My Week in Review to the 18th February

We had a great weekend in Valencia with Dave's daughters. Our Airbnb apartment was nice with fun decor and lovely tiled floors. The sun flooded in through large windows during the day although it did get pretty cold after dark. We stayed very close to the Torres de Quart so were ideally located for lots of sightseeing as well as near to lots of good restaurants. I think we walked over twenty miles during the weekend which was useful because we ate a lot of delicious food too! All the photos on this post show Valenciano street art and sculpture of which there is something new to see around every corner!

As I didn't really have my travel blogger head on, I completely forgot to make a note of the names of any of the restaurants and cafes we loved. Oops! We managed to go through the whole stay without having a bad meal so I am tempted to state that Valenciano food is just great all round. I'm sure someone would contradict me though!

Since we returned to our campsite we did have a day's rest! We've also had several walks including a good excursion through the Albufera woods and wetlands - up to a point where the path was closed for resurfacing with no alternative route anyway! We followed other people's footprints in the sand for a while but ended up needing to turn back instead of completing our planned loop. It was still a good walk though.

 

Valentine's Day didn't get celebrated in our usual style this year despite it being our 15th together. 15!! We were kind of dined out after Valencia so I think we'll treat ourselves some time in the next few weeks instead. Our caravan water pump had packed up the night before so we spent Valentine's morning visiting a local caravan spares shop. Romance is not dead folks! The shop, of course, didn't have an exact Whale replacement for our Premium submersible pump, but the Spanish equivalent turns out to be just as good, much quieter and was considerably cheaper!

A purchase we made on Friday was a stovetop coffee maker. I've wanted one of these for absolutely ages, but wasn't really sure how they worked or which to buy. Fortunately there was one in the Valencia apartment which Gemma kindly taught me how to use. It's very simple when you know how! And now we have our own. It makes delicious coffee although stronger than I am used to so I need to be careful not to drink too much. A splitting caffeine headache is not so much fun!

In blogging news, I curated two Top Ten posts this week. First up is my regular monthly Top Ten Etsy Finds - this edition focuses on Bees and there's some really beautiful items for your perusal. Then I was invited by Etsy to create a Mother's Day Gift Guide post. I chose to select from Artisan Rainbow-featured items which was fun and I might make up more Gift Guides in this way in the future.

I've started a new feature too - a monthly Giveaway Linkup. If you're hosting any Giveaways on your own blogs, feel welcome to add their links and try your luck on everyone else's!

Giveaway listed @ Stephanie Jane!

Here's what you might have missed on my other blogs this week. Click the images to visit the pages ...

	Artisan Rainbow	Literary Flits
M O N D A Y
T U E S D A Y
W E D N E S D A Y
T H U R S D A Y
F R I D A Y
S A T U R D A Y
S U N D A Y

Currently reading

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

tagged: currently-reading, fiction-africa, and charity-shop-find

My Week in Review to the 11th February

A slightly belated Week in Review post because we spent a busy weekend in Valencia with Dave's daughters. We all had a great time, walking a ridiculously long way and eating delicious food, but I'll blog properly about the visit later this week. In the post I want to catch you up with our current campsite and its local area.

We are pitched up at Camping Valencia in El Saler which is a tiny seaside town just outside Valencia. It's in the Albufera national park so there is good beach and woodland walking straight from the campsite. There is also the number 25 bus route right outside that goes straight into Valencia and a nice cycle route to the city as well. On our first evening here, we wandered over a road bridge to gaze out across the rice fields - and I spotted the flamingo street art too.

Camping Valencia is €15 per night with our ACSI card. This price includes a reasonably large pitch with electricity. The shower room is actually heated which is particularly nice as the weather is much colder up here than it was at Isla Plana! It's quiet here because there aren't many touring pitches and the 'shanty town' of permanent pitches isn't occupied at all (I don't think) at this time of year.

In the opposite direction to Valencia is El Palmar, a town of canals and paella restaurants right in the heart of the Albufera. It is easily reached by car, bicycle or that same number 25 bus route and we spent a nice sunny afternoon walking out in a large circuit from El Palmar around wide expanses of paddy fields. There are dozens of outlets in El Palmar offering boat trips too, but our being there mid-week and off-season meant most looked closed so we decided to walk. We saw dozens of herons and a few cormorants, otherwise surprisingly little in the way of wildlife.

Here's what you might have missed on my other blogs this week. Click the images to visit the pages ... and don't forget to enter all my Current Giveaways!

	Artisan Rainbow	Literary Flits
M O N D A Y
T U E S D A Y
W E D N E S D A Y
T H U R S D A Y
F R I D A Y
S A T U R D A Y
S U N D A Y

Currently reading

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

tagged: currently-reading, fiction-africa, and charity-shop-find

My Week in Review to the 4th February

A pretty quiet week all told here in Isla Plana. We took a shortish walk up to the hills behind the campsite, returning by way of villas and holiday homes nearly all of which are closed up for the winter. It's always strange for us, only seeing the southern coast of Spain in the winter, to try and imagine just how frenetic and packed these towns must be throughout the summer months. When we are here they're usually so peaceful!

We also tried a picnic walk to a village called Tallante which, according to a map board on the beach, is 6km away. There's a walking route that follows a rough car track between hills to get there with a few interesting sights en route. After an hour and a half of easy walking though, another map board showed us as not even half way to our destination so that 6km is wrong! 16km each way might be more like it! We found a rock to act as a picnic bench and decided that could be our turn around point.

In blogging news, I was pleased to sell 11 Etsy items via my Artisan Rainbow blog. I can't tell exactly what was purchased, but the most popular click-through page was this gorgeous Seagrass Traveller's Notebook made by Elrohir Leather. In contrast, I only sold 1 book via Literary Flits during January - Hostage by Skye Warren and Annika Martin. I guess I was concentrating more on Artisan Rainbow publicity? Or we all just received too many books for Christmas?!

Here's what you might have missed on my other blogs this week. Click the images to visit the pages ... and don't forget to enter all my Current Giveaways!

	Artisan Rainbow	Literary Flits
M O N D A Y
T U E S D A Y
W E D N E S D A Y
T H U R S D A Y
F R I D A Y
S A T U R D A Y
S U N D A Y

Currently reading

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

tagged: currently-reading, fiction-africa, and charity-shop-find