As Spain's third city after Barcelona and Madrid, Valencia has often been deprived of its moment in the sun. But now it is ready - the little sister has grown up and will go to the ball. Valencia will host the 2007 Louis Vuitton America's Cup in June and the megalopolis is agog with activity. It is the sailing world's most prestigious event and big names like Oracle, BMW, UBS, Lladro, are backing their teams to the hilt. Entire yachting communities have moved in, ready for the grim battle, giving the economy a boost and creating a 24-hour buzz.

At the swinging beachside next door, a range of restaurants serve up superlative seafood - hearty fishermen's fare, squid in black ink, seafood paella, crustaceans in salty saffron-laced sauce that we mop shamelessly with our warm bread. Valencia is home to paella and the varieties and permutations seem endless. Paella, a pulao-like dish inspired by Spain's Islamic past, is cooked in giant flat paella pans with seafood, saffron and sauces simmered together to infuse the paella rice with a rich texture. It is served directly on the table without pretension or fuss. You can eat it in a dry or broth-based version (a banda), or a noodle version (a fideua) which is delicious. I also had the stew-like rabbit version which was delicious and hearty.

Food in Valencia is invariably good. At the modernist Mercado Colon, which is an old marketplace converted into swish shops, cafés and restaurants, we tuck into the horchata, a typical Valencian pastry, in a tiled walkway converted into a very modern restaurant. Ali Pebre, another Valencia specialty - eel and potato stew in a paprika sauce - eludes me on this trip. Hospes Palau de la mar, is a much written about boutique hotel in a converted old palace. At Senzone, their cuisine is fused with a Spanish base. We try the foie gras with a raspberry coulis which is excellent and follow it up with a cod on black rice. All of Valencia, like the rest of Spain lunches at 2.30 pm, dines at 9.30 pm and parties all night. Chic little tapas bars enfolded into the old quarter around Barrio del Carmen and Plaza de la Reina and around the squares, offer up lamb-filled red peppers, crusty bruschettas, oozing with mozzarella and fresh tomatoes, ham and chorizo. There is an emphasis on freshness and quality wherever I go. Despite the fact that I can do a food diary on the town's excellent culinary choices and tapas bars, Valencia is not just about cuisines. It is about a metropolis that has reinvented itself many times in the last 21 centuries of its existence and now seems to have carved a clear vision of where it wants to be. It shows a certain determination that is reflected all around.

When an angry river and constant floods threatened to disrupt the lives of the natives, the megalopolis decided to banish the river out of its limits in 1957 leaving a long, dry river bed much below street level that is now the Jardines del Turia. Today, it has a jogging track, several gardens, a music hall and a beautiful green lung for its citizens to enjoy. Valencia hosts Las Fallas, a carnival-like festival every March, where giant wooden figures are lovingly carved and then burnt to the sounds of bawdy revelry. It is also home to the city of porcelain, the Lladro design centre. The Lladro museum is an interesting mix of fine designs as well as some beautiful Spanish Masters. Las arenas and La Malverossa beaches are popular summer hang-outs and June will be a month of reckoning as sailing fans and tourists pour in. Lust-worthy Spanish designer ensembles and shopping are available at Poeta Querol, a fun-filled window-shopping and browsing experience. There is no time to explore beyond the city limits but the Albufera Nature Park and old monasteries outside are highly recommended by the guide books.

Being in Spain, architecture plays an important part of any sightseeing expedition. La Lonja, the old 15th century silk exchange, is now a world heritage site and its architectural elegance and serrated pillars are worth a visit. The cathedral, the focal point of the old quarter, mixes ancient Romanesque, Islamic and Gothic influence. New frescoes have been discovered behind the plaster on the stately altar and there is a lot of excitement as they are being meticulously restored for an Easter opening. Le Miguelete is the adjoining tower and if you make it up its 207 spiral steps you will be rewarded with an inspiring bird’s eye view of the city. The chapel of the Holy Chalice houses the chalice from Christ’s last supper. The neoclassical Bullring and the art deco railway station are more modern but interesting to visit.

Above everything else, the spectacular counterpoint to the ancient and the modern is the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences (CAS). This is a breathtaking sprawl of five buildings that include an opera house, a planetarium, an IMAX, an aquarium and a science museum. Constructed on an industrial wasteland over 35 hectares, the CAS is a bionic triumph fusing architecture, engineering and biology. Familiar shapes like a marine skeleton, an eye, a ship in full sail, a bird’s plume, tantalise you as they take on new avant-garde forms. The unmissable new design CAS tells you that Valencia has its own Gaudi.

Valencian-born Santiago Calatrava is a world-famous archi- tect and has designed most of the buildings of the complex including the Palau de les arts Reina Sophia, the stop-and-stare opera house. This, I think, is his homage to his home town. It is certainly Valencia’s answer to Bilbao’s Guggenheim and for me it is the most riveting part of the metropolis. We watch ‘La Bruje’ (The witch), at the 1,700 hundred seat opera and walking up its linear white balconies I discover what has been termed ‘an interesting sequence of environments’. Glass walkways, metal bridges, palm trees, shallow pools and galleries fuse into each other, connecting the complex under the overarching umbrella of bionic shapes. The architect has said he has never left his city because it is always present in his life. This seems to be true. Flipping through a magazine much later, on a flight home, I see an awe-inspiring building designed by Calvatra called The Twister which reminds me of the elegant Gothic La Lonja’s pillars. But I may be getting too much into loyal Valencian mode. The place has that effect on you.