Tag: https://www.visitvalencia.com/en

Countries, Culture, Europe, Sport

You can be straight at Valencia’s Gay Games

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Las Fallas brings out the sniggering schoolboy in all of us which only proves you can be straight in Valencia’s Gay Games.

The 12th iteration of the GG, which dates back to 1982, will be held under the sun from June 27-July 4.

Take in the sights: In Valencia

And here’s the interesting thing, straights are welcome to compete, which is as it should be.

Just like modern Modern Games are now inclusive, so are Gay Games.

All of which is in keeping with the original Olympians in Ancient Greece.

For whom brotherly love in combat was a blood bond.

Ya dancer

GG features many of the events we know and love from Olympic Games in its 39-sports roster.

But which self-respecting Gay Games could not include DanceSport, same-sex ballroom?

Or The Pink Flamingo, a playful team event combining aquatics, theatre, and comedy.

Rainbow nation: The Gay Games

Or cheerleading… Ole Valencia.

Spectators too are included with everybody encouraged to join in the 3km International Rainbow Memorial Run.

There’s music, fashion, film and The Memorial Quilt Exhibition and countless other events.

Transvia the way to go

Drinks are on us: A gay-friendly city

Our amigos at Transviasport are the go-to travel providers for the Games.

With Olympia Ronda I and II coming in at €66 and €68 a night.

Our amigos in Valencia have helpfully mapped out the best places to enjoy ourselves while we’re there.

With the gay-friendly Piccadilly Downtown Club in Ruzafa a magnet for indie, pop, rock, and disco fans.

The line-up: Eye candy

Or Deseo 54 in the Sagunto District, for international house and pop and commercial music.

If it’s cocktails and cakes you’re after, and it always is, then Cafe de las Horas in El Carmen District.

And which combines old palatial stables with a baroque design in a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

A Fetish for fun

Hand in hand: Through Valencia’s streets

While how could the Fetish Morning’s Social Club not stop us in our tracks?

Popular after party for the LGBTI+ crowd.

Which despite its name is not a fetish club and is welcome to mixed ages.

And with that we’re away to train… for the cocktails and the dancing.

 

 

America, Countries

The Saga of Over 140 Tours

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I started a thread that’s started the whole world smiling, and with apologies to the Bee Gees mine’s is the Saga of Over 140 Tours.

My old employers from my student days in Aberdeen, where we made lunches for their day trips in Grampian, have been in touch.

And they have flagged up their brochure Worldwide with the tagline Over 140 Tours to explore worldwide.

Now I know we’re all living longer but Over 140s?

Saga, as well as being my summer employers which funded my Top Deck Oktoberfest booze bus antics was also my parents’ go-to travel providers.

Worldwide vision

China in their hands: The folks at the Great Wall


Saga has built its reputation on providing the best travel for the over-50s.

And yes that’ll creep up on you although these guys speed up rather than slow down.

It’s not nicknamed Sex And Games For The Aged for nothing.

Saga are teasing us in their new Worldwide brochure with somewhere very close to home which is home.

Dream experiences

Islands of fun: The Azores

Scotland is new on the menu alongside Valencia, the Azores and India.

Alongside old favourites across Europe, Asia, Australia, Borneo and more.

Of course Saga offers dream experiences across the travel spectrum…

You know… solo tours, stay and explore, small group tours and escorted tours.

Now as Saga like to start as they go on they’ll take the stress out of your door to airport experience by giving you a VIP driver.

Either to London or your local airport.

Mighty Mississippi

Mr Happy: Mississippi

And because it’s what would make my missus happy then I’ll flag up the sample Journey on the Mighty Mississippi.

Journey on the Mighty Mississippi is a 15-nighter down the grand old river from £5,945.

That includes your travel insurance with 11 excursions and visits.

Welcome to the Jungle: Elvis’s Jungle Room

And…

  • Tours of Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans
  • Entrance to Studio B, Country Music Hall of Fame, and Graceland
  • Complimentary shore excursions in every port on the cruise (‘Hop-On Hop-O’ coaches in Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, St Francisville, and visit to Nottoway Plantation)
  • 3 days – free time
    7 nights in hotels, 7 nights cruise on
    American Queen and 1 in flight
    International flights.
  • Prices are based on return flights with British Airways (direct) or United Airlines (indirect) from London Heathrow.
  • Supplements may apply from other airports
    22 meals: 9 breakfasts 6 lunches
    7 dinners

 

Countries, Europe, Food

Pile in on World Paella Day

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For the day that’s in it and because I fear The Scary One is leaving us with ‘heat-ups’ (her word for leftovers) tonight, let’s pile in on World Paella Day.

It’s a date on the calendar I should have marked in her diary alongside our anniversary which was three days ago but didn’t.

So it’s just as well that my old amigi Sara and Kathryn from the Spanish Tourist Board in Dublin flagged it up.

And a wee Rioja: With Sara

By inviting the cream of Irish Travel (I’m confined to barracks just now) out for a big paella.

Which is paella round-grain rice, bajoqueta and tavella (varieties of green beans), rabbit, chicken, sometimes duck, and the lima or butter bean garrofo, cooked in olive oil and chicken broth.

Mellow yellow

Man v Paella: And the paella always wins

With the yellow colour we know and love infused by saffron.

Paella, meaning frying pan in Spanish, has come to be the city and the country’s biggest food export.

But foodies will tell you that the dish derives from Valencia, while historians will point to the Moors from North Africa who introduced rice cultivation.

Paella is of course international now and the Valencians even host a World Paella Cup with the best chefs from around the world.

And thankfully without those ubiquitous ‘celebrity chefs’ we have all come to loathe.

Less Oliver: And more Paellaman

You know the ones who pimp their paellas like mock cockney Jamie Oliver who uses chorizo by Jamie Oliver or the rice, chicken, squid, chorizo ​​and clam version by chef Gordon Ramsay.

OK, I don’t have anything against you putting in whatever the heck you like into the pan to make your paella because after all anything with rice in a paella, or pan, is eh, a paella.

It’s just Oliver’s fake chumminess and Ramsay’s fake fecking puts me off my food.

Although writer Ana Vega ‘Biscayenne’, citing historical references, showed that traditional Valencian paella did indeed include chorizo.

And he exclaimed: ‘Ah Jamie, we’ll have to invite you to the Fallas.’

Paella on the pounds

No need for plates… just dig in

And what we all want to know in these straitened times is can it feed the masses?

Well Valencia restaurateur Juan Galbis claims to have made the world’s largest paella with help from a team of workers on 2 October 2001.

He claims to have fed about 110,000 people and this is even larger than his earlier world-record paella on 8 March 1992, which fed about 100,000 people.

Galbis’ record-breaking 1992 paella is listed in Guinness World Records.

So pile in on World Paella Day, there’s enough for everyone.