Hi my name is Star and I have been lucky enough to call Gran Alacant my home for over 10 years now. My 8 year old daughter Ashlee and I are often “Out & About” enjoying the local attractions and culture in this part of Spain. Over the next few months I will be sharing some of our experiences with you to encourage you to go “Out & About” yourselves and maybe learn a little bit about this beautiful place we call home.

 

This month we wanted to share our experiences from a two day break that we took in Valencia. My Mum was visiting and I have always wanted to take her to the Oceanografic as Ashlee and I fell in love with it when we first visited and have been wanting to go back ever since.

So after revealing the surprise of our trip, early in the morning we set off from home. My Mum was really surprised at how different the scenery was as we drove the toll free route that took us past Alcoy and through the mountains. Almost two hours later we left the countryside behind and headed towards the city landscape of Valencia. We arrived at our hotel for the night, left our bags with reception and headed off to the City of Arts and Sciences which was just 5 mins away.

This group of stunning buildings includes an Opera House, IMAX/3D Cinema, Science Museum and the Oceanografic. The Oceanografic is the largest Aquarium in Europe and is home to 45,000 creatures from around 500 individual species. We took our time to walk through all the areas that are separated into the various ecosystems that can be found on Earth. It really is difficult to put into words how amazing this place is, especially the two really long tunnels that allow you to get really close to the animals as they swim around and above you. We admired all of the different types of Jellyfish, Fish, Rays, Sharks, Beluga Whales, Penguins, Walruses, Sea Lions, black necked Swans, Frogs and Turtles to name a few and we even saw Nemo and Dory!!


We all thoroughly enjoyed the Dolphin show which brought tears to my eyes from start to finish as the relationship between the Dolphins and their trainers was beautiful to see. In fact, the Dolphinarium is one of the largest in the world and they actively encourage conservation which can be seen in the show as although you see the Dolphins do amazing things, it is showing how they have fun and interact rather than just performing a show to entertain the crowd. They also have the largest 4D cinema in Spain so we treated ourselves and watched a short film where we were blasted with air, covered in bubbles and foam and felt little creatures around our feet!!! It really was a fantastic day.

Some useful links:
https://www.oceanografic.org/en/

https://www.cac.es/en/home.html

Additional Info:
Ashlee and I used our annual passes for Terra Natura to get a 25% discount on entrance tickets to the Oceanografic, this discount also applies to the Science Museum and Hemispheric (IMAX Cinema). As Mum is a Pensioner, we took her passport so she could get reduced price tickets.

Until next time ……

Join us next month to discover the other things we saw and did on our 2nd day in Valencia.

Star & Ashlee xxx