Back To Valencia: 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.