More sunny days

Wednesday, 24 January 2024: Fast walk in the morning, down almost to the river on Carrer de Centelles and back along Av. Regne de Valencia. A warm day, headed for 23C. 

After lunch-dinner, we headed to the beach by bike. After our first beach day last week ended up a bit of a fiasco, we thought we’d give it another go. We left it a little too late, though. By the time we got down there, ditched the bikes and walked a bit on the promenade, the sun was getting low. We sat on the wall along the walkway to catch the best of the remaining sun, and read for 40 minutes or so. More tourists about than locals on this working day. 

Then we packed up and went home on the tram and tube, doing a small grocery shop on the way. There was a concert in the university series I could have gone to, but by the time we got home, I would have had to rush to get there. No worries, there’s more free music to come.

Thursday, 25 January 2024: Thursday is now our going-out-for-lunch day. I spent a good part of the morning researching places we might try. I searched “‘menu del dia’ lunch restaurants valencia” and came up with a few new recommended possibilities. 

We set out at about 1:30 for a place that looked promising, down in Eixample, just off the Gran Via - Restaurante El Trovador. We had been warned it was a very popular place for working folk to get their lunch and it was busy when we got there. It’s a small place and there was a queue already forming. We opted to go back to another on our list that we’d passed along Gran Via - La Turqueta, one of several in the city owned by Grupo Saona.

Spotted on the way: Basílica Sant Vicent Ferrer, Eixample 

Spotted on the way: posh apartment block on Gran Via

It was pretty good. Nice clean, modern decor. There’s a bright section at the back with a big window and tropical plants. Without a reservation, we were seated a little to the side of it - with artificial lighting and fake plants. The €12.95 menu del dia offered a fair amount of choice, but a lot of it was pasta, seafood or vegetarian. I had a kind of open-faced sandwich of bean paste, potato and cheese on flatbread for starters. Karen had chicken-stuffed lettuce heart salad. We both had the grilled pork and potato main. It was perhaps a little sparse compared to the servings at Tasqueta de Mercat, the restaurant we went to last week, but tasty. We both had two drinks: three white wines and a beer. And a very good chocolate tart for dessert. 

The drinks, not included in the menu del dia, must have been expensive because the bill came to €42.70. That also included a small service charge that is either not levied at most places or included in the fixed price. That’s about CDN$65. Still pretty good for three courses and two drinks for two people.

We were entertained by the neighbouring tables. At the one nearest, there was a young family with a very lively, happy baby of about nine months. Both being babyphiles, we were smitten, Karen especially. 

The table on the other side had a middle-aged mum and dad and two pretty, dark-haired twenty-something daughters who I kept glancing at because they were so similar looking. I finally decided they were indeed identical twins. Which was interesting synchronicity as I had just that morning read a review in the New Yorker of a new book about twindom, How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins by Helena de Bres. De Bres is a New Zealand-born professor of philosophy at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her twin, Julia, a lecturer in linguistics in New Zealand, and also an artist, collaborated with her sister and provided illustrations for the book. 

Karen couldn’t really see the restaurant twins clearly from where she was sitting, but at the end of the meal, she got a good look at them, and confirmed: “Yes, twins.”

It was already after 4 by the time we left the restaurant - the service was a bit slow towards the end. We headed down to the river to the Pont del Mar (Bridge of the Sea - despite being nowhere near the sea) where we were pretty sure we could sit in the late sun for a while and read. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned, but part of our routine in this nice weather is to sit out on our tiny balcony, reading and baking in the midday sun. Mad dogs and Englishmen. The sun is gone from the balcony by 2 or 2:30, though.) 

The stone-built Bridge of the Sea was constructed in 1591 to replace multiple earlier wooden bridges that had been swept away by the river. Now, of course, it spans a dry riverbed. It has two very nice cupolas with statues of bishops. It also has stone benches built into its sides. We were lucky to grab one in the sun. Karen read. I read too but also took some cheeky candids of people in the park below and on the bridge.

While we’d been looking for the restaurant, an email came in from the bookstore where I’d ordered a book by the French portrait photographer, Pierre Gonnord. It’s the book I discovered at the library last week when holed up there on a rainy day. They had my book. I was excited. We were only a couple of blocks away from the shop. So when the sun went behind the buildings, we headed over there. 

It had already passed through my cynical brain that finding the book at such an excellent price - €19.90 for a very well-produced coffee table book, one that I actually wanted, especially when it was unavailable at mainstream sellers - was almost too good to be true. And it turns out, it was. 

     When I got there, the guy brought out this tiny paperback book of photos by Gonnord. I said, no, that wasn’t the book I’d ordered. He said, ‘El libro mas grande?’ He shook his head and said, ‘No es possible.’ I was pissed off. It might have been an honest error - that they’d sold out of the book I wanted, but inadvertently left the ad up at their site. But it felt like a bait-and-switch, especially when he was offering this clearly inferior product at not anywhere near as good a price. He showed me another full-size, hardcover book of Gonnord’s work that he had in stock. It was newer and only €25 but didn’t have the images that were in the book I’d wanted. I should have just walked out, but I looked at the small book and it did have the images I liked. It was €15. I ended up buying it. At least it will remind me of Gonnord and his photos.

Full moon: view out our back window