Travels

I'm so shocked that it's the end of October already. This month has flown by. Two weekends ago I went to Mallorca, and this weekend I got to go to Valencia. Both places where tons of fun and really interesting. Mallorca is the biggest island in Spain. It's right in the Mediterranean, so I got to lay on a beach in 70 degree weather in the middle of October. It was awesome. Here's some pictures from the trip.
There's a huge basilica in Mallorca. It was really cool because Mallorca is this little island and yet the basilica was one you would expect to see in a huge city. Valencia was a very cool city as well. I'm now planning on going back for the festival de las fallas. Each year in March all the neighborhoods in the city commissions a giant float. All the floats have a theme. Some are political, some historical, others are based on famous art/ novels/ movies/ people. A lot of them are supposed to be satirical.
We went to the Museo de las Fallas. Every year one of the smaller "muñecas" or dolls from the floats is "pardoned". The muñeca is put on display in the museo. There are also pictures of some of the best Fallas from over the years. The center piece of one of the most memorable fallas was a giant (20 foot) version of Michelangelo's David.

When we first arrived in Valencia, we had a few minutes to look around in the Mercado Central. It's huge and has something like 1,000 stalls. The fruit and cheese looked amazing and there was all kinds of interesting fish and meat for sale. I particularly liked this fish.
Another highlight of the trip was the visit to Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. This is the part of the city that houses Valencia's arts and sciences community. There's a science museum, an Aquarium and a theatre. The whole thing was designed by a famous Valencian architect. All the buildings are done in a super modern style, which usually I'm not a big fan of. But the scale of these buildings was just amazing (think along the lines of the Sydney Opera House).This picture doesn't actually capture it too well. The sun was so bright that day that I couldn't get a decent picture, but you get the general point.