Sometimes you get really lucky, and you turn up in a city having done absolutely no research and strike holiday paydirt.  For me, that happened in Valencia. In fact, though, much of my enthusiasm can be summed up in two words: Restaurant Week.  My Friend Robert pointed out that there are lots of drawbacks to Restaurant Week, but for me it means lots of really good food pretty much every night.  We got particularly lucky the last night, when eight of us went to a place near Plaza de la Virgen (so near that I would have been skeptical, on my own).  We had two vegetarians and one man who asked for no garlic.  I mean seriously.  And even so, we had a delicious meal; the highlight was foie yogurt.  I don’t know what it was (besides some combo of foie gras and yogurt) but it tasted amazing.  It was the definition of delicious.

I had been holding out on reporting on the food because other people meticulously chronicled what we ate, and I had hoped to con them into guest blogging or, at the very least, sending me their photos (you know who you are).

So that may still happen.  But the food (and experiences relating to food) were amazing even if you discount the meals – cherries in a square behind the central market, mojitos in the shade on a sweltering afternoon, an ice cream shop where I got so many free samples I was full by the time I ordered, and lattes and campari spritzes in a leafy cafe run by two old ladies with a puppy who stood on its back legs when patrons entered, tucked into a tiny square square on the edge of the Barrio del Carmen .

The snacks were amazing.  Above: orange ice cream served in an orange skin, purchased for 60 eurocents at a grocery next to our hotel; fardons and horchata at a famous horcheteria (seriously, that’s a thing); and a sticky meringue at the central market (sadly, my photographs of the market are terrible).