph the beers.

That's one good thing about metrication - at least the beers come in nice big glasses.

We go back to the UK a week on Sunday, and I'm determined to fit in a tomato salad at least once before I go. Definitely.