Valencia, Recon Trip

This was what welcomed me to valencia- you're never that far away from home i guess

So the weekend before Las Fallas (a festival in Valencia that i'll post about next) I went to Valencia on my own to check out the Cathedral, the fine arts museum, the contemporary museum, and the arts and science center. The low down on Valencia is that the cathedral is really amazing- kind of a hodge podge of all sorts of different time periods, but has a really impressive baroque facade, an impressive altar- and my favorite part: a cupola with the 4 evangelists in the corners (I have a guilty pleasure associated with finding depictions of the evangelists and subjecting unsuspecting friends to a little lesson in symbolism).

Cathedral in Valencia

Alright let's not beat around the bush...mummified arm of a saint...a little strange

The Altar

One example of the evangelists- hello Luke with the Ox

The view from the tower of the cathedral

The Fine arts Museum was good but not fantastic. They had an impressive collection of gothic altarpieces- which I like but it's not really my favorite time period for painting. The two standouts in the museum was a self portrait of velasquez (it's the one that you almost always see associated with him- so that was neat) and then a really impressive Ribera piece that gave me goosebumps.

El Museo de Bellas Artes

The Contemporary Museum on the other hand was out of this world. They only had temporary exhibits up, but I give a standing ovation to the museum director for having that many impressive shows under one roof. To begin with there was a Jasper Johns works on paper exhibit, which was neat- primarily later work so not exactly his most notable stuff, but I give props to anyone who loves what they do enough that even after changing the art world completely- still has the urge to continue creating. Then there was a really neat Exhibit for Chilean artist Roberto Matta- who's work I was not previously familiar with, but his work really blew me away at this show. Then the last exhibit was a collection sculptures by Degas- which included the bather AND the 14 year old dancer! Really extremely cool all around.

Random lookout tower

This Civil Building was initially used as the Market- check out the palm tree columns!

Home sweet Hostel

 Then Saturday before my train I went and saw the Science museum at the Arts and Science city- which was pretty darn cool (see, just because it's not an art museum doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a museum). There was also a Concert happening that night with My Chemical Romance headlining, which I didn't stick around for, which angered the angsty teenage alejo, but the 21 year old was content to head back to the calmness of the beach in Alicante (man i'm getting old). haha

The Science center- dreary day- i should note that it rained almost all weekend

My Chemical Romance concert that happened that night at the Science Center