The City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia

Recently, I visited a part of Valencia that is one of the biggest tourist destinations for the city. The City of Arts and Sciences is a huge complex filled with museums, music venues, an Imax theater, planetarium, and amazing architecture. Each building is amazing in it's own way, and even just going to the area to walk around is worth doing if you ever find yourself in Valencia.

After walking around a while, my friends and I went to the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum. The architecture of the building is supposed to resemble the skeleton of a whale, and has at least three levels of exhibits to explore. To enter, it costs about 6 euros for students with an ID or 8 euros for adults.

As far as museums go, this was one of my favorites. The whole museum is very interactive and keeps you entertained and informed the whole time. We spent two hours in just the first two exhibits alone because they took lots of interesting information and made them into fun activities. All of the exhibits varied a lot, with everything from new smart house technology to the European Space Agency, and from the benefits of using wood to a Star Trek exhibit.

The museum closed at 7, soon after we had explored almost all of the exhibits. So, when we walked outside to leave, all of the buildings were lit up beautifully. There are lots of other places at the City of Arts and Sciences I still have yet to see, but this museum was a good start and anyone who visits Valencia definitely needs to check it out.

My first days in Valencia

UPV and My First Day in Valencia

My first week in Valencia was packed with trying to figure everything out. I got to Valencia not knowing where I was going to live, what classes to take, or even where I was going to sleep that night. I only knew the names of the students from the University of Maryland and had spoken with them briefly about the trip.

I got to Valencia on Monday night. I didn't find a place to stay until around 8 or 9pm, after I got of the train and found a McDonald's with free wi-fi. With the help of my dad, and a piece of paper from the school with possible suggestions, I found a hotel called Hotel Sol Playa. Hotel Sol Playa was located right on the beach, I stayed there for two nights before finding a flat, and I took a picture of the view from my window.

The next day I had a meeting with an advisor at the Universidad

Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) and got a tour around campus. The campus is a lot smaller than the University of Maryland, so the tour basically consisted of

paddleball courts (looks like a cross between raquetball and tennis)

and rock climbing, the equivalent of a student union, and the center of campus with all the food and bookstores. I would say that from end to end, the campus only takes about ten minutes to walk, and it's a pretty nice walk when there are palm trees everywhere. After exploring the campus a little bit, I started my search for a place to live.

Finding a Flat

Finding a flat AFTER you get to where you are going to live for 6 months is a very stressful situation. The first day I was in Valencia, I set up two appointments to go see possible flats, but they both fell through. It was pretty discouraging, but the second day left me with some hope. On day two, I looked at three flats and finally settled on one near the main street of Calle de los Santos Justo y Pastor, with the help of my new friend Janelle who had an open room in her flat.

From what I have seen, most flats don't have any kind of central air. My flat only has a space heater in the main room, and definitely no air conditioning. We don't have a microwave, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a dryer, and our hot water only lasts for less than 10 minutes. This doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary for any of the exchange students living in Valencia, and now it is clear to me how most people in the United States can consume so much more energy than those in Europe.

Energy Consumption

In one of the classes I am taking at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, we compared energy consumption of different countries, and USA was far ahead of the rest of the world. Much of it has to do with us having to drive everywhere, but I can't imagine leaving lights on, having the air conditioning making stores unbearably cold in the summer, or constantly using products to make lives more convenient helps in our favor either. In Spain, most places do a lot of little things to save energy like in the hotel I stayed at, you had to leave your key card in place on the wall, so that when you left you couldn't accidently leave the lights on. Google has everything, so naturally it was easy for me to find a graph comparing the energy consumption of the United States to Spain, which is posted above.

After my first two weeks in Spain, I'm adjusting to the different lifestyle and learning new things everyday. I'll keep you posted!

Madrid: January 31, 2011

As soon as I got off the plane the culture shock hit me. I've never been out of the country before, let alone traveled anywhere by myself, and this was the first time I had ever been somewhere where I didn't speak the same language as the majority.

Somehow, I managed to find a bus from the airport to the train station, and once I got to the train station I put all 3 of my suitcases into a big locker and went to explore the city of Madrid. The flight wasn't really conducive to getting a full nights sleep so finding a cup of coffee was high on my priority list.

After I enjoyed a strong cup of cafe con leche and a croissant, I went to see what was around. I quickly figured out that almost all of the museums in Madrid are closed on Mondays, so, I went to the only museum that was open: the Reina Sofia Museum.

In case anyone was wondering, the Reina Sofia Museum is a relatively new museum that was founded in 1992 and is named after Queen Sofia of Spain, according to the lovely, super short, Wikipedia article. A lot of the art exhibited were works by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. One of Picasso's most famous paintings, Guernica, finally found a permanent home at this museum after being banned from the entire country of Spain during Franco's Era from 1939-1975.

One of the most humbling exhibitions at the museum was a room full of 150 front page newspapers articles from around the world the day after September 11Th happened. Maybe it was because I'm an American but it also made me realize how much of an impact this event in American history had on the rest of the world.

After I left the museum, I decided to go explore the rest of the city and after walking through the streets for a while, I ended up on the other side of the city near Palacio Real. This is the official residence of King Juan Carlos, the king of Spain, but he lives on the outskirts of Madrid, and only uses the palace for state ceremonies. I didn't actually go inside, but I think it would be worth seeing during my next visit to Madrid.

After about 7 or 8 hours in Madrid I headed back to the train station to catch my train to Valencia and get some much needed sleep.

Both of the main sights I saw that day were super touristy, but I consider my first day in Spain a success.