Spain's Valencia: New and Improving

My first day's walk also took me to three other lovely old squares and past the amazingly beautiful and elaborately sculpted Lonja de la Seda, the 15th-century silk exchange market. I likewise stumbled on the Mercado Central, where merchants have 1,000 stalls for selling produce, fish, Spanish hams and other food.

Small food stalls outside the market had great-looking prepared food, but I wasn't quite convinced they'd pass a health inspection test, so decided to pay a lot more at the sit-down cafes for similar fare.

My second day -- the old quarter is worth two days -- I hopped a tour bus to get a good overview, and a drop-off in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes, the best of the various museums in Valencia. El Greco and Goya are the most famous artists represented there, but the collection spans centuries, with a focus on paintings of the Gothic period.

The bus allowed me a quick summation of things I didn't have time to see up close, such as the Torres de Serranos, a 14th-century gateway that is one of several remaining sections of the medieval walls that once surrounded the city.

Sometimes the recorded narration seemed out of synch with the bus, so I wasn't always sure that what I was hearing about was what I was seeing. Then again, I did learn that the silk market was once a popular place to abandon unwanted children. The way it worked was, you'd bring your extra kids there and point out the weather vane on top, and while they stared up at it, you slipped away.

The bus also toured the other side of town, and the City of Arts and Sciences. Although I think Calatrava does the most interesting and dramatic work of any living architect, when I first saw from the bus windows the city he mostly designed, my first thought was "The Jetsons." To appreciate it, you have to get up close.

State of the Arts

Imagine a building constructed to look like a complex model of a giant human eye, and you'll get a pretty good image of the shape of L'Hemisferic building in the City of Arts and Sciences. Inside, a planetarium shares space with giant Imax film screens.

Then there's the Museum of Sciences. It has the usual array of exhibits and demonstrations you'll find in the biggest and best science museums closer to home. But the building, now that's unique. More than six tons of steel hold together 215,278 square feet of glass separated into more than 4,000 windowpanes. The thing itself is fantastic and a bit eerie to begin with, and it gets even stranger when reflected outward on the pool below.

The aquarium, said to be the largest in Europe, doesn't have as many exhibits as, say, Baltimore's or Monterey's. But again, the building is magnificent.

I was most keen to see the restaurant inside, which is walled with fish tanks and said to be spectacular. I approached at ground level and could see just inside the door the balcony overlooking the restaurant below.

A woman at a desk said I couldn't come in without a reservation. Could I just walk to the edge of the balcony and look down, to get a sense of the place? "No, you need a reservation," she growled, in the manner of a Franco prison guard.

Giving up, I followed a walkway lined with pools and reached the 229-foot-high performing arts center, which with great fanfare opens for its first opera season in October. It is as distinctive as the Sydney Opera House and may well become as famous. Its main hall holds 1,700 people, the amphitheater another 1,500. Two other performance spaces each seat 400, and all four spaces are said to have advanced, state-of-the-art technology.

The raves in Europe about the City of Arts and Sciences have already made Valencia the fastest-growing destination in Spain. Last year, the city of 750,000 had 5.1 million visitors.

From June 22 to July 7, when the world's fastest-sailing vessels began competing for the world's most prestigious yachting title, the spotlight will be on Valencia. By then, a third major section of the city will be tourist-ready, and Valencia is betting the world will love what it sees.