Day 7

Thursday 16th February: We had a nice relaxing start this morning. We don't dock at today's port of call, Valencia, until midday so went to have breakfast at our restaurant, Villa Verde. Breakfast with waiter service was a nice treat! There were a few different options to the Bora Bora, oatmeal porridge being one of them, it was divine! Once we'd finished breakfast we still had over 2 hours until we docked so asked Charlie if he'd like to go to the kid's club, he jumped at the chance! We looked at this morning's activities, he did Arts and Crafts and a Musical game! Mark went to collect him at 11:30 and we got ourselves ready to go into Valencia. After docking we could see Valencia centre was quite a distance from the port, even the terminal building was a good distance from the ship! Thankfully they put on a complimentary bus to the terminal and from there we bought tickets for the city bus. There were 3 stops en route into the city, we decided to get off at the first one which was for the aquarium. Valencia is very much an extreme between old and new! Around the aquarium there are a few very modern (and interesting) looking buildings, one in particular I thought looked like a motor bicycle helmet!



We priced up the aquarium, let's just say it was way over budget!!! Even once you'd paid to get in you then had to pay extras, like for example, 3 euros each to see the penguins! As much as I would have liked to visit there I'm afraid they made the decision for us! So we went to the stop and waited for the next city bus. The second stop was only a little further up the road so we continued into the centre. This was where all the old buildings are, we saw the Correger clock tower and a church (I don't know it's name.) In the same square we found a very nice cafe, I chose a banoffi pie, oh my goodness, I was in banoffi pie heaven, lol!!! Unfortunately we didn't have time to venture anymore in Valencia, this was one of our shortest stops of the cruise but we feel we saw enough to get a flavour of the place.





It's a good job we came back when we did, by the time we got back to the ship there was a long queue to get back on board but it did provide a very good opportunity to photograph the whole ship. (everywhere we've docked so far it hasn't been possible to fit it all in)

It was only about 45 minutes until dinner once we got back to our cabin so Courtney had a quick snooze, Charlie played a game on Mark's Xoom (like an iPad) and Mark and I soaked up the sun sitting on the balcony. Just before Courtney's sleep we all got a surprise! We were on the balcony and a para glider whizzed past us! I quickly grabbed the camera in case he came past again and sure enough he did!

Dinner was, as always, lovely. We decided to watch the show tonight in the Strand theatre as it was a ventriloquist and we thought Charlie and Courtney would enjoy it. He was very entertaining and very funny, both children laughed away at his puppets......good job they only thought of it as a puppet show, the chaps mouth moved the whole time!! Still it was a good show! Look at the size of the theatre!