Biking in Valencia, Spain 🇪🇸
Don't let the chance slip away to delve deeper into a city's essence and experience it on a more intimate level, all while pedaling your way through its streets.
I would like to introduce a new section I have been thinking about for some time where I can share with you guys quick anecdotes, stories, and experiences while on two wheels. I will call these #WednesdayShorts. This is the first story in this series. I hope you enjoy it! 😊
Nowadays every time I am traveling somewhere I wonder to myself if I will get to ride a bicycle in one way or another, if there will be a chance to do so, would I have enough time? Will the opportunity rise? I wonder if I can take one of my bikes with me so I can get out and enjoy a ride. I didn’t use to be like this before I started liking cycling this much. Last year my wife and I went to Valencia, Spain, where I wondered the same thing. Luckily, Valencia is a city that is very bike friendly and there are lots of opportunities and places to rent a bike and go for a quick stroll. Being a busy tourist city, there are many places with bike rentals ready for the next customer to take one. Some days it’s hard to find one available, some others are very easy to find one, it just depends so you never know for certain.
Being the careful (and worrisome) person I am, I plan routes in advance before any rides, especially in a new city I know nothing about. However, with navigation GPS in our cell phones and head units, now it’s easier than ever to find your way around pretty much anywhere. Sometimes you just want to go explore without really knowing where you are going and sometimes not knowing the city and just riding without direction ends up being one the best ways to know you’re way around. It’s important to always practice safe riding, at the very least research the area you want to ride around to not end up somewhere you might find yourself worrying about your whereabouts.
On a summer day in 2022 in Valencia, my wife and I decided to rent a couple of bikes and enjoy the summer’s heat. The city is always vibrant and very bike friendly, did I say that already? there are bike paths all throughout the city (though we only stuck to the main areas with attractions or points of interest) so it was very easy to move around. The bikes that you rent tend to be very used and worn out by the thousands of people that visit the city and want to ride but they are in good working condition which is what we wanted and needed. We biked through some of the main parts of Valencia, which were El Turia Park, the City of Arts and Science area, and the neighborhood of Rusafa. It was very easy to move around the city on bikes, the bike paths are very wide and separated just like the streets in the US, divided by a middle line that serves as lanes for both pedestrians and bikes. Not only the path is divided, one side is for bikes in both directions, while the adjacent half is for pedestrians. I found it to be very efficient and people really respect these rules, it’s one of the things that I really loved about the cycling community in Valencia.
While cycling through El Turia Park, which is a 9-kilometer-long (5.6 miles) park and one of the largest in Spain, we went under several ancient historical bridges that gap the park because it used to be a river that was later diverted, and turned into what is now the park due to massive flooding that devastated the city in 1957. During our cycling, we saw events happening, from little book fairs, live music, soccer events, and many people going on walks and runs with their families. We rested for a few moments under some trees and then went on our way back to the rental place to return the bikes. Along the route, we saw many shops that looked interesting, and perhaps we would like to go back and explore. I must point out that throughout the city there are also many bike-sharing stalls with bikes for rent through mibisivalencia or valenbisi. We did not go this route as we decided to go to a rental place and rent the bikes for pretty much the whole day.
Valencia was amazing! And we hope to soon visit again to keep enjoying the sun, the vibrant atmosphere, and the bike paths that run all along the city. Whenever you go and visit a new city, try to go and explore it, how? Cycling of course! 😊
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