The Spanish way: children, noise and late nights in Valencia

There's a moment, usually on your first summer evening out, when it dawns on you that if you came to Valencia looking for quiet, you came to the wrong place. Here life spills out of the houses, turns up the volume and takes the children along for the ride. It's disorienting - and then it's catching.

The children never go to bed (almost)

Eleven at night, in a restaurant, a table of ten: three generations, and two small kids playing between the chairs. On the squares, children are still running around long after the hour when, back in the UK, Ireland or the US, they'd have been tucked up for ages. Here children aren't hidden away or sent upstairs so the adults can have their evening: they're part of the social life, the meal, the long unhurried night. Society is genuinely intergenerational, and you can see it out in the open.

A love of loud bangs

The next discovery: firecrackers. Spaniards - and Valencians above all - love a good bang, and not only during the big festivals. A wedding, a goal, an ordinary Sunday: something goes off. The newcomer jumps a mile; the local grins, delighted. And when the great festivities arrive with their broad-daylight explosions (the mascletà is a percussive fireworks display you feel in your chest, no colours required), you finally understand that here, noise isn't a nuisance to be complained about. It's a celebration.

The hum of a crowd as a sign of life

Terraces full until late, conversations rising, music pouring out of a bar: silence isn't really a local value. The instinctive "shush" - the tut, the polite request to keep it down - has no real equivalent here. It takes a while to accept, especially if you live above a lively square. And then you realise the din is simply the sound of people happy to be outside, together.

The street is the living room

At bottom, it all comes down to this: here the street is an extension of the living room. People live in it, eat in it, raise their children in it, grow old in it. The grumbler in you - the one who values an early night and a bit of hush - may mutter for the first few weeks. Then one evening, a cold caña in hand, the kids laughing on the square, you'll let go. And you'll feel a little bit at home.