Rain, rain, go away!

Tuesday, February 7, 2023 - Little to report for the last two days, and few pics. 

I ran Sunday morning. We had a long video chat with Caitlin in the middle of the afternoon - about the time we had planned to go for a bike ride down to the City of Arts and Sciences to sit in the last of the sun we’ll be seeing for a while. It was too late for that when we finished with Caitlin, so we just walked over to Central Park (only a few blocks away). We sat on a bench in the late sun for a while, reading, then walked for a bit.

Uncharacteristically rainy weather arrived yesterday. The original forecasts called for a high probability of rain all day, every day, right through next weekend. It has improved a little since then, but not much. Milder, drier weather will return, we’re told, for our last week in Valencia. (We leave February 18.) Firle and Nimes (home to Ms. Boyes this winter) both, again, showed better weather than here. O Valencia!

I did a fast walk in the morning yesterday, Monday. It was cold and damp. Then spent more time spinning my wheels trying to get some multiple exposures to work. This is the only one I don’t hate.

For dinner, I made a variation of a traditional Valencian dish: arroz horno - baked rice. Most versions call for pork meat, blood sausage, pancetta, chickpeas, tomato and an unpeeled head of garlic. You pre-fry the meat, then the grated tomato and Valencian-style short-grain rice, with seasonings (smoked paprika, turmeric, salt, pepper). Transfer rice, chickpeas  and tomato mixture to a round ceramic oven-proof dish, pour in broth steeped with garlic, arrange meat and slices of tomato on top with the garlic in the centre, and bake. Here’s the recipe I started with. 

Mine had a few mods: chicken instead of pork meat, no sausage (and certainly not blood sausage - blech!), bacon instead of pancetta, a few peeled garlic cloves instead of an unpeeled head (they were delicious - had forgotten how great baked garlic is), canned tomatoes instead of grated fresh. It worked quite well, I thought. Karen, of course, is trying to limit her intake of refined carbs, and short-grain rice like the Valencian rice I used have an even higher glycemic index than long-grain, so this dish is unlikely to become a staple in our home. Still, I could make a batch for my evening “snacks.” 

I was disappointed to discover that all the tickets for the next of the free concerts at La Nau were gone when I tried to reserve one online. It’s the one I was most looking forward to, a string quartet. I will endeavor to book as early as possible for the last two before we leave. One is a brass quintet - not my favourite thing, but worth a try. The other is a clarinet trio.

Karen and I played Scrabble in the late afternoon. (What an exciting life we lead!) Karen won, her first in a few games. Our scores have been remarkably close recently - within a few points and going right down to the endgame in most cases. In one, in which Karen had been leading all game, I beat her by three points based on subtracting the value of letters she had left in her hand, and adding them to my score because I went out first. We even had one tie!

By the time we’d finished playing, I had a bad case of cabin fever and decided to go out for a ramble - damn the weather. Karen needed tea and we’d located a tea shop over in the old city, so I walked over there. It was cool, with a very fine, misty rain, but not entirely unpleasant. Lots of people were still out. I even saw people, bundled up, sitting in cafes. The tea shop was cute, had what we wanted and the sales clerk even spoke English - I thanked her for that.

City Hall

I took some night shots around city hall square on the way home. I thought of biking the rest of the way but remembered a warning I’d heard that Valenbisi bikes had a tendency to slide on wet pavements. I could see how that would be as even walking sometimes feels unsafe when the sidewalks are even slightly wet. If they’re polished stone, as they are in some places in the centre of the city, they’re particularly slippery.

Central post office

The weather, at least today, has turned out much better than was forecast. As I write, we have an almost completely blue sky, bright sun, and temps in the low teens. But the rain is supposedly back tomorrow - and for the rest of the week. Drat!