Epilogue: Escape from Europe

19 March 2020 - We're home, in self-isolation. As a friend said to me recently - by email, of course - "What times we live in!"

Our stay in Valencia ended on a somewhat fraught note. When we arrived at the airport last Saturday to catch a Ryanair flight back to England - with Caitlin, Bob and Louis in tow - we learned from online sources that the Spanish government was about to order an Italian-style lock-down. At that point, we didn't know exactly what it would mean or when it would come into effect, so weren't too worried. We were taken a bit by surprise, though. 

We'd been monitoring the situation in Spain and Valencia. It was clear it was getting worse. Madrid and Barcelona, not surprisingly, were bearing the brunt, but there was also a smaller number of confirmed cases, and one death, in Valencia province, which includes the city. But Spain was nothing like Italy. We thought. 

Amstel fallas at corner of Calles Sueca and Literati Azorin

Mahou fallas at corner of Calle Cuba and Literati Azorin 

Some measures had already been taken. Fallas, the big end-of-winter festival was cancelled about three days before we left, although we didn't realize right away. The neighbourhood Fallas organizations and big corporate sponsors had begun erecting their sculptural tableaux in squares and at street corners. It's always a fascinating process to watch. But on the second-to-last morning, I noticed at one site the tableau had been partly dismantled. I thought it was just to make repairs, but now think they were starting to tear down. We also noticed that the mascletás, the "noise fireworks" they let off at city hall square every day at 2 pm during the festival, had stopped. 

Mahou fallas: detail

Mahou fallas

Fallas brings an estimated €500 million economic benefit to the city. That's about $750 million Canadian! A lot of it, probably most, would be lost. There was still a week to go when they cancelled. That last week is the most important, with the most activities and events, and the period for which most visitors come to the city.

Mahou fallas

At the airport that Saturday, we were able to check in, although with some delay. They loaded the plane late but everything still seemed fine. Then we sat on the runway. The pilot told us that because we were late pulling back from the gate, we'd lost our take-off slot. We were still fairly oblivious. In the end, it was about 90 minutes late taking off - but did take off.

It was only when we got to England that we heard the Spanish government had pulled the trigger on the lock-down shortly after we took off. That said, it's not clear we would have been stranded even if we'd been leaving later. A friend of a friend of Karen's got out of Malaga in the south of Spain as late as this Friday.

The photographs above were taken not far from our flat on the day Caitlin, Bob and Louis were arriving. It's a park in a triangular block - two streets at right angles, one running diagonally between them - bounded on all sides by mid-rise apartment blocks. I photographed the street art a few years ago, and went back this year to see what, if anything, had changed. It struck me that it was a quintessentially Valencian - or maybe just big-city Spanish - scene. The grottiness of the space, which is used as a dog park and is littered with dog shit, juxtaposed with the beautiful redbud trees in full bloom and the bright wall murals. You can only get into this space through a gated laneway off one of the streets, so it offers a quiet, unsupervised place for street artists to practice their craft.

My beautiful daughter, Caitlin, on the terrace of our flat

My handsome son-in-law, Bob, who claims I never photograph him

Mummy and Louis at a restaurant

Until the very end, it was a really nice visit with Caitlin and Bob and Louis. We didn't do a lot. They were more interested in chilling out - and poor Bob had work to take care of that kept him at his computer more than we had realized would be the case. We got to the beach one day for a walk along the promenade and tapas and drinks at an outdoor bar. There were a couple of lunches out and other walks around the centre and over into Ruzafa to look at the "failures" and the lights. And one run for Bob and I in the Túria (dry riverbed) park.

Mr. Personality himself

Street art by Julieta, spotted on walk to find Louis some new books

Lolly and Louis at Maria Mandiles restaurant, Plaza de Carmén

Plaza de Carmén

Plaza de Carmén

Louis was his usual charming self, although he has moved into the terrible twos. He doesn't like to be denied what he wants, and mostly what he wants is lots of adult - especially mummy - attention. But he's fairly easily distracted and entertained. A bit of running around on the upper terrace, kicking a beach ball, a bit of running along city sidewalks, exploring doorways - and lots of book reading. 

Reading on the terrace - Louis's favourite activity

The child is book obsessed. You read one to him, and he pays rapt attention. Then after a little pause, he says in a plaintive voice, "Again?" And you have to read it again - or sometimes twice or three times more. Caitlin accidentally left some of the books she'd brought for him on the plane from England. So on their first day, we walked across town to a very good multi-lingual bookstore where we were able to buy him some new books, all of which, including the ones shown in these pictures, were hugely successful.  

He likes other children and he met local kids a couple of times. Once at the beach and another time at the park, he tried to join family soccer games. On both occasions, the children were very indulgent - or possibly just bewildered - and let him have a turn. No need for language.

The day before we flew out was my 70th birthday, the ostensible reason for Caitlin and family coming when they did. Wouldn't you know it, I wasn't feeling well: tummy troubles, probably something I ate. We had made a reservation at the steak place we'd gone to earlier with Shelley. It was as good as before, but I didn't eat a lot. The kids took the left-overs and Caitlin ate some on the plane the next day.

San Miguel (beer company) fallas, spotted on walk home from birthday dinner

Then we had four days in Maldon with Caitlin, Bob and baby. Bob by the time we got back was having tummy troubles of his own and was mostly off work the first couple of days. His employer had instituted a work-at-home regime in response to COVID-19, anyway. We did get some walks in along the canal outside their door, down to Heybridge Basin and over to the Tesco. It didn't rain a lot, but the sun didn't shine a lot either. We had a couple of visits to playgrounds for Louis, which are always fun (if you're a grandparent, probably not otherwise.)

Leaving them was hard. Panic over the pandemic was ramping up in England. They were worried about us. We were - are - worried about them, and about whether our flight would leave as scheduled. The Canadian government was urging travellers to come home "as soon as possible." Did they know something we didn't? Air Transat wasn't saying anything about imminent cancellations, but we couldn't be sure.

Oh to be in England now that...March is here?

Rotting boat in tidal mud of Blackwater River

Maldon and basin from promenade

We had a last Chinese take-out meal together on the Wednesday evening - restaurants and pubs were still open but we thought it more responsible not to go out. Then we drove our rental car, which we'd picked up at Stansted when we flew in from Valencia, to Gatwick, about 90 minutes away. We had a night at the Hampton by Hilton and left the next morning.

We have flown into and out of Gatwick for years. I've never seen it so eerily uncrowded. Checking in and going through security were a breeze. The big central Departures area is usually a zoo. Sometimes it's hard to find a seat it's so busy. Not this day. We had our choice of seats. 

By now we were starting to be a little paranoid about the pandemic. We moved once when a couple of people wearing surgical masks decided to sit right behind us - inches away, not even close to the recommended six feet. At another point, a guy settled across from us - again not anywhere nearly six feet away - and promptly gave a great sneeze. I had bought disposable latex gloves before we left Maldon, which we wore at the airport, and we had antiseptic wipes which we used as well.

But our paranoia was nothing compared to some passengers. Lots, mostly Asians, it seemed, were wearing masks. Karen saw a couple wearing actual hazmat suits. There was one young woman sitting not far from us with an absurd get-up that had her masked and covered from head to toe in multiple layers. One layer was a plastic raincoat. We watched as she sprayed herself all over with some kind of disinfectant.

Quite a few flights were cancelled - a lot of them EasyJet. The EasyJet information desk was besieged by irate passengers. We sat and read our books and newspapers and texted with friends and family. I picked up a couple of liters of my favourite single malt, Glenmorangie, at Duty Free. It was on sale for £36 the liter. That's less than I'd pay at home for a 750 ml bottle. 

The departure gate for our flight was announced exactly when the board said it would be, which is a good sign the flight is on time. And it was.

The flight was uneventful, but disappointingly spartan. We had splurged and paid for Club Class. Air Transat, perfectly reasonably, had decided as part of its response to COVID-19 - to protect "staff and passengers" - to cut virtually all in-flight services. Instead of a welcome glass of wine, we got mediocre bagged lunches with stale food and bottled water left on our seats. There was no hot meal, no booze. 

The two attendants in Club Class spent most of the time sitting in their jump seats in the galley, masked, reading, with the curtain between galley and cabin closed. They asked us not to come in unless we were on our way to the washroom. 

Fair enough. It must have been nerve-wracking for them to be on those flights.

At one point, I asked them if they knew what we could expect at Pearson. The government had restricted all incoming international flights to four airports, which meant Toronto might have been receiving extra flights that would normally have landed elsewhere. The guy said he didn't really know, but had heard from other crews that they were only letting 200 people at a time into the Customs hall, with resulting waits of up to two hours.

As it turned out, the number of incoming flights had been so curtailed that there were no such delays. In fact, it was the fastest we'd ever got through Customs and collected our bags. We touched down on time at 3:30, had our rental car by 4:30 and were home before 6:30. There was no rush-hour. Astonishing.

Now we have two weeks of self-isolation. What times we live in! 

Fallas!

7 March 2020 - Fallas, Valencia's berserk end-of-winter festival, which officially started on Sunday and lasts two weeks, is more and more making its presence felt in our lives.

Every day at 2 p.m., the mascletás, the much-loved "noise fireworks" shatter the peace of siesta. (Much loved by a segment of the Valencian population; we know some locals get out of town at this time of year because they can't stand the noise and chaos.) We're about a 20-minute walk from city hall square where they let the mascletás off, but we can hear them here very clearly. It sounds like you're in a war zone. And they last almost ten minutes.

In the past few days, it's not just the city-run mascletás. Shops all over town, including specialty pirotécnica shops that are only open at festival time, are selling fireworks. I noticed the other day that the shop around the corner that sells pool cues and other billiard supplies is also now stocking fireworks. 

Mostly, they're selling the kind "bangers" we loved as kids but that are no longer sold in Ontario because they're so dangerous. Kids here, and adults too, buy them and let them off in the streets, where they echo off the buildings. As I sit writing this at a little after 1 p.m. on a Saturday, a couple go off in the streets below every few minutes, some of them ear-piercingly loud. (A little later, we figured out why there seemed to be so many going off very near us. There's an entrance to a blind alley across the street where they like to let them off, presumably to get the amplification from sound bouncing off the tightly surrounding buildings.

When the craziness reaches its peak in the approach to the final night - and well before that too - mischievous kids will light firecrackers and throw them at the feet of unsuspecting adults, or at their friends. I was walking behind a scruffy-looking teenager the other day. He was on his own. I watched as he casually flung a little firecracker into the terrace in front of a building he was passing, and heard it pop. When I drew level with it, I noticed there was a motorcycle parked there. Was he trying to see if he could set off a really big explosion?

There are of course more benign aspects to the festival. Pretty lights are strung up across streets, including ours, and lit at dusk. We were disappointed to read that a famous music-and-light show on Calle Cuba, several blocks from us, will not be mounted anymore. Too bad. We saw it a few years ago and it was spectacular. The organizers could not guarantee a safe escape route for the hundreds who often attend, no doubt partly because so many of the narrow streets in the neighbourhood are blocked off for Fallas - so the city shut it down. 

Churro stands have also sprouted everywhere, not just at the train station where they appeared first. They do a brisk business. In other parts of Spain, churros - twisted tubes of sugary, deep-fried dough, often dipped in chocolate - are a staple morning snack. Here, they are particularly associated with Fallas. You can get them at other times, but the city only licenses the stalls to set up in the days leading to Fallas. The stalls are brightly lit - sometimes blindingly - at night. Music stages are also set up in some blocks that have been shut off to vehicular traffic - again, including the next block up on our street.

Churro stand and lights on Calle Literati Azorin

And barriers are erected and traffic blocked at corners where they're going to build "failures," the sometimes huge painted styrofoam and wood sculptural tableaux. "Failure" is one of several English translations of fallas we've seen. Others are "flaw" and "fault." (We saw all three used in one obviously machine-translated text.) We think it may refer to the off-cuts of wood from carpentry shops and joineries that were burnt in bonfires as part of early end-of-winter celebrations in Valencia. 

The crazy thing is that scores of the carefully crafted modern-day "failures" erected around the city by community groups are burnt on the last night - March 19, St. Joseph's Day. It casts a pall of smoke across the city. Some that are funded by rich sponsors such as Amstel and Mahou, the Spanish beer maker, reportedly cost hundreds of thousands of euros. Karen just read something that quoted a figure of €8 million-plus for the total value of the "failures" built for the festival this year. Perhaps fortunately, we will not be here for this final madness.

The other night, Karen and I noticed that some of the big pieces of the fallas to be erected in  city hall square had been delivered and were lying on the ground, awaiting crews of artisans who will assemble and finish them. Then yesterday, we walked over into Ruzafa and saw that pieces of the always huge and elaborate fallas at the corner of Calles Cuba and Literati Azorin, sponsored by Mahou, were being unloaded from a lorry. The pieces always come from the workshops wrapped in clear plastic. The fun is to try and guess ahead of time, as the thing is being unpacked and assembled, what its theme and content will be. There is almost always a satirical narrative - often lost on foreigners. We know the Mahou fallas will feature busty female figures - pretty much de rigeur - in historic costumes of some kind, and circus animals. Beyond that, no clue.

Plastic-wrapped piece of fallas at corner of Calle Cuba and Literati Azorin

We think Louis is going to love the "failures." They are basically three-dimensional caricatures, and many feature animals and cartoonish human figures.

Speaking of Louis, we're going to see him tomorrow (now today), and his mummy and daddy. They're coming to stay with us for a week. In fact, we'll all be leaving Valencia together next Saturday. So soon.

So what have Karen and I been up to the past few days? Not much. 

On Thursday, I ran in the late morning. Then in the afternoon, we walked a lo-o-ong way out into the suburbs to see the Museum of the Fallas Artists. It took over an hour to get there. 

Suburban street art spotted on trek to Fallas Artists Museum

It's one of two Fallas museums in town. We saw the other, sometimes referred to in tourist literature as the "official" museum, years ago. The one we went to on Thursday is in a slightly down-at-heels section of the Beniclap neighbourhood that houses a lot of workshops of Fallas artists and co-operatives. For this reason, the enclave is officially designated the City of the Fallas Artisans. The museum is run by the Fallas Artists guild and is in the same building as its headquarters.  

We would have ridden bikes, but there was another "wind disruption" and the very stiff breeze would have been right in our faces. We'd bike back.

Fallas Artists Museum: 2018 winner - subject unknown

The museum includes a display of small versions of fallas from years past - called ninots - including some going back to the middle of the last century. Each year, one fallas is selected as the overall best, and that one alone is spared the crema, the ritual burning that consumes the others on March 19. So the ones at the museum are the best or at least among the best of their year. The older ones are, not surprisingly, less sophisticated than the more recent. The more recent ones, on the other hand, have more the look of Disney characters.

Fallas Artists Museum - Christians and moors, date unknown

Fallas Artists Museum: slightly racist 2016 winner - the "submerged" economy

There is also a partly-constructed full-size fallas in a stairwell that demonstrates the construction methods - or at least the methods used at one time. This one has a frame of wooden planks, covered with tiny strips of wood about a half-inch by a half-inch, bent over and around and tacked to the frame. The plank frame is still used but much more of the construction now involves carved or molded styrofoam.

Fallas Artists Museum: full-size fallas demonstrating construction methods

The museum displays also include design drawings and sketches, some fairly primitive, some almost works of art on their own. 

Fallas Artists Museum: homage to fallas artist Salvador Dali

One interesting thing learned at the museum: Salvador Dali, the great surrealist artist, participated as a Fallas designer one year. In 1954, he was commissioned by an organization called La Comisión El Foc to create an out-of-competition fallas that was "planted" in city hall square. It had a bullfight theme and appears to have featured a giant head of Dali himself.

1954 fallas designed by Salvador Dali

The bike ride home along Valencia's superb system of bike paths was quick and easy - especially with the wind at our backs. I think we were only forced to go on the sidewalk for about three blocks of our 6-kilometer route, the rest was on bike paths fully separated from motorized traffic. This is the way it should be done everywhere.

Yesterday was a down day, a little coolish, not a lot of sun. We did a shop at Consum, ate in the late afternoon, then went out for a wander in the early evening. We headed first to city hall square to see if there was any  progress on assembling the fallas there. There was not. We looped back through Ruzafa to see the state of play there. No sign at that point of fallas, but there were lots of lights lit and churro stands blazing.

Pieces being unloaded at site of Mahou fallas at Cuba and Literati Azorin

Today, Saturday, I ran again. We went to shop at the Mercadona in Ruzafa but first walked up to buy bread at our favourite bakery across the street from where we stayed last year, and check out the corners where we knew there would be fallas. It was then we saw the pieces of the Mahou tableau being unloaded. Such excitement! Lots of people milling about, peering at the pieces as they were unloaded.

Plastic-wrapped piece of Mahou fallas at Cuba and Literati Azorin

Our corner has been partly blocked off. Tables and chairs were set up in the road - which means there was probably going to be a big paella feast for the neighbourhood at some point in the weekend. (We missed it.)  There is also a stage set up, from which we are now hearing very loud, bass-y music - mingled with the pyrotechnic explosions. My head is beginning to ache. 

And it's only about 5 0'clock. Oh dear! 

Later Saturday, with crazy music blaring from the bandstand at our corner, and the pop-pop-crash of firecrackers going off, we ventured out to see what was going on. The corner was milling with neighbourhood folk, many in the blue crested fleece jackets of the local Fallas association. The paella lunch or dinner was evidently over since the chairs and tables were stacked away neatly. Now it was party time. 

Dancing in the street - a few doors from our apartment

There was a crush of dancers in front of the grandstand, hopping around to what sounded like revved-up Spanish-style oompah - lots of brass, very fast, crazy shouted singing. Little boys were letting off fireworks on one corner, lighting them with long smoldering ropes, then flinging them away to snap across the pavement, or at someone's feet.

Boys playing with firecrackers at our corner

We wandered down Carrer de Matias Perelló, the major east-west street at our corner. There was another little neighbourhood group partying a few blocks further on, but it was much more subdued. We decided to walk further into Ruzafa. The eight- or ten-square-block area at the heart of Ruzafa is Fallas central. Two of the biggest and most elaborate "failures" are planted there a block apart, one sponsored by Mahou, one by Amstel. 

Lights on Calle Sueca

Those corners, both of which have multiple outdoor cafes, were swarming with people. Everybody was out - old, young, families with toddlers and babies. The cafes were packed. The corners are lit with daylight-bright floods. The streets running away from them are hung with lovely coloured lights and dotted with blazing churro stands. The Mahou fallas had unloaded earlier in the day when we were there. Now we discovered that some of the pieces of the Amstel "failure" had been delivered as well. At both corners, people were milling about, peering at the plastic-wrapped pieces, trying to figure out what they were about.

Pieces of Amstel fallas at Sueca and Literati Azorin - is that Fidel?

Karen and I meandered about for a half an hour and then walked home. Our corner was still the loudest, by far. The amplified bass from the bandstand was horrendous. It was early yet, though. The music and crashing of fireworks carried on until ten, when the music ended. Then it was just fireworks. At a couple of points, we rushed out to the terrace because we could see coloured rockets going off somewhere nearby, but they were short displays and we missed most of them.

Lights on Calle Puerto Rico

Churro stand on Calle Sueca

We could hear firecrackers going off long into the night. One long clatter woke us from a dead sleep at one point. I still heard the odd pop and crash when I woke sometime after 4 a.m. And there were brief Sunday morning mascletás at 8:30 a.m. 

These people are crazy! And we've invited our family into the craziness! What were thinking?

Adiós Amiga

6 March 2020 - Shelley has left the building.

Ms. Boyes departed Tuesday (it's Thursday today) for Barcelona. She had one evening and the next day (Wednesday) in her favourite city, then was on a plane back to Canada on Thursday. It was really nice to have her here in Valencia these past few weeks. We didn't do a lot, but we weren't complete slugs either.

After our Cuenca excursion, Shelley went back to work and we didn't see her for a few days. Karen and I amused ourselves by doing not very much at all - except enjoying our sunny terraces and this beautiful city. 

On Wednesday the 26th, we all went for lunch in Carmén, the funky nightclub district on the other side of the centre. The plan was to try the restaurant in Plaza Tossal that Shelley and Shelly had liked so much last year. There were no tables in the sun, though, and no menú del día, so we wandered off and ended up at La Pizca de Sal (the pinch of salt).

It's in the square at Torres de Quart (Plaza de Santa Úrsula), a restaurant we've been going to since our first visit to the city. It has changed hands and names since our first two winters here. Today, it's a more upscale place, but continues to offer a reasonably-priced menú del día at lunch. I think it was €13.50 this day. I still lament the departure of the original chef who made a dish I loved. They called it cazuela, which  means casserole - although it really wasn't, or not to our way of thinking. It was a plate of very good french fries, smothered in aioli, cheese and bacon bits and baked in the oven to melt the cheese. To die for. Also, probably a contributing factor in many deaths.

The sun on the terrace was intense. The place was crowded with, we think, French Canadian tourists. Two families at nearby tables were playing cards while they waited for their meals, one had cards with the Canadian flag on the back. I couldn't hear them clearly enough to know what language they were speaking, but not English, I think. Karen and I loved our meals - green beans in a jamon and butter sauce for starters, ham-like roast pork with fried potatoes for mains. Shelley was less impressed with her chicken-and-rice main and Russian salad. The food is always fresh at this place, though, and often, as this day, quite artfully presented.

We wended our way back to Shelley's through Carmén, at one point finding ourselves in a square Karen and I didn't recognize at all. It's by the art school complex, the Institut Valencià de Cultura.

Institut Valencià de Cultura

Karen and I biked home from Shelley's. We were supposed to be meeting the technician from the boiler manufacturer there. We found our hostess, Olga, already here, with the technician. She had kindly brought the promised highchair for Louis - the same Ikea chair he uses at home. Olga has no English, or none she's willing to use, so it was a little awkward. At a couple of points, we had to use Google Translate. The technician eventually left and a little later, Olga. We later heard from Guillermo - who, we learned from Olga, had spent time in the U.S., hence his good English - that the tech could find nothing wrong with the boiler. He also gave us different instructions for correcting the problem if the thing cut out again. In fact, though, it hasn't failed once since the technician's visit. So who knows?

Thursday and Friday were slow days. Karen and I went for a walk into the centre one day, mainly to visit the tourist information centre at city hall to see if they had good information about Fallas happenings. They did not, as usual, but I picked up a postcard to send Mike Haas using one of my counterfeit stamps. 

Karen took a spill on uneven paving stones near city hall. It was quite spectacular. She turned her ankle and went down so quickly, ending up flat on her back, that I had no time to react. She took the impact mostly on her hip, she said, which was a little scary given the recent osteo diagnosis. But she was up almost as quickly and said it hurt but not badly. She could walk normally. There appears to be no lasting damage. It's the second time this has happened in Valencia. The last time, a few years ago, was not far from this spot - in the middle of a busy intersection. Weird!

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Another day, I walked and biked over to Bombas Gens, the foundation-run art gallery that often features photography. They had a new exhibition of floral photography, Botanicals. Karen didn't want to go, but walked with me part way. I was a little disappointed in the show. Some of the images were historical - yellowed pages from early 20th century books. But there were some impressive large-scale colour images by Hans-Peter Feldmann, a contemporary German artist, and a small selection of classic black and whites by Imogen Cunningham, the best thing in the show in my opinion.

Imogen Cunningham, Lillies (late 1920s)

Late Friday afternoon, we walked over to Ruzafa to see if we could get Karen some of her English Breakfast tea from the little specialty shop on Calle Cuba. It was still closed - didn't reopen after siesta until 6 pm, the sign said. It seems we used to be able to count on everything opening up again at 4 or 5 at the latest. Now, it's hard to tell what's going to be open after siesta or when. 

On Saturday, Shelley was coming to stay for a few days. Her plans had changed, as they sometimes do. She was originally going to train up to Barcelona when her rental here ended and spend a week there. Now, she had managed to move forward her flight home from Barcelona by two days so she could get back in time for Sue Baka's 65th birthday party. It "only" cost her $200 to change the flight, much less than usual. This was apparently because airlines are desperate for business with the corona-virus slow-down in travel.

In any case, Shelley was coming Saturday morning. The power went out soon after we got up, and stayed out until a few minutes before I had to leave to go and help her get her bags down from the flat. It was a good thing it came back on because humping Shelley's Big Bertha suitcase up six flights of stairs would not have been fun. 

Shelley insisted on taking us out for lunch and had made a reservation at a Moroccan restaurant a few blocks away, Restaurante Aleimuna. This was a place she had tried a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. She won't go back, though, and neither will we. 

When we got there at 1:30, the place was empty. The owner seated us at a pokey table in a dingy corner at the back, right by the entrances to the toilets. Shelley was not pleased and asked the guy if he could seat us somewhere else. No, the other tables were all reserved, or were too big, or too small for us. After some discussion, we had pretty much decided to grin and bear it, if not happily, and had ordered drinks. Then another party of three came in. 

Did they have a reservation, we heard them being asked? They did not. No problem. Tables and chairs were moved and they were seated at a prime spot near the door. That was it.

Shelley called the guy over and remonstrated. We would not stay, she said. The guy started to get shirty and say we had to order something to eat. At one point, he called over a young man from the table he'd just seated, who supposedly had more English - he didn't - to try and interpret. It ended with us flouncing out, having paid for but not having finished our drinks. 

You could understand, given the restaurant's location - well away from the tourist track - that he might be more interested in cultivating a local, regular clientele. But to be so obviously discriminatory and then rude to us almost suggests harboured resentment against foreigners or English-speakers. No matter - end of episode. 

We walked over into Ruzafa, and tried to get Karen's tea. The place was open this time, but the woman was out of English Breakfast. We wandered a couple of blocks up to La Fresca, one of our favourite lunch spots from last year. I don't know what the food would have been like at the Moroccan place, but the difference in the experience was night and day. We sat in the sun. The young waiter was charming and friendly and spoke a little English. The menú del día was only €9.50. For the price, the food is always surprisingly good at this place. We all had roast chicken with fried potatoes for mains. Can't remember what we had for starters. The desserts - Shelley and I had something they called carrot cake, Karen something chocolate-y - were good though small.

We hung out back at the flat for awhile in the afternoon, but then in the early evening set out for our big activity of the weekend. Amstel, the beer maker, was sponsoring a supposedly stupendous fireworks display down at the marina to kick off the Fallas celebrations. We would go. 

We started out thinking we'd catch a bus. The number 19 goes along Regne de Valencia, one of the major streets near us, and then wends its way to the waterfront. But despite the city promising to put on extra buses and subway trains to accommodate the thousands expected to attend, the first bus stop we came to was crowded with people waiting, and when a No. 19 came along, the sign on front said it was full. 

So we walked a bit more and then hailed a cab. The cab got us a few blocks down Avenida de Puerto, the major thoroughfare that goes from the edge of downtown to the port. Then it ran into a traffic jam. Valencianos love fireworks. Actually, they're batshit crazy about fireworks. It was clear half the city was going to be there. We finally ditched the cab and walked the last mile or so. The sidewalks were packed the whole way. Everybody was headed to the water.

We found a spot in one of the recommended places near the old Customs building where the crush wasn't too bad. And waited. And waited. The show was supposed to start at 8 pm but, this being Spain, it didn't start until almost 8:30. Most of the crowd were locals, but there was a group of young English women standing near us. They were loud and a little obnoxious. They irritated us with their phony-sounding blather. 

When the show finally started, we couldn't really see much. There was a fence in front of us. We hadn't thought anything of it because the Amstel promotions for the event claimed the fireworks would be the highest ever. But the first five minutes were mostly a write-off as almost none of the rockets went high enough for us to see them over the fence. I finally thought to move us back a little which meant we could see better, and then the fireworks started going higher anyway. After we re-located, the English girls moved next to us. The loudest and most irritating of them said, laughing, "Ha, ha, we're following you." O joy. 

Our view was still compromised by the bright security light left on, shining right above us - this despite the fact they'd turned off most of the other lights around the harbour just before the show started. Some young Spanish girls behind us were giggling and mimicking us, saying, in English, "Why don't they turn the light off? Why don't they turn the light off?"

Oh, my. What a time we - well, we didn't have. The fireworks were okay, but not as good as others we've seen in this city at Fallas time. It definitely wasn't worth the long tramp to get there. And now we faced walking back. The buses would be even more crowded because everyone was trying to get away at the same time, and the chances of finding a free cab were slim to none. So we started walking, picked back streets where the crush wasn't so bad, and eventually outdistanced the crowd. 

When we got near the City of Arts and Sciences, Shelley spotted a Greek restaurant and suggested we stop for a drink and a nibble. It turned into a full meal, our second of the day - pig for Karen and I, octopus for Shelley. (We won't tell Louis who is a huge Octonauts fan.) Meat dishes boring, Shelley's octopus, she said, quite good. We waddled the rest of the way home through the City.

Churro stand in square in front of Norte train station, bull ring in background

Sunday was to be a museum day. Shelley had not been to IVAM, the modern art museum, in all her visits here, so we headed there. We walked through the centre, which was swarming with people, all excited about the beginning of Fallas. They were massing near city hall square for the mascletás, the incredibly noisy fireworks they let off every day there during Fallas at 2 p.m. The churro stands were open and doing a booming business in the square in front of the train station. Shelley popped in to the station to see if she could buy the ticket for her Tuesday Barcelona trip. No dice.

Churro stand, Norte station

We walked on, through Carmén. When we got near IVAM, Shelley, as is her wont, suggested a stop for refreshment. We sat in a little square just off Guillem de Castro and had a coke. When I pointed out that the ethnography museum was just across the street, Shelley got interested in that. I went over and got some brochures. We would add it to our agenda. 

Julio González

The shows at IVAM were only okay. The one that had most interested Shelley and Karen was about the way tourism was developed and promoted in Franco's Spain. It turned out to be a very small exhibit in the library, mostly contemporary brochures, post cards and magazine articles. It didn't interest me so I went over to another one, "Matter, space and time. Julio González and the avant-gardes." 

IVAM, Julio González exhibit

González (1876 – 1942), a Barcelona artist who ended up in Paris, is one of IVAM's specialties. We've seen a few exhibits with material from the museum's collection of his work. This one included many of the same pieces - abstract sculpture mostly. I quite like some of it, but we have seen it a lot. When I tried to take a picture of one piece, the guard approached me and said I could only take pictures of the room, not of individual pieces. This is a change from the museum's policy in the past - or possibly just this guard's interpretation of the policy.

From IVAM, we wandered over to the Museu Valencià d'Etnologia, the Valencian Ethnology Museum. Shelley was attracted by the Roman exhibit and a temporary one about Visigoths in the Valencia area. Visigoths were the Christianized "barbarians" who came after the Romans. The Roman exhibit, which had a few nice large pieces - part of a large mosaic, a couple of statues unearthed locally - was frustrating for Karen and I because there was no English labeling, and by this time, we were too tired to easily interpret the Spanish. We didn't get a huge amount out of it, or I didn't.

After the thirsty work of the museums, we of course had to stop for drinks and tapas at a little square in Carmén that Shelley had recently discovered and liked. We had patatas bravas and a sausage in cider sauce dish. The latter was actually a mistake by the wait person. Shelley had ordered something else entirely. We ate it anyway - despite the fact that it was what Shelley was supposed to be cooking for dinner at home that night.

Karen and Shelley in Shelley's quiet Carmén square

Carmén - taggers at work down an alley

We walked home through Carmén. I took more pictures, of course. It's one of my favourite parts of the city. Delightfully grotty, full of character. 

We ended up in Plaza de la Virgen where the late afternoon sun was shining prettily on the basilica's pink exterior. We stuck our heads in for a few minutes. There was a service of some kind going on. Shelley had to leave, she said, because she watched one of the worshipers doing the sign of the cross with one hand while scratching his butt with the other. Another woman had a finger up her nose to the second knuckle. Shelley has a strong gag reflex.

Plaza de la Virgen, Basilica

Basilica's frescoed dome

Modernista Bank of Valencia building reflected in windows of office tower

Apartment block near our place

I made a vaguely Moroccan meal for dinner that night - compensation for our aborted Moroccan lunch. I somehow didn't get it on the table until after nine. It ended up being a late night.

A "wind disruption" occurred in the middle of the night - very high winds that rattled shutters and blinds, and shifted the heavy deck chairs very noisily across the upper terrace. Karen was disturbed by it quite a bit and slept badly. I had taken a quarter of a sleeping pill and woke reasonably well rested. 

The wind was howling in the morning. I noticed the lattice screen at the top of the wall on our lower terrace was pulling loose from its moorings in the wind. I was concerned it would blow off and crash into the street below, causing damage or even injuring someone. I texted Guillermo, our host, about it, but he seemed a little blase, at least at first. In the end, we decided to chance leaving it. I went off for a run. When I came back, the screen seemed even looser. I texted Guillermo videos showing how it was pulling away. 

I was about to go out and try and buy some rope to tie it down when Karen called out, "Too late!" Most of the screen had gone flying off the terrace!

I went down, dreading what I would find. The wreckage had blown up to the corner of our street. It was bent and mangled. Luckily no one was about. One car had a ding in the side, but it was a bit of a beater and the dent looked as if it could have been old. I texted Guillermo a picture of the screen lying on the pavement and asked him what he wanted me to do with it. 

Could I put it by the grey bin (the garbage bin)? I was starting to do that when a street sweeper came along and offered to do it for me. Muchas gracias. In trying to pick the one piece up, I realized how heavy it was. It could easily have killed someone had it hit them.

We didn't do much else that day until much later. Shelley worked and finalized a bunch of travel arrangements, Karen embroidered,  I worked on photos from the day before. In the early evening, we walked out to a highly-rated restaurant on the other side of Regne de Valencia, Grillo Grill, a beef place. This was Shelley's treat for my birthday - such a kind friend. Not sure I deserved it but there you go. 

It was a lovely meal in an interesting little bistro-y place. We had an amuse-bouche of beef of some kind and pickled onion - I think - on pita, very tasty. My starter was goat cheese and something or other. The mains were two big hunks of entrecote, two different cuts, one hung longer than the other, and roast veggies. Both steaks were very good but we all preferred the one not hung as long. None of the desserts tempted, but it was all-round the best meal we've had here. Muchas gracias, Shelley! 

We made it a somewhat earlier night. Shelley was travelling next day. Her train, from Joaquin Sorolla station left at 11 a.m., so we didn't have long in the morning before she was off. I helped her down with her bags and waited with her for the cab. One came almost immediately - unlike our experience last year seeing off Caitlin and Bob when we eventually gave up on a taxi and Caitlin called Uber.

Karen and I walked over to The Cevello Palace, in Plaza Tetuan later in the day. I thought it was a stately home that was open to view. It turned out it was also - or mainly - the museum of the city archives. The rooms on the ground floor were given over to displays of local historical images and documents, including a mildly interesting exhibit of travel guides to Valencia going back into the 18th century. 

The slightly odd attendant kept telling us we couldn't go upstairs quite yet to see the rest of the place...for reasons he couldn't actually explain in his limited, but over-confident English. He kept directing us into other rooms on the ground floor. When we came out of the last one, he very apologetically told us that we still couldn't go upstairs. Could we come back later? We decided to take a pass and walked home.

Church of Saint Thomas and Saint Philip Neri

Near Plaza Tetuan - old palace housing Bancaja gallery on left

In the early evening, we walked over to Ruzafa and finally were able to buy Karen's English Breakfast tea. After we got home and Karen did the conversion from euros to dollars, she noted that the tea was actually cheaper here than we pay at home. This is surprising given that the first year we were here, when I bought loose tea from a different shop in the centre, it was way more expensive than at home.

On Wednesday, a mostly sunny day, with temperatures up over 25C, we rode down to the beach in the afternoon. As usual, we sat on a bench on the promenade and read and people-watched, then started walking back. We ended up walking the entire way - through the marina and then the City of Arts and Sciences. It took us over an hour. We were a little footsore and weary by the time we got home.

City of Arts & Sciences: Agora and Harp Bridge

Marina: hull of America's Cup craft decorated by street artists

Fancy boats in the inner harbour