Valencia

Valencia is a sun-drenched Mediterranean city that invented paella and built a futuristic City of Arts and Sciences complex that seems to belong on another planet. The old town preserves a magnificent Gothic cathedral said to house the Holy Grail, while the converted Turia riverbed is now a 9-kilometre green park threading through the city. Valencia's famed Las Fallas festival in March features enormous sculptural monuments that are ceremonially burned.