April 19

Today we are in Valencia, Spain. It is a wonderful small city. However, our tour was AWFUL! Absolutely horrid. Our guide was the pits. Our tour went to the Lladro factory which was really neat - amazing how they make all of the porcelain statues - really interesting. No wonder Lladro costs so much - it is very labor intensive! The woman who makes all of those tiny flowers is just amazing - no way my clumsy hands could work with something that small. And the women who painted the statues’ faces were amazing! Such delicate work. And the way the make parasols out of porcelain was too fascinating! Then of course they gave us time to browse in the Lladro shop. But our STUPID guide never even mentioned when we should be back at the bus so at 12:30 or so she finally comes back and we head off to our next stop - mind you we were supposed to be back on the ship by 1:30! By the time we got to the next stop it is 12:55 and she tells us only half the group at a time can go through the Ceramics Museum! That gives each group approximately 10 minutes since it is still a 5 minute walk away! Ginnie and I - even though she was really looking forward to it - opted to sit in a café and watch the people! It was a beautiful day and the town was great. We drove by a wonderful beach - very long and very wide. There were some beautiful buildings and the iron work on the balconies was fantastic - no two buildings had the same design. It looked great - had it all - a nice beach, beautiful buildings, wonderful weather. It was just the tour that was the pits! I think Valencia is a place I would like to visit again - just on my own - no tour!