Valencia 32nd America's Cup

We left Barcelona by train and headed to Valencia, with the primary purpose of watching the last few races of the Louis Vuitton Cup which would decide who the challenger for the 32nd America's Cup would be. The Swiss team (Alinghi) are defending. I didn't know much about Valencia before we arrived, but I assumed they grow nice oranges (which they do).

First some images of Valencia itself, which has an interesting mix of both new and old.


Now, the America's Cup. This is a huge event for Valencia to host with and the facilities they provided were excellent.
The Defenders (Swiss Alinghi)
The Challengers (Emirates Team New Zealand)
The prize ... the Americas Cup. Racing starts in early July.
Marco, his father Pietro and best friend Roman had their sailing dreams come true by going for a sail on an ex-Americas Cup racer. At 175 Euro per person, I'm sure it was worth it. I hung around Valencia and investigated the beach and the harbour which were both beautiful. I also got to see the Kiwi's do their victory dance!

I could get very used to Valencia, which was a beautiful place. It was hard to get used to the eating times - lunch at 2:30 and dinner no earlier than 9:30. Here's a picture of all of us after dinner at a "locals only" restaurant in the suburbs (recommended by our taxi driver). Nobody spoke English so we had to rely on Marco and sign language. I was sucessfully able to communicate lamb by saying "baa baa".