Cycling in the city Experience Valencia the wheel way By Alejandra Guzman
Article author Alejandra Guzman rides her bicycle in Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences complex.
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fter arriving in Valencia, one of the first things I noticed was the number of people on bicycles. It seemed that they were all on different wavelengths, some coasting on the sidewalks, others speeding down busy streets and narrowly avoiding hectic traffic. I immediately scratched bicycling off of my “things to do while in Spain” list because I wasn’t trying to become a fly on someone’s windshield—but my friends thought otherwise. This is how I found myself gripping onto the han-
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dlebars for dear life, making my way toward the Playa de la Malvarrosa. Valencia is one of the fastest growing cities in Spain and a major tourist hot spot. The area where FSU International Programs resides, El Carmen, is home to many cafes, shops, and—to my friends’ delight, but my dismay—bike rental businesses. One of these is PassionBike. Pier Leonardi owns this business, which is a couple of doors down from the Gold building, an FSU classroom and apartment building. For the bold and brave, renting bikes from Leonardi’s shop only costs €8 for four hours. That’s €8 to travel freely through the city, exploring the crevices you can’t get to in a larger vehicle.
Or, you can even ride beyond the city. “Albufera is a very relaxed area, and you can only get there on a bicycle. It’s guaranteed to be a beautiful day,” says Leonardi about L’Albufera de València, a natural park about seven miles south of the city with a freshwater lagoon that attracts thousands of migratory birds. It’s no wonder that renting a bike is listed on TripAdvisor as one of the most popular things to do in Valencia. The city, which is flat, has over 120 kilometers of bike lanes, with most of them stretching to about 8 kilometers, a calming statistic for wimps like me. While I can personally vouch for PassionBike, there are bike shops on every street for whenever someone gets the urge to take off. The small neighborhood of El Carmen alone has more than a dozen rental shops within