Wednesday, 21 February 2024: A down day - other than my run in the morning and working on this blog. I was supposed to go to a concert in the evening - one of the UV Winter series, a piano trio. I was looking forward to it. But when I went to register for the free ticket, they were all gone. Bummer. I never had a problem getting into the free concerts last year, but that’s two I’ve missed this year because they were ‘sold out’. One more indication, perhaps, of how this city has grown and been discovered by visitors.
In lieu of a concert, we played Game 4 of the Winter Scrabble season: a win for me, under almost identical circumstances to Karen’s win in Game 3 last week. This time, it was she who pulled high-scorers near the end that she couldn’t play. I won by fewer than 20 points. Series tied.
Thursday, 22 February 2024: Not much visible progress on the Fallas preparations in our neighbourhood. It was forecast to be a warm day, so we planned to head to the beach - although there was also cloud in the forecast, and the dreaded wind icon appeared for some hours of the day.
I went for a fast walk in the morning and managed to get myself briefly lost. I’m still not sure how I did it - by not paying attention, basically, listening to my audio book (Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer) and thinking I knew the territory too well to get lost. I had to resort to Google Maps to get myself reoriented and headed in the right direction. I definitely went around in circles at one point because I saw the same shops twice.
We left for the beach, on bikes, about 12:30. When we got down to the sea, we ran into a huge demonstration by farmers, protesting the crippling rise in fuel prices. There were scores of big farm machines parked along the road and crowds of country folk, with police trying to wrangle them. Some had signs. They spilled over the bike paths, blocking our way. At the intersection where we came to the main road along the seafront, they had burned something, possibly tires as part of the protest, possibly just wood over which they’d cooked a lunch. It was still smoldering and stinking. Once past Porto, we were free of the worst of it, although there were farm machines parked all along the road practically to the Neptu beach.
It was hazy and starting to be quite breezy, an off-shore wind. It was strong enough to blow sand in our faces as we rode along the promenade. We had a little trouble finding parking spots for the bikes and had to split up. We met up a little later and found a bench to settle on. While Karen read, I experimented with trying to take candid shots of passers by, including kids from the local highschool out doing their PE run. It’s difficult to get the subjects in focus - and difficult to avoid being spotted as the one shot clearly demonstrates.
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It was heading for 2 o’clock when we decided to go looking for a place to eat further up the beach. We walked right to the end, to Alboraya, but nothing appealed. There are a couple on the promenade at the end that have reasonably priced menus del dia, but they didn’t feature anything we wanted to eat on this day. So we headed for the tram.
To try and get away from the wind, we crossed the multiple lanes of the road that runs along the seafront and walked back towards Malvarrosa on a sidewalk in front of a row of villas. I guess we’d never walked over here before - we usually stick to the beach promenade - so we were struck by some of the architecture. The people who live here - or more likely, spend summer weekends here - have a lot of money, that much is clear. The first one that caught our eye was the museum/house of the early 20th century Valencian novelist Vincente Blasco-Ibañez. I’m not sure if this was actually a house he lived in - it looks awfully rich for a novelist, however popular he was, and awfully new too. I’ll have to do some research.
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| Blasco-Ibanñez House Museum |
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We found the tram stop after 20 minutes of walking and took it back to the Marítim Serreria tube stop. Sitting across the aisle from me on the tram was a guy about my edge who opened a notebook in his lap. I happened to glance over and noticed that the pages were full of fabulous pencil and ink drawings of people - very detailed, very realistic. As I watched, he found a suitable page and started drawing a young woman who was standing a little further along in the car. He glanced up and back down constantly as he worked, but never hesitated. She got off a little later and he closed his book and put it away.
When we got on the tube train, he was sitting across from us again, facing us this time, and immediately pulled out his notebook and pencil. I thought, ‘Oh, cool. Maybe he’ll draw me.’ Karen had a completely different reaction. She twisted around and looked out the window. ‘I don’t want him drawing me,’ she said. In fact, he wasn’t interested in either of us. He was drawing the 40-ish woman sitting next to me on the bench.
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| Spotted on the walk to our restaurant |
Our plan was to check out the restaurant in La Nau, the University of Valencia building in the city centre. It looks like a nice place, and the menu del dia is a reasonably good deal, but they weren’t serving anything that appealed to us today - we’re picky. So we trudged on, back through Plaça de Rodrigo Botet, where we had lunch last Thursday. We ended up at a little working folk’s lunch spot on one of the narrow streets leading out of the square.
Bar Transits has tables outside on an alley - there was a crowd of city street workers just getting up from lunch as we arrived. We decided to eat inside where they have maybe ten tables packed in very tightly. We sat at a table for two right under the counter, with about two feet between it and the next table. It’s very loud - a lot of hard surfaces, and the barman likes to bang things down on the marble counter. We were often shouting at each other to be heard, but it was kind of fun.
The menu del dia includes bread, starter, main, one drink, dessert or coffee - for €12.90. I had paella for starters, Karen had the Valencian salad - both standbys on Valencian lunch menus. We both had something called lagrimas de pollo for our main, which translates as chicken tears. We had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be chicken fingers, but fresh, hot and tasty, served over a little mound of mash. I had a beer, Karen a glass of wine - well, I had two beers. And we both ordered ice cream for dessert, which turned out to be packaged cones from the Mercadona. Fine by us, we eat the Mercadona house brand ice cream bars all the time. Total bill with tip €30.60 (about CDN$45.) We left quite replete.
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| New wall art spotted on walk to museum |
Our next stop was an art gallery we’d been meaning to visit for some time: the Fundación Mediterranea in the Square by the Central Market, a ten- or 15-minute walk away. The Fundación is a non-profit funded by “former savings banks” - not sure what that means - and has facilities in the Valencia region and Murcia (the province to the south of Valencia). It’s dedicated to cultural pursuits, including exhibiting art, and offering lectures and performances.
Bank-run non-profit cultural foundations are a big thing in Spain. We’ve enjoyed exhibitions at two others that are active in town - Fundación Bancaja and Caixa Forum (where we saw the Egyptian mummies exhibit earlier.) Bancaja, which has a beautiful facility in an old palace in the city centre, used to be a mainstay of our visits. We’ve seen some fabulous exhibits there - most memorably, a couple of big shows of Picasso prints. Sadly, Bancaja, which used to be free, at least on some days, now charges an entrance fee. And the shows on offer aren’t anywhere near as appealing or ambitious.
It was really me who had been anxious to visit the Fundación Mediterranea gallery. The current exhibit is of photographs by a Spanish artist called Pilar Pequeño. Photo exhibits aren’t one of Karen’s favourite things, but she humours me. As it turned out, we both really enjoyed the show. The photos, botanicals, are very sensual and strikingly lit. We both liked the colour photos more than the black and whites, but both were good.
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| Pilar Pequeño |
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| Pilar Pequeño |
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| Pilar Pequeño |
From there, we headed home for the day.
I can’t remember when we first noticed it, but a churro stand, with garish flashing lights, appeared on our street, just below our balcony. Well, we knew this was Fallas-central. With two of the biggest fallases, both sponsored to the tune of hundreds of thousands of euros, a block apart just down the street, plus other smaller displays and portable stages for live music, the neighbourhood draws big crowds at Fallas time. We’re looking forward to our first festival churro.
Friday, 23 February 2024: T&Z-minus-one. Brother Tom and Zena arrive tomorrow for a week-long visit. Yay!
A mild, sometimes sunny but very blustery day today, so just as well it was a day off from running. Winds were forecast to be as high as 45 kph at times.
Karen said she recorded more steps yesterday (counted by her Fitbit) than any day since we arrived, so she was taking a day off and staying home. I worked on some photos, read, did some grocery shopping and made dinner, then went out for a ramble on my own about 4.
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| Fallas bullfight posters that appeared on the bullring recently |
I started off meaning to get some shots of City Hall lit by the late afternoon sun. It’s a pretty impressive building that I haven’t photographed for a few years. I was forgetting they’d set up tall barriers around the area where they let off the firecrackers every day during Fallas time - the mascletás. It fills much of the square in front of City Hall. If I stood between it and the building, I’d be too close to get it into the frame with my widest lens. In any case, the sun wasn’t on it. Duh! So I had a go at the roof line of the post office building across the square instead. Also pretty impressive.
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| Embossed door on north side of City Hall |
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| Central Post Office |
After that, I meandered. I couldn’t tell you where I was half the time, but always came out somewhere I recognized. I ended up over in the area around the Central Market and the Carmen district. My obsession with photographing the narrow streets and pastel-painted buildings in the city’s mediaeval centre continues unabated.
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Taking a picture of Mr. TV Head and whatever tagging or mural appears on the hoarding below him has become an almost annual ritual. He was new the first year we came to the city. He doesn’t look in too bad shape given his age. Some other wall murals around the city that I remember from our early days here have either disappeared entirely or are faded and flaking.
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