It is sunny, but still cold today, as we prepare for our next ship’s tour.  We are only in port a short time today, and it didn’t make any sense to just get ourselves into town to wander around again, so we signed up for a tour that takes us to the Oceanografic park – which is supposed to be amazing, and one of the largest aquariums in Europe.  Because of the timing, we don’t feel like it would be worthwhile to try to get there ourselves, and this tour is so cheap, we figure we’ll just suck it up and get on the bus.

We definitely are not pulling the H Card today – it doesn’t make any sense for tours because we know the drill.  Of course today, the ShoreX guy totally throws a loop into the strategy and won’t let us sit in the front row like normal, so we end up way away from the exit door.  To some degree, it really doesn’t matter because we just need a seat on the bus – even though we know there will be a circle tour of Valencia, what do we need to see?  But in the end, we manage to get the first tickets for the 2^nd bus!  Yay!  So we are again first on the bus…..or not.  When we get on, there are tons of people already there.  How did that happen?  Weird – but we get the seats by the back door, so we’re ok.  (As it turns out, these are all handicapped folks – as is evidenced when we go to get off the bus, which is nice to know there is some procedure to make it easier for them.)

The circle tour is, the circle tour.  You can’t take a big bus in the city – especially with all the construction around Placa de Reina, so it pretty much just skirts the city on the ring road.  Arriving at the Oceanografic park, we congregate at the entrance, then are set free for 2 hours of exploration on our own.  We could follow the guide for a tour – but we’d rather not.

It is a huge facility and we obviously didn’t do enough research, because to get from one section to another is all outside, and it is cold, but we didn’t wear our heavy coats so we wouldn’t have to lug them around inside…..thankfully it is only 2 hours!  But still, it is an amazing place with tons of different ecosystems to explore.  The Mediterranean, Caribbean, Arctic (although the penguins are a little weak – but only because we’ve been spoiled by the Cape Town aquarium), shark tank (awesome, they followed us through the tunnel under the aquarium, like we were walking them on a leash or something) and the outside dolphin show stadium.  Oh, and the salt pond with the flamingos. 

It’s a fascinating couple of hours exploring, and bonus, we find an open coffee shop by the dolphin show to warm up with cappuccino.  And it wasn’t even that expensive.

Then it is back to the bus, back to the ship, and back to our normal routine, gym, dinner, room for movies.  We are holding out hope on the illusionist and the new comedians obviously coming aboard in Malaga or Cadiz.  Fingers crossed.