some of my thoughts and notes

Valencia

From the perspective of a car driver, Valencia is much more relaxed than Barcelona.

It's pretty flat and not surrounded by hills, so space isn't as much of a problem as it is in Barcelona and neither is stopping and starting uphill.

The streets are wide and there are plenty of parking places. Only to find a calm and dark place I drove towards one corner of the city where fields separate it from the harbor.

Walking towards the center of the city past a stadium that is just being built I could enjoy the smell of freshly ground steel.

Further towards the center everything reminds me much of how I remember Madrid. The smells of different perfumes mixing with the smell of dusty earth and sweat from football players arguing on a small playing field.

A speaker announcement on the firefighter station, and soon later sirens and fire trucks driving through the streets. I hope my car didn't catch fire.

Curiously, the busses in Valencia honk regularly. I usually never hear busses honk in other cities and with this much space it seems even stranger that they do.

But they're driving fast and often pedestrians crossing a red light or motorcycle drivers get into danger.

And overall, people don't seem as open and happy to me, but it's hard to say whether that is really so or rather a result of my own attitude towards the city's inhabitants.