Hangin' in the 'hood

Saturday, 10 February 2024: It didn’t start off to be a very nice day today, sun and cloud - mostly cloud - low teens. And windy. I bundled up and went out on my own in the morning for a walk around the neighbourhood. I tried to walk down blocks we don’t usually walk down, but it’s difficult. We’ve spent so much time in Ruzafa over the years. 

Ruzafa: random bit of street art

     Still, I did see some interesting little businesses I hadn’t noticed before, including an artists’ studio/gallery/atelier over on Carrer de Buenos Aires with some interesting-looking abstracts in the window. The artist - or an artist - was working on a painting at the back. 

     There are a lot of interesting arty businesses in the neighbourhood: ateliers teaching people how to paint or make pottery, small art galleries, eccentric little shops selling odd mixes of books, art, clothes, records, knick-knacks. How they stay in business is anybody’s guess. I’m sure many don’t last long. I really should take a notebook sometime and make an inventory of the more interesting little specialty shops. One I like that has been around for a few years sells nothing but berets that have been painted with funky designs. It’s rarely open.

    And then, slightly less interesting, there are the countless curated “vintage” shops, and bicycle rental agencies. The second-hand shops are a cut above the charity shops in Britain in terms of display and selection, but they’re also priced accordingly. 

The bike rental places  obviously cater to visitors. But the city-run Valenbisi bike-sharing service, while mainly for residents, is also available to visitors. You can buy a one-day ticket for €3.99 or a one-week pass for €13.30. It’s cheaper than most of the private rental agencies, and you don’t have to worry about locking your bike when you stop - although you can lock them. Instead, you just turn your bike in and get another when you’re ready to ride again.

After lunch/dinner, we went out for a walk together. We started off heading for the centre, thinking it wasn’t going to be sunny or warm enough - and a bit too windy - to sit anywhere comfortably. Once we were out, though, we realised it was warmer and sunnier than we’d thought, so we headed for Turia park. We ended up, as so often, at the foot of Carrer de Ciril Amaros at the Bridge of the Sea and the Bridge of Flowers. This time we sat on a sunny bench on the Bridge of Flowers - it has planters from one end to the other, crammed with geraniums, mostly bright red. The sun went in and out a few times but it was warm enough that we shed a layer and sat reading happily for an hour.

I’m reading a book called The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk. It’s his first novel, but he’s won prizes as a short-story writer. It’s an historical adventure with a fantasy element, set largely in Constantinople in the 1760s. Highly recommended…if you quite like that sort of thing. He’s a fine writer with an interesting cast of mind.

     Two somewhat odd-sounding movies I’ve been reading about recently that I want to see. A new Wim Wenders film called Perfect Days, about the daily routines of a caretaker who looks after public toilets in Tokyo. The guy’s a sort of Zen figure. Nothing much happens in the film, but it sounds intriguing. And it’s up for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar. 

     The other is The Taste of Things by the French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung. He made a lovely film Karen and I saw years ago called The Scent of Green Papaya - also nominated for Best Foreign Picture. The new one is another in which little happens, except a lot of food preparation and eating apparently. It stars Juliette Binoche, which is never a bad thing in my opinion. Given that our repertory cinema in London is apparently on the ropes, my chances of seeing either seem slim. 

     We’ve started two new streaming series. We had been watching some old and slightly (or wholly) cheesy American shows. So these two are a nice change. Both look good. Expats, a four-part, Hong Kong-set psychological thriller starring Nicole Kidman, is brand-new on Prime.  One Day, also new, is on Netflix. It’s a British-made dramedy about mis-matched and unrequited young lovers, based on a novel by David Nicholls (whoever he is). 

Sunday, 11 February 2024: I went out for a run this morning. I was going to just do another fast walk, but then I got out there and felt like running. Well, jogging. Well, trudging. It was cold - supposedly 10C, but feeling colder with the wind. A short route: about 4K, around the railway stations. Gotta build back up slowly.

    In the afternoon, I went out again on my own for a walk around the neighbourhood.  Karen said it was too cool and cloudy. I had downloaded a little audio recording app to my phone with the idea I could take voice notes and begin my inventory of odd-ball shops in Ruzafa. Everything was closed, of course. Or almost everything. I did take note of a few places and photographed a couple mentioned above. I’d forgotten the beret painter also painted other kinds of hats - but mostly berets.

Ruzafa: random bit of wall art

     Cluttered “antique” shops are more a thing in the neighbourhood just east of the Central Market and south of Carmen, but I did find this one in Ruzafa, a kind of flea market in a shop front. Who buys this stuff?

On the mend

Thursday, 8 February 2024: I think I’m on the mend. I was a little dozy in the morning again, but in the afternoon, we went out for lunch, a walk, a (brief) museum visit and bike ride. So I can’t be too sick anymore.

Karen points out that we have so far gone back to restaurants that we discovered last year three out of the four times we’ve been out. It shows a lack of imagination and adventurousness, I suppose - but has produced good results. 

Today, it was Thai Mongkut in Carmen. There is also a branch in Ruzafa, about five minutes away, but we wanted a leg-stretch. So we hiked over there, about a half-hour walk through the centre.

City Hall Square, looking north

    

Market Square, Church of St. John of the Market

     I’m pretty sure that when we came here last year, they did not have a menu del dia. They do now and it’s excellent value: €15.90 for three courses and one drink.

There is no choice of starter. Everybody gets a trio of appetisers: a spring roll, chicken skewer in peanut sauce, and a ground chicken and calamari croquette. All excellent - and the croquette wasn’t fishy at all. Karen had a chicken and vegetable main over rice, I had Pad Thai. Both were very good and surprisingly generous with the meat. Dessert was a very firm and chocolate-y chocolate mousse with nuts crumbled on top. The wine was okay. We had an extra glass each. Total bill: €39-something - just under CDN$60. It’s more than we’ve spent elsewhere, but the food and ambience were also a cut above.

The service was fine. Our rather exotic-looking (possibly trans) main wait person spoke English, but seemed a little disapproving that we didn’t try harder in Spanish. I don’t blame her. We’re terrible. 

Once again, we were seated beside a table with a young baby, a cute and happy little soul, being cooed over by an indulgent auntie, I think. It’s an interesting space. We were seated against a glass wall that looked into the lobby of an apartment building with exposed stone arches that looked very old - 16th century maybe.

Carmen, previously unnoticed square

After lunch, we walked out to the river. It was a little overcast and breezy so sitting in the sun with our books wasn’t a great option. We walked instead over to the Museo del Bellas Artes, the historical art museum. It’s always free, so you can dip in and out. 

We looked at a special exhibit about the Spanish Academy in Rome, a place that apparently functions something like our Banff Centre for the Arts. Spanish artists go there for a period - not sure how long - at somebody else’s expense, and work on projects. The exhibit included examples of the work they’ve produced over the 150 years the institution has existed, plus narrative stuff about how it operates and its importance. 

You’d have to be a serious student of the Spanish art scene to really get a lot out of it. There were a few interesting pieces, but much of it, to my eye, was kind of mediocre. We didn’t linger long. 

I had wanted to look again at my favourite painting in the permanent collection, a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch of the Scourging of Christ. When we came a few years ago, it was missing from where it’s usually displayed. A small sign said it was out for restoration. Last year, it was back and looked even better than I remembered - restoration complete presumably. But today, it was gone again, replaced by the same sign, saying it was out for restoration. It’d be interesting to know the story behind that.

We walked part of the way home, then grabbed bikes and rode the rest of the way.  

Royal Gardens (next door to museum)

Friday, 9 February 2024: I went for a 4K fast walk this morning, but it seemed to take more out of me than usual. I guess I’m still recuperating from my suspected bout of Covid.

      Still, I later did a shop over at Consum, made dinner, read quite a bit of the latest issue of New Yorker magazine - and wrote in this blog, so I can’t be too sick.

Sick in Valencia

 Wednesday, 7 February 2024: I’m coming back to this after a hiatus of several days to try and concentrate my brain on something other than how crappy I’m feeling. I’m pretty sure I have Covid, again. 

It started about a week ago as just a simple head cold, not that bad. But as with the last time I had Covid two years ago, the cold symptoms tailed off after a few days, but the fatigue, the low-grade headaches and chills - and some possibly related, possibly unrelated digestive issues - have lingered. It obviously could be a lot worse. There’s no sore throat or coughing. Nothing in the chest. I just sleep a lot. 

Karen seems to be fine, but then we’re pretty sure she had Covid in England before Christmas, so presumably has good immunity as a result.

In the meantime, we naturally haven’t been doing much. 

Last Friday, before the worst of the fatigue set in, we took the tube down to the City of Arts & Sciences in the evening for an advertised fireworks display. It was the kick-off of preparations for the Fallas Festival. The niñots, miniature versions of the fallas, the giant painted styrofoam and wood tableaus that are displayed at street corners during the festival and burned on the last night, went on display at the Science Museum. There was some kind of inauguration ceremony inside the museum. Then fireworks came afterwards. 

I texted the tourist office and asked what time the fireworks would start. The person who responded told me 7 pm. So we arrived just before 7 and took up a position across from the museum - along with hundreds of others who had evidently been told the same thing. We ended up waiting almost two hours! The inauguration ceremony must have gone on longer than planned. We attended a similar event a few years ago, and the local politicians and festival organisers droned on and on interminably. At least we didn’t have to listen to them this time. But it got colder and colder as we stood there. 

When the fireworks finally came a little before 9, they were pretty spectacular. Worth that  long a wait? Questionable. It’s scary to think how much this city must spend on fireworks, considering this is just the first of several night-time displays over the next month and a half, plus the lunchtime mascletás - organized firecracker volleys that, for reasons known only to the Spanish, draw huge crowds to city hall square daily during the festival week and the week before.

     Another day, we walked down to the Turia park and sat in the sun by the fountains in front of the Palau de la Música and read. I walked up to the music hall and around it and took some pictures, which I’ve tried blending - with limited success.

Palau de la Música

Palau de la Música

     Yesterday, after a good night’s sleep, I made the mistake of thinking I was well enough to do some exercise and went out for a fast walk. I slept much of the rest of the day. I sleep well at night too, but it seems I need even more. 

Today, we had planned to go out for lunch and then to the beach - it’s meant to get up to 22C with full sun. But I’m not sure I’ve got the energy. We’ll see.

Later: We didn’t go out for lunch - maybe tomorrow - but we did go down to the beach. We left it a little late, though, arriving after 4 with not much sun left. We took the tube and tram to get there - just to give the old, sick body a break. We walked the promenade and sat on the retaining wall for a while reading. But then it started to cloud over - it’s supposed to be cloudy tomorrow - and a chilly off-shore wind picked up. So we headed back by the same route. 

Not much of an outing, but something. And I seem to have tolerated it fine.

The sun goes in, the sun comes out

 Sunday, 28 January 2024: The weather has turned. It only got up to 14C today and clouded over in the afternoon. It’s forecast to go to 16 tomorrow but still cloudy. The next two weeks mostly - mostly -  look pretty decent.

On cleaning day this week, Wednesday, we’re tentatively planning a day trip to a little place called Buñol, to the west of the city, about a 70-minute commuter train journey. It has a castle and some nature walks. Frustrated with the inadequacies of the Renfe (state railway monopoly) website, I went out in the morning and rode over to Estacio de Nord to see what I could glean.  The ride over there was bracingly cool.

The Renfe website’s trip planner applet had said there were no trains available to this place, but I found other pages that clearly showed the route of Cercanía Linea 3 (commuter line 3) going from Nord to Buñol. ‘Que the f__k!?’ - as someone (not saying who) might say in Spanglish. 

The station is under renovation so it’s a mess. But the first board I looked at showed a train arriving from Buñol and another leaving shortly afterwards. I then approached a sullen-looking employee in the station’s temporary “customer service” office. He said he spoke a little English but then treated me as if I was an idiot when he couldn’t understand my fairly simple question: ‘Where do you buy tickets for the commuter trains?’ When I said it in Spanish, he understood but I was still an idiot. He waved contemptuously towards the ticket wickets - which I had thought were only for longer-distance routes. Well, now I know.

It warmed up briefly in the middle of the day and we sat outside in the sun for a while.

From our balcony

From our balcony

    But when we went out in the afternoon, planning to ride down to the City of Arts & Sciences, I found I’d seriously under-dressed for the weather. The temperature had dropped a degree or two, clouds had rolled in, and a little breeze came up that cut through my three layers of wool and cotton. I called off the ride, we ditched the bikes and just walked briefly around the neighbourhood.

We filled in some of the rest of the afternoon with Game 2 in our Winter Scrabble Season. We’re now tied, 1-1, but both games were decided by minuscule margins. We’ve both become very defensive players.

Monday,  29 January 2024: High, heavy overcast, 10C. A lazy run in the morning - down Regne de Valencia to the ring road, over to the Gran Via and back up to Ruzafa: less than 4K. I’ll have to modify that route to bump up the distance.

After lunch, we dressed more warmly than we had the day before and rode bikes down to the City of Arts & Sciences. The previous afternoon and evening I’d started experimenting again with blending images in Photoshop to create abstracts. Perhaps an indication that I’m already getting bored with the other photographic subject matter on offer. In any case, I wanted to get more raw material for blended images, specifically some detail shots of the wild architecture at the City. So off we went. 

Blend of two images

Blend of two images

Biking was fine, despite the cooler, cloudy weather. Karen’s plan was to sit on a bench and read while I wandered around taking photos. I worried she might be chilly. And she was. A bit of a breeze had sprung up and she could feel it on her back where she sat in a fairly open area near the Palau de les Arts. I spent 30 minutes or so taking pictures, then we wandered around the Science Museum and over by Caixa Forum - and eventually made our way to the Linea 10 tube stop across from the Aquarium. We got off at the Ruzafa stop this time and walked home through the neighbourhood. Here are a few of the pictures I took - before I started monkeying with them.

Science Museum

Palau de les Arts

Murals under Montolivet Bridge near Palau de les Arts

Tuesday, 30 January 2024: Another cool, cloudy day. I did a fast walk in the morning - the same route I’d run the day before. It’s a more appropriate distance for the walk. We spent most of the rest of the day indoors, other than a couple of forays to grocery shop, once to Mercadona (just me), once across the street to Consum (with Karen). 

     I worked on my image blends much of the day. Here are some of the crazy results.

In the evening, I had a concert, one of the free University of Valencia recitals. This one was at a different university building in the old city than the one I’d gone to a couple of times last year, but it was easy to find. I rode over. Once again, I failed to follow the correct procedure for securing a seat. When they asked for my name to cross it off their list of registered ticket-holders, I had to say I hadn't signed up. “Espere,” she said and indicated a place beside her. “Wait.” When all the legitimate ticket-holders clustered in the courtyard above the concert venue had been counted, it was clear they had extra capacity and I and a few others were allowed to go down the stairs and claim a seat. Once again, I had to sit at the back.

The soloist was a mandolinist named Jordi Sanz. The name sounds Catalonian - or Valencian - but he did his training in Murcia, a province well south of here, and a long way from Barcelona. Some of the musicians I saw last year in this series were still training or had only recently finished. This guy already has a small international performing career underway and also teaches. He was accompanied by a pianist, Maria Abad, whose resume was even more impressive. She was an artist-in-residence at St. Thomas University in PEI at one point. 

The music was all by a Spanish composer, Felix de Santos (1874-1946). He’s listed in the Spanish Wikipedia as a mandolinist and teacher. Evidently, he also composed for his instrument and is still revered by other mandolinists. The performances were very virtuosic, the music all attractive. Definitely worth hearing. The room was interesting too, it’s called the Room of Murals. There was an art exhibit on the walls - of large-scale photographs taken, it looked like, in North Africa. Maybe that’s why it’s called the Room of Murals. But there was also an exposed stone wall behind the performers. which I’m assuming is of some archaeological importance. I’ll have to go back some time when there isn’t a concert on and explore.

It was after 8:30 by the time I got home.

Wednesday, 31 January 2024: Cleaning day. We went to Buñol by train to look at the castle - and get out of Adriana’s hair. 

Purchasing train tickets was no problem. As I had learned on my earlier reconnaissance trip, the cercanía routes are considered “medium distance” so I lined up at that set of wickets in the entrance hall. I was waited on by a polite and friendly young-ish woman - as opposed to the usual grumpy middle-aged man - and understood most of what she said to me in Spanish. The train was already on the platform. By the time it left a few minutes late at 10:30, it was still mostly empty. How do they afford to run these routes? I said it was a 70-minute ride, and it can be, but this was a fast train and got us there in just over an hour.

We were struck right away by how dead the town seemed. It has apparently been a place that well-off Valencians come to in the summer to escape the heat, although at this time of year, the climate appears to be about the same as in the city - cloudy and cool on this day. All the houses seemed to be shuttered. Many businesses were closed. We followed signs for the castle, about a 20-minute walk away, and found it without too much trouble. It’s open all year and entry is free. There’s even a free audio guide you can download to your phone. We found it a bit dry, with far too much detail about stuff we weren’t particularly interested in.

Apparently it's a thing with the people living in houses in the castle to make these mask-cum-plant pots from recycled water or bleach jugs.

       There have been fortifications here - near the old border between the kingdoms of Valencia and Castille, and the camino real, the royal road - since the 11th century, but most of what remains today dates from the 15th, and has been heavily built over and then restored in the 20th. Its most interesting feature is that at one point in the castle’s history when it was all but abandoned - in the 19th century, I think - ordinary people moved into it and built homes in its precincts. They’re still there and lived in today, lining the main plaza between two of the surviving towers, snuggled up against the castle walls. 

      We gave up on the audio guide fairly quickly and just enjoyed clambering over the battlements and taking pictures (me) of the views out over the old city’s snarrow, winding, up-and-down streets and tile roofs. We probably spent 45 minutes at the castle, maybe an hour. Then wandered out in what seemed the logical direction given what we could see of the town from the castle towers. Next on our itinerary was lunch. 

Of course, we got hopelessly lost, and weren’t anywhere near the areas where we might find a restaurant. Eventually, we resorted to Google Maps and found our way to the town’s commercial centre. The restaurants were not appealing, or they were closed. We couldn’t get over how shut-down the whole town seemed to be. We wondered if it might be a half-day closing day - although that wouldn’t explain why shops were shuttered in the morning when we first arrived. In the end, we decided to just head back to Valencia and eat at home.

Spotted on the walk to Buñol train station

It was a long-ish - 30 minute - and fairly boring walk back to the train station. We waited for about 15 minutes for the next rain and were back home before 4 - where I rustled us up a quick and simple meal that we agreed was probably better than anything we would have got at a restaurant in Buñol.

Thursday, 1 February 2024: Hooray! The sun is back. It’s been a grey and cool few days here. Well, cool by Valencia standards.

I ran in the morning, a slightly truncated City of Arts & Sciences route that I extemporised in order to avoid waiting for a traffic light. I turned on to Carrer de l'Escultor Josep Capuz (named for a not terribly illustrious local sculptor) and then ended up somehow at Avenue of the Silver, so ran up it towards home.  

Today was going-out-for-lunch day in Valencia. And we did. I suggested we go back to a Japanese place we’d liked last year, Sake Restaurante in Eixample. I’d forgotten it was such good value. The menu del dia lunch is five courses with one drink for €10.95. I had miso soup to start, Vietnamese spring rolls for seconds. Karen had cucumber salad for starters and some other kind of spring roll for seconds. We both had fried rice with chicken and veal in plum sauce for third and fourth. One catch: no wine, only tiny bottles of beer or soft drinks. I had a beer, Karen a coke. We forgot that dessert was included and didn’t understand when they asked if we wanted it, and said no. Duh! It was still about as good value as you could find. A total of €21.90 or about CDN$33.

After lunch we walked down to the Turia and sat in the sun on one of the benches in the park below the Bridge of the Sea. We stayed for about an hour and then walked home along Ciril Amaros St. And that was pretty much the day.