Thursday, February 9, 2023 - Climate Change is starting to get personal. After my last post, in which I complained about uncharacteristically rainy weather here in Valencia, Shelley Boyes reminded me that last year she endured 25 days straight of rain in Javea, which is just down the coast. So, is climate change ruining one of the northern hemisphere’s most benign winter climates? I sure hope not, but it begins to look that way.
Meanwhile, our forecast has improved minimally in the short term - it’s actually sunny today, if still cool - but, where we were previously promised a nice week to finish out our time here, now the prognosticators are saying it won’t be as mild or as dry as they originally said. Firle, is looking better and better, with less rain than here the week we arrive back in England, and temperatures similar to what we’ve had the last several days here - low teens. We’ll hope it holds to that.
We haven’t done a lot the last couple of days. The cool, wet weather has been a factor, but we’ve also been further limited by Karen tweaking her knee the other day.
Tuesday was unexpectedly fine, if cool. I ran in the morning, blogged much of the rest of the morning and early afternoon.
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| WHAT IS THIS TREE?! It's everywhere here... |
After our mid-afternoon dinner, we did get out for a walk. Karen wanted to stick as much as possible to the sun, so we walked down the north side of the Gran Via to the Turia, then cut over towards Calle Regne de Valencia and found another street with some sun, which we followed until we had to turn off to go home.
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| Doorway spotted on the Gran Via |
That was it for the day. Other than mostly fruitless attempts to make my multiple-exposure images work. I got one that I’m sort of okay with. I'm thinking of calling it "Rose of Paradise"…
Yesterday, Wednesday, was pretty miserable in the morning, with a few hours of misty rain and cool temperatures. Just as well I was taking a day off from exercising.After our mid-afternoon meal, I went out on my own - Karen wanted to give her knee a rest. I meandered, down Calle de Colon first, ducking into a couple of shops, including the big Corte Ingles at the bottom of the street. The third-floor men’s department has a bunch of designer boutiques with absurd prices. Massimo Dutti, across the street, a Spanish chain - despite the Italian name - has much more interesting clothes and way better prices. But nothing was purchased, nor will be.
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| Plaza of Alphonse the Magnanimous |
I came out of the Corte Ingles at the Plaza of Alphonse the Magnanimous, with its grand statue of a mounted James I, King of Aragon, Mallorca, Valencia and Count of Barcelona, aka James the Conqueror, the guy who drove the Moors out of Spain in the 13th century. The sculpture was made by one Agapit Vallmitjana i Barbany in the middle of the 19th century. The building across the street, which I’ve always admired is the Palace of Justice.
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| James the Conqueror - vanquisher of Moors |
From there, I wandered over to the University of Valencia’s old-city precinct and the La Nau Cultural Centre. This was the first building of the then newly constituted university at the end of the 15th century. It has been built over many times since then, most notably in the 19th century when the cloister with its beautiful columns was added. The statue in the middle of the cloister is of Juan Luis Vives (1492 - 1540), a Valencian-born humanist, philosopher and educator.
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| La Nau cloister from mezzanine |
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| La Nau cloister, mezzanine |
The latest comprehensive renovation and restoration was completed in 1999. Today La Nau is a cultural centre with performance halls, like the Capella Sapiencia that I went to to hear a violinist last week, lecture rooms, exhibit halls, and administrative offices. The exhibit you can see in the arcade on the cloister’s mezzanine level is photographs of Ukrainian refugees escaping the country.
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| Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters |
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| La Nau |
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| La Nau Street - Cultural Centre on right |
Next stop: the Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters (Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas), a rococo mansion with some of the most ornate exterior decorations I’ve ever seen. It was rebuilt for the family of the marquis, starting in 1740. Today it houses the national ceramics museum. Many of the rooms have been restored to their gaudy 18th century splendour. We’ve visited it a few times, and no doubt will again if anybody new ever comes to visit us while we’re in Valencia. On this day, I was mainly interested in photographing the exterior decorations.
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| Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters - carvings over main door |
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| Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters |
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| Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters |
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| Palace of the Marquis of Two Waters |
From there, I grabbed a bike and headed home.
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| Karen waiting for her lunch at Thai Mongkut |
I ran this morning. At about 1:30 we headed out for our weekly restaurant meal. Today, it was a special treat - not our usual cheap menu del dia, but lunch at a highly-regarded Thai restaurant, Thai Mongkut, in the Carmen neighbourhood. It was very good, as good Thai food as we’ve had in a long time. We had spring rolls and tempura veg for starters, and a yellow curry and beef in oyster sauce for mains. With two glasses of wine each, it was almost exactly twice as much as we’ve been spending to this point.
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| Catholic University of Valencia |
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| Catholic University of Valencia |
Karen’s knee was paining her on the walk home. I can always find things to photograph in Carmen. Most of these were taken of or near the Catholic University of Valencia, which is housed partly in this beautiful gothic building, reminiscent of Oxbridge colleges.  |
| Near Catholic University |
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| Somewhere in Carmen |
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| Somewhere in Carmen - the Lady of the Paella Pan |
Karen was in considerable discomfort by the time we got home - enough so that she broke down and took an extra strength Tylenol. I’m assuming we’re in for the day…but you never know, I might go out again. (No, I’m not.)
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