If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 8/26/08

Remember a few weeks ago I showed you some highlights from my June trip to Valencia, Spain.

Remember this photo?

This is the Hemispheric, part of the "Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias" (City of Arts and Sciences) that stretches along a former river-bed in the south of Valencia, Spain. Designed by Salvatore Calatrava, the Hemispheric, when reflected in the surrounding water, strongly reminds one of an oversized eye. In fact, Calavatra designed a mechanism which opens and closes the "eye lid" over its full breadth. The interior of the eye consists of an IMAX-Dome combined for the first time with the most progressive planetarium techniques.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

Just beyond the Hemispheric is the Oceanigrafico (Oceanarium), which is basically an aquarium park.  This was the main reason why I included Valencia on my itinerary.  I may have mentioned that I'm a bit of an aquarium nut, and have visited aquariums all over the world (from Boston to Hong Kong).  But in all honesty, I was a bit disappointed.  I had heard that it was the largest aquarium in the world, but it turns out is just has the largest single saltwater tank.  That particular tank was quite impressive, but the rest of the park was less than expected.  In any case, I enjoyed my visit there so much I decided to show a few photos from the aquarium.

One really impressive feature is the tube.  There are actually two or three underground (underwater) tubes that give you a "in-house" view of the big tank.  This feature in itself is reason enough to visit the park.  This is merely the entranceway.

Of course there are plenty of fish, mostly saltwater given Valencia's location on the eastern coast of Spain (Costa del Azahar).

Here's a typical brown moray (the green one wasn't very photogenic this day)

This spider crab was particularly interesting

As I mentioned, I like aquariums.  The most impressive display of jellyfish I've ever seen was in Monterey, California.  This is the second most impressive.

And there always seems to be a cute little (ok, big) sea turtle or twenty. [This was actually about 2 feet from head to tail]

There was an aviary in the park as well, mostly with rosy ibis and roseate spoonbills like this one.

Back into the water.  Besides jellyfish, I'm also a big fan of Mola mola (Ocean sunfish), which are huge, slow moving fish that often float sideways on the surface.  This one gave me a profile. [And it is roughly 6 feet from nose to tail]

The focus was obviously on pelagic (i.e., swimming) fish, but they did have some shallow water habitat, with these anemones and sea grass.

And like any tourist trap that involves water, they had a dolphin show.  This one actually had 10 dolphin all performing at once (only some of them are in this photo).  So overall it was pretty impressive.

That about wraps it up.  I'll leave you with one topside view of the visitors center (i.e., shops).

Actually, now that I think back on it the park was more impressive than I had initially remembered.  The area was amazing, and the underwater portions of the oceanigrafico got you right into the action.  I would recommend it for a visit, but make sure you spend time in the other parts of the Cuida de las Artes y las Ciencias as well.

Until next time.

Posted on:

http://tuesdayisbelgium.gather.com/

http://internatnaltravl.gather.com/

http://gatheritall.gather.com/