Anatomy and Art

I recently had the opportunity to travel in Spain.  I loved everywhere that I went, but I have to say that I was utterly charmed by Valencia.  The old town was beautiful, the paella delicious, but in retrospect I realized that it’s emphasis on both the arts and the sciences was really awesome.  And the proximity with which those categories were kept was refreshing.  My first pass through the city didn’t offer enough time to really explore much beyond the old part of town, but on my way back through later I decided to check out the Museo de las Ciencias.  The buildings over there were just too cool not to take a closer look.

I’ll admit, the architecture does overshadow the exhibits inside, but I really did enjoy walking around and seeing their displays.  They had things about dinosaurs, about Mars (I had to text a friend from JPL when I saw their Mars Rover display), a tesla coil, and a surprising smattering of health and anatomy related stations.  There were displays about cancer, and genetics, and muscle strength, and even dying.  It felt like a really different representation of these things than I can recall ever seeing in The US.  I found myself wondering if matters of health and medical treatments are perhaps more ingrained in the public consciousness over there.  There was even a little display where you looked through a mock surgical door window to see surgical videos.  It was interesting.

Someday I hope to make it back and check out the Oceanographic aquarium and maybe even catch an Imax viewing at the Hemispheric.  Really though, all of those buildings were just such beautiful architectural masterpieces, that it was lovely just walking around as well.

I did have a little confusion that made me laugh about there being two NH hotels right next to each other when I first got in.  Turned out that one was the Hotel NH Valencia Las Ciencias and the other was the Hotel NH Valencia Las Artes.  Anyone who reads here with any regularity knows that I would have combined those offerings, but I did enjoy that they were literally right next door to one another.  I asked what the difference was, and I was told that the science section was a 4-star hotel whereas the art section was a 3-star section.  I guess there’s some commentary in that about the expectation for artists to be well-paid.

Overall though, I was very taken with the level of artistic detail in so many spaces, alongside the emphasis on science, and then add to that all the history that just comes naturally with European cities and their buildings which date back so very long ago and constantly keep that sense of history alive in modern day-to-day life.  A lot of that blend was just the way Spain is in general, but I think that the University of Valencia was maybe pushing that rich content blend just that much further.  All in all, it was a beautiful place to spend a little time.