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!

Sunny weekend in Valencia

Sunday, February 5, 2023 - Friday morning, I ran, my usual route. 

This was the day we were going to visit CaixaForum at the City of Arts and Sciences to see the British Museum Egypt exhibit. It was my turn to cook, so I prepped in the morning so we could go to the show before our mid-afternoon meal. We set out about 1, biking down to the City. It was a lovely day, sunny and mild - high somewhere in the mid-teens - hardly a breath of wind. A shame to go inside really.

Fundación La Caixa, which operates CaixaForum, is a species of cultural institution not really known in Canada, but fairly ubiquitous here: a privately funded foundation that operates galleries and performance spaces, among other activities. This one is funded by La Caixa (pronounced kah-EEsha), one of the country’s major banks. It took over the under-used Agora building - which looks like a flattened astronomical observatory - a year or so ago.

At least one of La Caixa’s competitors,  Bancaja, has a similar foundation with a major presence in Valencia. (It’s a Valencia-based bank). We’ve seen some great stuff at its gallery, housed in a beautiful baroque palace in the old city. One of the most memorable was an exhibit of naughty Picasso prints from the foundation’s own collection. In the past, it was either free or only a couple of euros. This year, the seniors’ rate has gone up to 4 euros, we noticed - shock, horror! We haven’t gone yet, but I hope we will before leaving the city.

CaixaForum appears to be going for a bigger splash, bringing major exhibits from outside, like the Pharaoh show we saw, and one that just opened on Apollo 11. We could have gone to it too with the tickets we bought for 7 euros each, but we weren’t really interested. The Egypt exhibit gave us our money’s worth, we figured. It was fabulous.

It’s a relatively small show, with excellent curatorial information, some really beautiful pieces, very well presented. The signage and labelling was in Spanish and Valencian, but there was a QR code that gave us access on my phone to English translations of the introductory material for each section. Then we used the camera option in Google Translate to translate labels. We could puzzle out some of the Spanish and Valencian (which has some French influences) but Google Translate was good to have as back-up. It works amazingly well. You take a picture of the text and the app - automatically, in a few seconds - does character recognition and translates the resulting text. I took pictures.

After viewing the exhibit, we wandered around in the building, including going up to the second level where there’s a restaurant. It had a 15 euro menu del dia. It was almost 3 by this time and I was starved. So we decided to postpone my meal until the next day and eat in the restaurant. 

Inside Agora/CaixaForum

The food was generally good, much fancier preparation and presentation than most of the restaurants we go to here. Karen wasn’t crazy about her starter, a weird combination of stuff that included a waffle, made soggy by the mushrooms in a sauce on top. It also wasn’t as described on the menu. Mine was also slightly odd - Vietnamese spring rolls stuffed with hummus - but quite nice. We both had a veal pie - totally unlike an English pub pie, with flaky pastry, and beautifully cooked veg on the side. Brownie with ice cream and not-great “cheesecake” - more a pudding than a real cheesecake - for dessert. The service was good, but the ambience was weird and kind of sterile. We wouldn’t rush back.

We walked home, stopping to take pictures of the City along the way. And stayed in for the rest of the evening.

*

Saturday was beach day. The temperature was headed up to 17C with full sun and no wind, which meant it would probably be quite a bit warmer. I took a day off exercising. We grocery shopped in the morning. I got our dinner on the table by 2:30 and we were off by bike a little after 3. (Our earlier Valenbisi woes seem to be behind us now.)

At the beach, the first Valenbisi station was full. The beach stations are often chocka-block on sunny weekend days. Everybody rides to the beach and drops their bikes.  We rode on to the next, a hundred meters or so along the beach. It only had one spot vacant. We docked my bike and I took off on Karen’s to find an empty spot further along. She started walking down the promenade in the same direction. I had to go a half a kilometer or so to find a spot. Somehow we missed each other. Karen walked all the way to the end of the beach, I walked all the way back to the beginning. Then we both turned around and walked the other way - and finally met up. 

It was as crowded as I remember seeing - pent-up demand for sun and warmth after a week and a half of cool-ish weather, I guess. What must it be like in the summer? Lots of tourists, as always, some crazy enough to be in the water. It was a lively scene. We’d both had enough of walking, so we found a spot to sit on the low stone wall along the promenade, and read and people-watched for a while. 

I also tried my hand at some candid photography of people around us. I’ve always been interested in this kind of street photography, but never had the moxie to try it. With the camera in my lap, though, the LCD screen flipped up so I could look down on it and the camera set to ‘live’ mode, I could at least take pictures without being noticed. I didn’t get any masterpieces, but a couple are kind of interesting.

After 45 minutes or so, we wandered down to the pier and walked part way along it, marveling at the crowds out on the beach. Then we headed for the bikes. We rode to the Maritime Sereria tube stop - about 10 minutes away - and caught a number 7 train to Bailen. It was after 6:30 by the time we got back to Ruzafa. Things were starting to heat up. The cafes were full and noisy. People were streaming into the neighbourhood. Ruzafa, it seems, has become an entertainment draw. 

It was also a full-moon Saturday night, so we expected maximum craziness. I’m sure there was lots of craziness, but our apartment is surprisingly quiet. The street noise - mostly just people talking and shouting in the cafes and bars - is audible but not obtrusive in the front of the flat. Once we’re in the bedrooms, we can’t hear a thing.

Blazing violin

Friday, February 3, 2023 - Wednesday, the day before yesterday, was a very full day for your humble, aged correspondent. 

I ran in the morning, then blogged. Karen said she wanted to bike down to the City of Arts and Sciences and walk back - just for something to do and some exercise - which of course I welcomed. So I prepped my dinner ahead and we set out at about 1:30. We rode down Peris y Valero Avenue, across the bridge and along the other side of the Turia to the City. 

Nothing much has changed there since our last visit a few weeks ago. Still no sculpture displays. We did notice a fourth type of pleasure craft plying the pool in front of the Science Museum - an entirely new type of vessel as far as we know. It's like an over-size paddle board with pedals inset into the board and a post sticking up near the prow with handlebars. You stand on it and pedal as if walking on the spot. It looked exhausting. And pointless.

The shallow pool at the far end of the Science Museum had been drained for whatever reason. Without water in it, you could see how shallow it is - only a few inches at its deepest, I’d guess. The boogie-board daredevils I saw skimming along one of the shallow water courses at Central Park a few weeks ago would have a field day.

Visiting the City reminded us that we’d intended to visit the new-since-2020 CaixaForum to see an exhibit of Egyptian artefacts from the British Museum. That is now planned for today.

Of course, it's impossible for me not to take photographs at this place.

It's a parking lot air vent

Pretty apartment block on Gran Via de Marqués del Turia

By the time we got back, and I’d finished cooking, we’d eaten our meal and I’d showered, it was almost time for me to set out - solo - for my evening activity. The University of Valencia offers a series of free classical music recitals and concerts through the winter, usually at the La Nau Cultural Centre in the old city, occasionally at the Botanical Gardens. I discovered this the last time we were here in 2020 and always meant to go, but never did. This time, I applied online and got one of the free spots for Wednesday’s concert.

It was a recital by a very young violinist, David Ruiz del Canto, a child prodigy who started his professional training when he was only seven years old. He’s 19 now. If I understand the local dialect in the program notes, he’s now studying at the University of Valencia. The recital was held in the baroque Capella de la Sapiencia, a chapel first built in 1498, but completed in its present form in 1737. It’s gorgeous, of course, and was pretty nearly full for the concert. 

Capella de la Sapiencia

Del Canto played a selection of mostly fairly familiar pieces - a movement from a Brahms sonata, “Apres un Reve” by Gabriel Fauré, a short piece by Camille Saint-Saens that I didn’t know, Tzigane by Maurice Ravel. I didn’t recognize the title of the third piece, or the name of its early-20th-century composer, Eugene Ysaye, but thought I recognized the music as soon as he started playing. Turns out, I didn’t.

A slight digression. Years ago, as part of research for some article I was writing, I made a silly little movie. I thought this Ysaye piece was the one I’d used as background music - only in a version played on cello. The weird thing is, when I went back and checked the credits in my movie, it wasn’t the Ysaye piece I’d used at all but  Fauré’s “Apres un Reve.” Weird memory burp.

I wasn’t too impressed with the violinist at first. He seemed tentative and stiff. He’s nervous, I thought, too young. But slowly he got into it. After a nice reception from his audience to the first piece - they could tell that, if nothing else, he had phenomenal technique - he loosened up. By the end he was playing very expressively, almost flamboyantly, gesturing with his body, putting everything he had into it. He played two encores, virtuoso pieces both. After the first, as he and his accompanist were pretending to leave, he was laughing and encouraging the audience to clap and cheer. Cries of “Bravo” rang out, and sure enough, he came back and played another piece. 

It was a good concert, a good experience. I hope to go back next week for a string quartet concert. I’ll maybe try and get there a little earlier next time. I had to sit right at the back. It would be nice to be a little closer to the performers. Karen won’t go because she says she just doesn’t enjoy the music. Too bad.

I grabbed a bike a couple of blocks from the university and was home in ten minutes - in time to watch a little TV with Karen.

*

We’ve started two new Netflix series. We like to have a few on the go so we’re not bingeing on the same stuff all the time. I’d recommend both, with a couple of reservations. 

The Snow Girl (La Chica de Nieve) is in Spanish, although I believe you can watch it dubbed in English if you’re averse to reading subtitles. It’s a child kidnapping story set in Malaga, where Karen and I spent six weeks a few winters back. A little girl is grabbed when she wanders off in a crowd at a Christmas pageant in the city's main square. The first thing that occurred to me was, yeah, this is exactly the kind of crowd scene Spaniards seem to love so much - and here’s why they’re not a great idea. 

The series follows the stories of a young woman journalist who becomes obsessed by the case, a female detective inspector and her colleagues and the mother and father. It jumps back and forth between 2010, when the girl is taken, and 2016 when the case is reopened after an anonymously sent video shows she’s still alive. We think it’s very well done: interesting characters, very nerve wracking, very intense. It’s also fun for us trying to spot parts of the city we recognize.

The other is probably a harder sell for adults. It’s called Wednesday, a reboot of the old Addams Family TV series from spook-meister Tim Burton. It follows the adventures of the troubled teenaged daughter of the original family, Wednesday - "Wednesday's child is full of woe" - transposed to modern times. She’s shipped off to a boarding school for ‘outcasts’ after attempting to murder her younger brother’s tormentors. She does this by dumping piranha fish in the pool where the mean kids are playing water polo - a novel idea. 

It wouldn’t attract us normally - I never watched the 1960s series, thought it was lame - but it got some surprisingly good reviews. And the writing is first rate, at least for the acerbic lead character. The actor who plays her is great fun to watch too. We’ll see if it can hold us. It’s pretty silly, though.

*

Yesterday, Thursday, I did a fast-walk in the morning, the usual route, then worked on some multiple exposure images. Got a couple I don’t hate.

After our mid-afternoon meal, we biked down to the Turia and walked along the park as far as Exposition Bridge, and then hiked up Calle de Colon a ways before turning off to escape the crowds of late afternoon shoppers.

Pont de Mar

Elegant apartment block on Avinguda del Regne de Valencia

And so home for the evening. It’s an exciting life we lead here.

Restaurant fail

Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - I ran Monday in the morning, the usual route, then blogged and  read the paper. Two great long-reads in the Saturday Globe “Opinion” section: an excellent take-down of ChatGPT, and an illuminating backgrounder on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, which the author argues should be as front-of-mind as Ukraine because it has as much potential to create wider regional conflict.

It was a cool day - only 6C when I went out for my run. And the apartment has been cold. It’s most un-Valencia like. Temperatures in Nimes - which we rejected as having too cool and wet a winter climate - and Firle have both been warmer the last few days, at least in the morning and at night. The sun always warms us up in the afternoon here.

I went out again on my own a little after 4. Karen declined to join me, citing the cold. That was unfortunate because it had warmed up nicely by then - to about 10C - and was quite pleasant and sunny with no wind. I biked over to Plaza de Reina, dumped the bike and set off on foot into the neighbourhood to the east of there, called La Seu. It is apparently the oldest barrio in the city.

Side door of Basilica

Cathedral side door, Bishop's Palace

I like the narrow streets and elegant apartment blocks - and the occasional splash of colour from street art. I think it’s a fairly well-to-do area, though, so street art is not quite as well tolerated as it is in Carmen, which it borders. There are also fewer demolished buildings and resulting reconstruction projects with hoarding around them to attract the street artists and taggers.

Santíssim Crist del Salvador

My aim in these walks is always to get lost and find new stuff to look at, and photograph. But as long as I stay between the Turia and the Xativa-Guillem de Castro ring road - which I inevitably do - it’s pretty much impossible anymore to get lost, or find new sights. It’s basically the old city that was surrounded by walls in mediaeval times. The two massive gate towers - Quart and Serrano - are the remnants of those walls. I might find the occasional narrow little street or tiny square I’ve never seen before - or forgotten - and I might occasionally get turned around and not quite know where I am for a few blocks. But it’s all pretty familiar at this point.

Medical museum, poster of exhibit on history of psychiatric care

Of course, I ended up skirting the edge of Carmen before heading home. I can’t seem to stay away from the place. If it’s not older than La Seu, it seems it. It’s certainly grottier.

*

Yesterday, Tuesday, was a cleaning day. Adriana, Lola and Borja’s on-the-ground maintenance person, was coming at 10 in the morning. We cleared out of the apartment about then. We had planned to go out for lunch, but lunch here isn’t until 2 or 2:30, so that would leave us with four hours to kill. It was another really cool morning - supposedly only 4C when we set out, though sunny and not feeling that cold. We were concerned, though, about being outside that long. On a warmer day, we’d have gone somewhere where we could sit in the sun and read. But not this day.

So I came up with the brilliant idea - brilliant as it turned out - of finding a library to go and sit in. We strolled for 40 minutes or so. I took Karen on my fast-walk route, through Central Park and across the pedestrian railway overpass to Joaquin Sorolla station, so she could see the wall murals on the apartment blocks across the street from the station. (The route also had the benefit of being mostly in the sun.)  

Central Park - anybody know what kind of tree?

Then we found a great library, the Biblioteca Pública de València Pilar Faus. It’s about a 20 minute walk from here, just on the other side of Xativa-Guillem de Castro, right beside MuVIM. How many times have we visited that museum, including just the other day, and wandered around in the park it’s set in, and not realized there was a public library there - and a really nice one too?

The place has a long and interesting history. The original structure, of which little remains, was erected  in the early 15th century as a psychiatric hospital - one of the first, if not the first, anywhere. The story goes that Friar Joan Gilabert was on his way to deliver a guest sermon at the cathedral when he witnessed children harassing and stoning an indigent lunatic. The mentally ill in those days - much as in present-day Ontario - were left to fend for themselves on the street. Friar Gilabert stopped the abuse, lectured the children, then went on to the cathedral where he delivered such a powerful sermon advocating for an insane asylum that the good burghers of Valencia began construction on it the following year, 1409. It would become the Hospital of the Poor Innocents. 

The present building, with many later additions and renovations was put up in the early 16th century at the time all the hospitals in the city were amalgamated into the General Hospital of Valencia. It was designed in the shape of a Greek cross with four ward wings on each of two floors, and a dome at the centre. That design and most of the pillars supporting the second floor remain. It served as a hospital until 1960. In the 1970s, it was remodelled to serve as the central library in a city-wide system with branches in most barrios and exurbs. 

There are lots of tables for students and researchers to work at, plus chairs to sit and read in. Also, quite nice washrooms, always a bonus. The lounging chairs, at a glance, didn’t look all that comfortable - curved wood with no padding - but were, surprisingly so. We settled in near the front door. Karen had newspapers to read on her tablet, so was likely gone for an hour or more. I started browsing the special display shelves nearby. 

The first thing I picked up was a book called Gran libro de los retratos de animales. I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was. It appeared to be reproductions of old-master portraits of animals dressed as humans. Each was accompanied by serious-sounding art-historical notes. The paintings looked real - you could see the cracks in the paint. It wasn’t until I gave myself a shake, did a little research and looked more closely at the cover that I realized the book was a spoof, the recent work of a Croatian children’s book illustrator, Svjetlan Junaković. (He’s won awards.) I started to twig when I recognized some of the portraits. They’re all take-offs on real old master portraits, including a froggy version of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” This one, of a rhino, is one of my favourites. The book is also available in English.

I leafed through a few other things, including a book in English about a Japanese woodblock print master. But the one that really grabbed me was a 2016 volume by the American photo-journalist Steve McCurry entitled Sobre la Lectura (On Reading - it’s also available in English.) You wouldn’t think a bunch of photos of people reading would be particularly interesting, but they’re so beautifully made, and so beautifully reproduced - as good as I’ve seen in any photo book - that they really pull you in. McCurry took them over many years in many places, some quite exotic. Worth a look if your library has it.

I eventually got bored and started exploring the library, then taking pictures of it. Then I left Karen to her newspapers and wandered outside to take more pictures. The shelves full of fluted column stumps I always assumed to be detritus from Roman ruins, but I’m now not sure they aren’t building materials from the old hospital. The little sunken plaza by the shelving the stonework is stored in has now been taken over as a skate park, we noticed the last time we were here. On this day, there was only one wannabe skater boy. His tricks were unimpressive.

It was almost one by the time we left the library. Our idea was to try a recommended Thai restaurant over in Carmen, but I noticed when I looked it up again in Google Maps that it wasn’t open today - only Wednesday to Sunday. We went to Carmen anyway, but a lot of other restaurants were closed too, and those we found open with menus del dia didn’t suit for one reason or another. So we walked back over to Plaza de Rodgrigo Botet, near city hall square. And there, we had our first really bad Valencia restaurant experience. 

We chose a place called Bar Transits on a little street leading into Rodrigo Botet. They had a €12 menu del dia - the usual deal: three courses plus drink. We sat outside, the only patrons on the small terrace. There wasn’t a lot on the menu that appealed, but there was a secondo (main) listed as manitas de cerdo. Cerdo is pork. Google Translate gave me “handyman” as the English for manita. The more linguistically gifted may see what’s coming. 

The primeros - cream of mushroom soup for Karen, warm bacon salad for me - were fine, good even. The wine wasn’t chilled properly but perfectly drinkable. The service should have been the first give-away. It was perfunctory, as it so often is in Spain, but also simply disappeared for long periods. We waited for about 20 minutes after finishing the starters - almost unheard of at lunch place here in our experience. Then a different waiter appeared with our mains. Reader, it was pig’s trotter! 

Pig’s trotters are probably my most hated cut of meat. Well, calling it a cut of meat is generous. It never occurred to us that they would serve such a thing in a Spanish restaurant. Pig’s trotters in Canada are bad enough - they at least have some meat there. These had none, nada, zero - just fat, bone and gristle swimming in a gravy that soaked the paltry few fried potatoes it was served with. We were outraged. 

When our original wait person reappeared after another long wait, I told her as politely as I could that we were not happy, that the dish was “sin carne totalmente” - “completely without meat” in Spanglish. She apologized and asked what we wanted for dessert. At this point, Karen broke in, exasperated, and asked for the bill. She just wanted to leave.

A few minutes later, an older woman came out and tried to tell us that “manitas” never had meat - nunca. Then  and why would they serve them? And why would anyone order them, we wondered? We insisted on the bill, knowing full well that Spanish restaurants do not have the same attitude to customers as good Canadian restaurants do and that we would be charged the full price despite our perfectly reasonable complaint. Which we were. So we paid about $35 for a bowl of soup, a salad and two glasses of wine. Mind you, you could easily pay that for the same thing in a Canadian restaurant. But Bar Transits will not get a good review from us on TripAdvisor.

We went home and I made us bacon and tomato sandwiches.

Late in the afternoon, I walked back over to Central Park alone and spent 40 minutes taking silly pictures of flowers and leaves and water - fodder for my multi-exposure experiments. Which I haven’t got to yet.