Yesterday (Day 2): I’m feeling virtuous, I went for my first run in Valencia this morning. And that was after a not very good night’s sleep - having been woken by my wife crashing around in the kitchen at 5:30 a.m.! In fairness, it wasn’t all her. My bladder may have had a small part to play.
The weather was typical for the time of year: dry, high cloud, about 15C.
The route took me on a tour of some iconic Valencia landmarks and down notable streets with historically interesting names - so a nice reintroduction to the city.
I started on ‘our’ street, Sueca, in the Ruzafa neighbourhood. After one block, I turned left into Carrer Literato Azorin (carrer in the local Catalan-like dialect is ‘street,’ literato translates as “literary”). I always liked that the Spanish name their streets after artists and writers. The fact that I’ve never heard of most of them doesn’t matter.
I think I once looked up who Azorin was, but couldn’t remember, so consulted the oracle again today. Azorin was a pseudonym used by José Martínez Ruiz, an early 20th century novelist and essayist with little or no profile outside the Spanish-speaking world. He wasn’t from Valencia, but did briefly go to university here. He was on the Republican (losing) side in the Spanish Civil War - as was most of Valencia - and fled to Paris at its outset. So the street name was almost certainly changed to Azorin only sometime after Franco died in 1975.
Carrer Literato Azorin is also well known locally as home to two of the biggest, most elaborate fallas - the storeys-high wood and styrofoam painted sculptures erected during the spring Fallas festival in March. One will be at Sueca (so a short block from us), the other a block west at Carrer de Cuba. They’re sponsored by rival beer companies: Amstel and Mahou, part of the giant Spanish Mahou-San Miguel Group. They reportedly cost over a million euros to design and build - and they end up being burned to the ground on the last night of the festival, in the cremà!
Have I mentioned that the Spanish are crazy?
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| Amstel-sponsored fallas, 2012 |
We’re excited about Fallas because this year, unlike last, we’ll be here almost until the official start of the festival. The cremà is always on 19 March; we leave on 9 March. We’ll be able to watch the fallas being erected, starting often in late February, see the elaborate lights being strung and lit, and some of the fireworks. And enjoy the churro (donut) and other fast-food stands and performance stages that pop up all over the city, especially along Ruzafa streets. But we’ll miss the actual craziness when the city fills with visitors (its more sober citizens flee), and our neighbourhood turns into party central.
I followed Literato Azorin several blocks east and north, past the Ruzafa Market, a farmer’s market that we haven’t yet stuck our heads into this year. It reminds me a bit of the old Covent Garden Market in little London (Canada), but on a grander scale. It fills a whole city block, with lofty ceilings making it as tall as a three- or four-storey structure. It’s huge, although it’s not the biggest in the city. That would be the Central Market, a couple of kilometers away in the historic centre.
The Ruzafa market, a neighbourhood place, includes dozens of stalls, selling veggies, meat, dry fruit, pulses, grains, tea, specialty and ethnic products - and fresh fish, segregated in its own separate area, presumably to avoid the fishy smell permeating the place. It’s a great market, which we always intend to use more than we did on previous visits - but then don’t. The Consums and Mercadonas, chain supermarkets - one right across the street from our flat, the other a block and a half away - are just too convenient, and the produce is almost as good as the market’s. Wherever you get it, produce is almost always fresher and better than it is at home, a lot of it grown locally.
I kept going several more blocks to Av. del Regne de València (Avenue of the Realm of Valencia), a dual-carriageway thoroughfare one of a few major roads that radiate out from the centre, with a park-like boulevard in the middle. I hung a right, skipped over to the boulevard and jogged away from the centre in the direction of the river. Or, rather, the former river.
The Túria, which marked the boundary on two sides of the mediaeval city, frequently flooded and did so once in the late 1950s with catastrophic loss of life. After that, in a massive engineering project, the city and region diverted the river to a man-made channel well to the southwest of the core, and then turned the resulting dry river bed into a miles-long park system. It’s a fabulous amenity, with sports grounds galore, children’s playgrounds, bike, running and walking paths, fountains, flowering trees, gardens and more.
When I got to the river I turned right again and headed along Carrer de l'Alcalde Reig (the street of Mayor Reig), which follows the river, more or less, past the old law school to the City of Arts & Sciences. This is the other massive architectural-engineering project the city undertook last century, this one in the 1980s and 90s. The Queen Sofia Palace of Arts, an opera and live music venue, shaped like a bizarre giant beetle, is the first of the City buildings I come to. A little further on, with the Hemisfèric, another insectoid structure, a sometime iMax theatre, and the giant science museum looming on my left, I turned right into Av. de l'Institut Obrer de València (Avenue of the Worker’s Institute of Valencia).
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| Queen Sofia Palace of Arts, 2020 |
This is where the route gets a little humdrum. The avenue, another busy thoroughfare, heads into a neighbourhood of mid- to late-20th century apartment blocks and office complexes. It’s not very interesting. The traffic was so loud, I could barely hear my audio book - Calypso, a 2018 title by American humourist David Sedaris - so I deked right on a small street and worked my way over to the next artery going my way, Av. de la Plata (Avenue of the Silver). It was marginally quieter, but no more interesting. I followed it to the end, to Av. d'Ausiàs March, which is at least named for a mediaeval Valencian poet.
The architecture was still high-rise ugly, but the poet’s street did close the rectangle I’d been tracing and take me back to Ruzafa. I turned into the neighbourhood, through a little square just off Ausiàs March, the Plaça de Manuel Granero. This one is named for an early 20th century bullfighter who was killed in Madrid in 1922, aged 20. According to the Spanish-language Wikipedia, he was killed by a bull named Pocapena, owned by the Duke of Veragua. I guess it’s important to know these details - even 100 years later. I remember my eyes glazing over at the historical displays in the bullfighting museum we went to the first year we came to the city. If you thought baseball fans were detail obsessed...
Bullfighting has died out in many parts of Spain, but the bullring in Valencia, right in the centre beside the main train station, is still in use, albeit on a limited basis. The bullfighting only happens in conjunction with other special events - including Fallas. The story of poor Manuel made me think of the little outbuilding at the back of the stadium that I first noticed years ago - its own casualty clinic where they took victims of bull gorings.
From Plaça de Manuel Granero, it’s only a few blocks to our flat. Altogether, it was a circuit of a little over five kilometers. As I say, I’m feeling virtuous.
Later that day: Around 4 o’clock, after our mid-afternoon main meal of the day, Karen and I ventured out for a stroll. It was rush hour - the office workers were getting off work, the retail workers were heading back to work after siesta (2 to 5), when many shops, especially the smaller independent ones, close. Lots of traffic on the streets, lots of people on the sidewalks.
We worked our way through Ruzafa, crossing Av. del Regne de València and then Gran Via del Marqués del Túria (Great Way of the Marquis of Turia), heading towards the centre. We walked through the posh Eixample neighbourhood up to Carrer de Colón (Columbus Street), the city’s main shopping artery. We don’t really like this street. There are always too many pedestrians. It reminds me of London’s Oxford Street, a constant press of people. So we headed off it at the first opportunity, and made our way over to City Hall Square along smaller streets.
This is the city’s epicentre. The architecture is mostly 18th century, or inspired by 18th century styles, with elegant, ornate facades. It’s impressive. More of the surrounding streets have been pedestrianized since we first started coming here. Across the square from city hall, florists’ stands display their wares on the sidewalk. There’s a huge fountain. Bars, restaurants and shops line the streets around the square. And then there's the huge city hall itself (begun in 1758) with its turrets and towers.
Further in towards the old city, the long tear-shaped square gets very touristy, so we cut across it and out the other side, then worked our way back out to Carrer de Xàtiva. It's a major artery that follows the line of the old city walls and runs in front of the Norte train station and bullring. We remarked on the fact that one of the churro stands that used to only pop up at Fallas time now appears to be a permanent fixture in front of the station.
Just past the bullring, where patrons were lining up to buy tickets for the circus that’s been playing there since before Christmas, we cut down a pedestrian walkway. There used to be some interesting little independent shops along here, but now there’s nothing but junky fast-food and clothing outlets - with a new-ish Primark store half-way along it. Kitty-corner to the Primark, a huge wall mural depicts people in third-world countries hunched over machines making cheap products - exactly the kind sold in Primark and other shops along here. Painted beside them are euro figures of the paltry money they earn doing the work. It’s not a subtle message, but a good one. It doesn’t stop Valencians shopping at Primark, however.
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| The bullring |
From there it was across Gran Via de les Germanies (don’t know why it’s called that), an extension of Gran Via del Marqués del Túria, to Carrer de Sueca, and home. We were in for the night - at 5:15! What a couple of adventurers!
Many Spaniards, meanwhile, will be at work until 8, just about the time we’re thinking of watching some TV to finish off the evening. And they won’t have dinner until 9:30 or 10.
Vive la diferencia! I guess.
Monday (Day 1): Today was our first full day in Valencia, so it was mostly about getting settled. We’d both brought tea from home, and we had fruit we’d taken from the BA lounge at Heathrow. That held us until the shops opened. A few of our Airbnb hosts in the past have provided basic supplies for breakfast, even, in a couple of cases, bottles of wine. Not this one. The fridge was bare. I nipped out to the Mercadona down the street a little after 9 and bought bacon, eggs, granola, milk, bread (our favourite pan pueblo) and oranges. The joys of big city living - being able to walk to the supermarket in a few minutes. So we had a late (second) breakfast.
Later in the morning, we went across the street to the Consum and did a big shop for dinners and other necessaries - like sweets and peanut butter for me, sparkling water and paper towels. We dropped the stuff at the flat and went right back out to the Mercadona to pick up stuff we couldn’t find at Consum, or products we prefer from there. It seemed odd to shop at a Spanish supermarket without stocking up on ridiculously cheap booze, but we’re sticking with our no-alcohol-except-when-socializing regime.
After our mid-afternoon meal - Spanish lunch time, but our main meal of the day - we went for a short walk over to Parc Centrale, the high-design park built on old railway lands a few blocks from us. It features lovely gardens, walkways, fountains, playgrounds and great, sometimes secluded, spots to sit and read - or snog. Water courses crisscross its expanse. Karen had brought her e-book reader and found a bench in the sun where she sat and read while I wandered about looking for things to photograph. The flowering bougainvillea and other climbing plants on arches over a central walkway caught my attention.
We didn’t stay out long. Back at the ranch, we settled in for the evening, eventually turning on the TV and watching a couple of new Netflix shows: Fool Me Once, a UK-set Harlan Coben adaptation about spies, gaslighting and class prejudice (very good), and one of the latest, recently-added episodes of The Crown.
Sunday (Day 0): Travel day. It dawned cold and dry in Firle, the second day in a row after what seemed like weeks of wet and high winds. I went for a last brisk walk around the village; Karen took Louis out for a wander. Our son-in-law Bob, a gardening obsessive with way too many bulbs and too little time to plant them, worked in his fabulous garden almost until the last minute. Darling Caitlin sat inside crocheting Bob a scarf - when did she turn into Miss Chatelaine? Will was on his Xbox, until flushed out to help his Daddy in the garden for a short while.
It was a fond farewell. We’ll miss them for sure, but Karen and I have had enough of damp and cold. Bob kindly drove us to Heathrow, which is a little over an hour away in Sunday traffic.
We had booked British Airways “business” class. It’s really a fake business class as you get seats that are identical in every respect to economy but with the middle seat in a row of three unassigned. A little tray fits across it, which can be flipped back to turn it into a child seat. The other perks make the cost worth it, though. The extra luggage allowance - two 30 kg bags each versus one 19 kg bag in steerage (we only took three) - is almost essential when you’re going to be away for eight weeks. Check-in was a breeze. The priority security was fabulous - we didn’t have to take our electronics out of our carry-ons! Whoop! New machines, I guess. The attendant told us this was only available in the priority line at this point. The best part was getting to use the BA lounge - quiet, comfy seats, free booze, a quite good and varied selection of hot foods.
The flight itself was fine. I actually slept. We got away early and landed ahead of schedule. The airport at Valencia, never terribly busy, was almost deserted. We breezed through Immigration and caught a cab (25 euros) into the city. Our host Lola’s 20-something daughter, Candela, was there waiting when we arrived. We were in and Candela gone within 15 minutes. She didn’t need to show us around as we’d stayed here last year.
We sallied out shortly after to look for bread for breakfast. Given how important bread is in Spanish food culture, it’s a strange thing that none of the several Indian and Chinese convenience stores we we went into stocked it. We came home empty handed and unpacked.
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