Turismo Valencia photos Valencia is the home of paella, which includes saffron-flavored rice, chicken, sausage and mussels.

By Marlene Parrish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

VALENCIA, Spain -- If Pittsburgh got all redd up for the All-Star baseball game this summer, just imagine the effort Valencia is making to get ready for the America's Cup races.

Valencia has been constructing, planting and spiffing up to be at its beautiful best when the city hosts the pre-races and 32nd edition of the event, running April through June 2007. The Cup race is the most important sailing competition worldwide, with audience numbers just behind the Olympics and the World Cup.

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, was chosen because its position on the Mediterranean Sea offers consistent sailing conditions, it has many handsome tourist facilities, and it wakes up nearly every day to ideal weather, typically 300 days of sunshine a year.

	The new City of Arts and Sciences may do for Valencia what the Guggenhim Museum did for Bilbao. The building above, the Oceanographic, houses Europe's largest aquarium. Click photo for larger image.

Who knew? We didn't. My husband, Bob Wolke, and I are dedicated explorers, and years ago we discovered Spain. Last summer, when we wanted a fresh destination, we set up the specs. I like museums. Bob likes the beach. I like sports. He likes people-watching. Old and new. Crowds and quiet.

In Valencia, we found it all and then some.

After we Googled the city and scanned the guidebooks, we decided to split our hotel stay, booking three days in the walkable old city and three days at a beach hotel on the seafront promenade.

In the city

Because of its strategic position on the Mediterranean coast, Valencia is a melting pot of cultures. It was founded in 138 BC by the Romans, followed by the Visigoths, and later, the Muslims, all leaving legacies of food, culture, technology and art. You can still see the architectural remains of the walls that once surrounded the city.

In 2,000 years of history, Valencia had its heyday in the 14th and 15th centuries. It looks as if it is poised for another one in the 21st century.

There are so many cultural and historical monuments, tourists can easily spend a day or two strolling the narrow, cobblestone streets, enjoying the cafes and wandering into museums.

The Valencians speak their own local language along with Spanish, and many people speak at least some English. We giggled when a guide at the cathedral kept referring to the Statues of the Applesauce. What? She meant the apostles.

For centuries, the Turia River flowed through the center of the city and periodically and predictably flooded its banks. Finally in 1957, an exasperated city government said, "That's it! The river has got to go!" And they diverted it around the city to the sea, leaving a dry riverbed. Architects, city planners and landscapers then got to work. Criss-crossed with bridges, the now-lush, garden-filled riverbed is a magnet for young moms with kids, pensioners, cyclists and tourists. More important, it separates the urban center from the rest of the capital, linking historic and futuristic Valencia.

		If you go ... Getting around is quick and easy, thanks to five metro lines, a tram line and an urban bus network. Cabs must be called, not hailed. Download or print "The Guide to Restaurants and Tapas" by Valencia Tourism (www.turisvalencia.es). Restaurants: La Pepica Restaurant, at the beach near the port. Cafe Sant Jaume, Caballeros, 51, in the old quarter. El Canyar, Segorbe, 5, in the city. Restaurante Submarino L'Oceanografic, City of Arts and Sciences. Horchateria "Daniel," Avenide de la Horchata, out of the city. Hotels: Astoria Palace, in the old quarter. www.hotel-astoria-palace.com. Hotel Neptune, at the beach near the port. Hotel Las Arenas Balneario Resort, at the beach near the port (www.hotel-lasarenas.com). Beaches: Just minutes from the city center and reachable by bus, tram, car or bike. -- Marlene Parrish

A second golden age

A gasp of awe is a typical reaction when one catches first sight of the City of Arts and Sciences, an expanse of avant-garde architecture that has been in progress since 1988 along the banks of the ex-river. Blinding white parabolic buildings, designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava, are surrounded by acres of reflecting pools.

The Palau de les Arts, a performing arts, opera and music complex where Lorin Maazel has been named the first music director, is the jewel in the crown of the wildly contemporary venue. Because Valencia is the classical music capital of Spain, with something like 500 orchestras and musical groups, concerts are plentiful.

The Hemispheric, one of Spain's most visited buildings, is a stunning, eye-shaped planetarium and IMAX theater. The Oceanographic, Europe's largest aquarium, offers a high-tech tour of the marine life of the world. Virtually an underwater city, it covers 20 acres. We took a lunch break in the complex's underground restaurant, which has walls of floor-to-ceiling fish tanks, where thousands of silver sardines glide by just a few feet from the table.

More structures are in the works, with 2010 completion dates.

All bets say that Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences will do for Valencia what the Guggenheim Museum did for Bilbao: That is, put the final touch on an already exuberant city, making it a first-class, must-go destination.

Off to the beach

Valencia's Mediterranean topless-optional public beach -- four miles long and 100 yards wide -- has plenty of room for volleyball, pedal boats and lots of bare skin. A wide promenade accommodates strollers, roller skaters and cyclists. When summer days become summer nights, the crowds move to the terrace restaurants, bars and night markets.

When visitors see at least a dozen construction cranes piercing the skyline, they'll know they are in a city on the move. Because of the coming America's Cup races, the entrance to the port adjacent to the beach has been completely rerouted. We got a sailor's eye view of the international competing yachts as they sailed from the harbor heading out to sea for time trials.

At the new state-of-the-art marina, an open-air museum displays a history of the America's Cup, including artifacts and model boats. There is a new pedestrian park where the racing teams are based and, of course, an America's Cup sport store. Tourists can buy a Swiss team's Alinghi T-shirt, an American team's Oracle watch, or a South African's team's Shosholoza coffee mug.

An eating city

After a day of rubbernecking, a little nightlife is in order. We like the barrios, or neighborhoods, in this city, where people seem to live in the streets. Valencia has more than 2,000 bars and restaurants, and if you work at it, you can hit more than a handful of the best.

A typical night begins about 10 p.m. with a stop at a tapas bar, inevitably the first of several. Sample Iberico ham, tiny deep-fried green peppers, potato omelet, garlic shrimp, grilled baby squid. Eat, listen to music, then move on, ending the evening, if you're lucky, at Cafe Sant Jaume. From the terrace we watched the girls flaunt their sexy clothes and the boys ogle the girls, felt the breezes, inhaled flowery perfumes spiced with scent of a far-off cigar, and wondered once again why we don't just live in Spain after all.

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Valencia is the home of paella. Students of serious paella will go to rustic El Canyar, a modest, lace-curtained restaurant in the city, where pans of the classic baked rice are presented one after another. Sample more paella at the Valencian beach restaurant La Pepica on the promenade. It was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway, who used it as a setting for "The Dangerous Summer." An excerpt: "Dinner at Pepica's was wonderful, a big, clean, open-air place, and everything was cooked in plain sight. You could hear the sea breaking on the beach, and the lights shone on the wet sand."

Rice served in these restaurants will have been grown in what might be called Valencia's suburbs; the paddies are that close. Thirty percent of Spain's rice is produced in the province of Valencia.

Diners can sip wine with lunch and dinner, drinking nothing but Valencian wines, all labeled with the designation of origin, and not make a dent in the available choices. More than 80 labels in Valencia offer excellent reds, whites and roses.

The hugely popular soft drink of Valencia is sweet, refreshing horchata. It looks like milk, and it pours like milk, but the white beverage is made from the crushings of the Tiger nut, sometimes called earth almonds, a fruit of Egyptian origin. The Valencia region is the only place in Spain where they are cultivated. Street vendors do boffo horchata business from their carts in the hot Valencian afternoons. But if tourists have a car, it's worth a drive to a horchateria, which will serve the drink plain and sweet or fancied up with ice cream. Locals like to dunk the locally famous pastry, fartons, into the horchata. The tubular sweet doughnut tastes like a Twinkie crossed with a Krispy Kreme.

Travelers will find plenty of souvenirs when they are out and about. Valencia is home to the Lladro family of delicate ceramic figurines. It's also known for shoes, ceramics and anything leather. Buy Valencian rice and saffron at Mercado Central, Europe's largest indoor fresh food market. The huge cast-iron building is shopper-central for produce and seafood. Buy a real paella pan in one of the stalls outside the market, but be sure it will fit in a suitcase. The largest department store is El Corte Ingles, the Nordstrom of Spain. Most Corte Ingles also have a supermarket on the lowest level. Because the Spanish have the best canned goods in the world, anchovies, sardines, mussels and piquillo peppers are good buys.