Valencia - Wednesday 19th October

Staggering bleary eyed on to our balcony it seemed like the Aurora had been met by more taxis than usual. We counted about 2,500 Ford cars of various types not including the rows of vans in the distance. I don't know if they were coming or going or were stuck there as a result of Spain's economic woes. At cruise ports we've looked out on the Blue Mosque at Istanbul and rusting sheds at Gibraltar but this was our first car park.

The City of Valencia developed on opposite banks of the Rio Turia which has now been filled in to create a beautiful linear park. This is the sort of town planning project that gives urban designers wet dreams, but it is almost impossible to achieve unless you have a fascist dictator or a major disaster. Fortunately, as it has now turned out, serious flooding in 1957 meant that Valencia ticked both boxes. The old river was diverted and the opportunity for a range of public projects was created.

Within the parkland, a couple of miles from the old city centre, is the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencais. This a complex of six civic buildings which is almost but not quite complete. The architectural styles range from silly to very, very silly. This is not necessarily a criticism and silly architecture can occasionally be serious art. If you take talented architects, and tell them that cost, longevity, maintenance and functional content are irrelevant, wonderful things can and sometimes do happen. This way of commissioning buildings carries a serious health warning so remember “do not try this at home”

In this case, thanks mainly to the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the result is glorious and I walked around with my mouth open like a kid in a sweet shop. Viewed together the buildings look like every science fiction fans image of an alien planet. You keep counting the numbers of suns in the sky just to make sure there is still only one.

We only had time to go inside one building and we chose the Museo de la Ciencais Principe Felipe - the Science Museum. Not surprisingly, the museum's content could not live with the impact of the building. Think “Millennium Dome” or on a smaller scale “Urbis” in Manchester. The cathedral like, over glazed, spaces were totally unsuitable for the displays they contained and the exhibition designers had simply given up and built a town of little boxes to shelter their exhibits. Sadly the result looked just like a trade fair. So - if buildings succeed brilliantly as art but cost a fortune and don't work - is that OK? You can decide - I'm on holiday.

Dave C