Hotel Catalonia Excelsior, Barcelonina, 5 (to the right in the picture)
We flew down to Valencia on Sunday afternoon for a couple of days to meet Antonio, our architect. The design of the house is nearly finished to the stage where we can apply for planning permission, so we went to discuss some final details and to meet some of the potential suppliers. Quite a lot, in fact. We were in meetings from 9:30 until 15:00 hrs. A good job that the Spanish eat lunch late, so we were able to get a good meal after we finished.
We also met María Pedro for the first time, the landscape architect who Antonio put us in contact with some time ago. Up until now, our contact with her has only been via e-mail. She is a friend of his daughter and has just set up in business after studying in Spain and doing “industrial periods” in Scotland and Canada. We are very happy with the progress to date, and are hoping that Antonio will be able to submit the plans for approval before Spain shuts down for the summer holidays over the month of August.
We stayed at the hotel in the photo above, which turned out very well – it was completely quiet (no, we weren’t the only guests!), and there was no traffic noise either. At only 58 Euro for a double room (without breakfast, which we bought round the corner at a café for 5 Euro for the two of us, instead of 26 Euro in the hotel) it is very reasonably priced. We’ll probably try to stay there again next time we need to meet Antonio.
As we packed all our meetings into the Monday, we had the Tuesday free and did a little sightseeing, going to the Central Market, the Plaza Redonda and and the National Ceramic Museum. The nice thing about Valencia is that it is very compact, so we walked between the places we visited.
Central Market - Valencia
Central Market - Valencia
