The City of Arts and Sciences

I am pretty sure you have already heard about this place. It is one of the most visited in Valencia for many reasons. I can tell you some of them.

The place is located at the end of the old Turia's riverbed, next to the sea.Nowadays there is park created in this riverbank. It is formed by buildings that were designed by the world famous architecturer Santiago Calatrava, how practise or well-built are these buildings... that's another story.

All the buildings of the City of Arts have the same characterictic: they are all white because of the tiles that covered them as a big mosaic.

There is a sculpture garden and landscaped walk called "L'umbracle" under which is located a disco in winter named "Mya". On a part of this path walk there is another disco during summer. It is the same as "Mya", but the difference is that one is outside and the other is inside (with ceiling). L'umbracle is a nice place where you can take pictures. It is full of plants and there is a permanent exposition of sculptures.

The second building is a kind of 3D cinema, but the movies they project are not the typical cinema movies, there are more documentary, but I strongly recommend you to go at least once if you have never tried because it is an awesome experience. It is not too expensive, it is between 6. 45 and 8. 80€. It was inagurated in 1998 being the first building inaugurated after L'Umbracle. It is called L'Hemisferic and it has the shape of a human eye.

Then the Príncipe Felipe Museum, which is a sciences museum mainly. But their creators tried to do it a little bit different: they tried to create an interactive museum where you can go and read and see expositions but you can also play with the science yourself. The building is full of windows, so it is very bright. Schools go for didactic activities. I remember I went once and we had an activity with gravity and helium air, it was funny. A curiosity about the building: there are two big stairs on the right side because when Calatrava designed it, he did not think about the emergency stairs that all this kind of building has to have, so people who check out this kind of stuff made him to put those big stairs in both sides. You cannot really realise about it, because they are integrated in the building, but when you think about it without them... It looks much better.

The next building inaugurated was the aquarium called Oceanogràfic. It is just an aquarium where you can asist to the dolphins show, take a look on the cute pinguins (poor them, so little space they have... ), visit the big fishbowls where are sharks and devilfishes or visit the aviary but you will probably not see any bird ahaha, (as it happened to me when I went there). There are whales too, this kind called belugas whales which are beautiful and white. For me, they are like... shinning or something ahaha.

The last two buildings are the Agora, an events' place where the Valencia 500 Open (tennis bla bla... ) takes place and the Reina Sofía's opera. They are restoring this last one because the tiles were falling apart (Valencia's population is quite angry with this because the buildings cost a lot more than we expected, and moreover, there are having many many troubles).

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