Happy Restaurant Day!

Friday is lunch-out day for the Blackwells in Valencia. We left the apartment a little early with the idea of stopping on the way at City Hall, a beautiful building, to see if we could get out on the balcony at the front, something we had not done on earlier visits. It’s supposed to give great views of the square. 

It wasn’t open, as we had feared. I asked why not and got a stream of rapid-fire Spanish of which I understood only the key word: trabajando, working. The balcony was being set up for Fallas, when VIPs will use it to view parades and firework displays. When would it be open again? Not until after Fallas. Bummer.

Valencia City Hall: grand ballroom

We did look around inside again, at the pretty grand ballroom, the council chamber, the very underwhelming art displays and the small, surprisingly interesting museum about city history. The highlights of the museum for me are the mural-size 18^th century picture maps of old Valencia – like hand-drawn Google satellite views – and the astonishing fragment of a pennant, supposedly given to the city in 1238 by King James I of Aragon after his reconquest of Valencia from the Moors.

Plaza de la Virgen: Neptune statue and Basilica

Our researches on Thursday served us well on restaurant day. We headed back to Plaza del Carmen to one of the lunch places we’d spotted there, María Mandiles, right on the square. We were attracted both by the very reasonably-priced menu del dia – €8.95 for three courses, bread, wine and coffee – and the sunny outdoor seating on the plaza, overlooked by the lovely Iglesia del Carmen.

María Mandiles patio, Plaza del Carmen

It wasn’t actually sunny when we were there on Friday, though. The day was intermittently overcast, and it was early enough – 1:45 when we sat down – that the sun hadn’t cleared some of the surrounding buildings yet. Still, it was nice to sit outside, even if a little cool at times. We could have availed ourselves of one of the lap rugs they provide for diners, or asked them to turn on the nearest propane heater, but we toughed it out. It astonishes us that Valencianos will walk around dressed as if for winter in 20C weather, but still sit outside to drink or eat when it’s only 15C.

María Mandiles specializes in “authentic Valencian home cooking.” The menu del dia offered three choices for each course. I had a mixed salad – ensalada variedad – with lettuce, feta-type cheese, strips of ham, a tomato quartered and some kind of sweet veggie marmalade (sun dried tomato, we think). Way better than the simple limp mixed salad with cardboard tomatoes you’d get in an inexpensive restaurant at home, but not fancy. Karen had cream of calabeza (squash) soup with crispy ham bits for her starter. The soup was tasty, but not piping hot.

For my main, I ordered Secreto Iberico, which turned out to be a generous slab of roast ham, served with fries and carrot dice. Spanish-style Iberico ham, such as Serrano, the most famous, is a much-loved delicacy here. The best ham, sold by the thin slice in specialty shops and as a tapas staple, can be jaw-droppingly expensive. This was presumably a much less expensive variety, or possibly prepared by the restaurant itself. Spanish ham is generally drier, with a more delicate flavour than ours. Karen had a curried chicken dish: very lightly curried strips of breast meat on a bed of creamy, buttery mashed potatoes.

(Ed. As my friend Shelley Boyes explained the above information about Spanish ham is mostly rubbish. Yes, Iberico and Serrano are both hams made in Spain, but fundamentally different in that they're made from different types of pigs and in different styles. Beyond that, her explanation kind of zoomed over my head. The important points: it was ham, it was mild-flavoured and dry-ish.)

Plaza del Carmen: the sun came out

We both drank the house white wine (perfectly fine) for our bebida and had caramel crepes drizzled in chocolate sauce for postres (dessert). Everything was prettily presented, fresh and flavourful. All-in total for both of us: €19.85 (about $31 at the day’s exchange rate). You can’t beat that for value.

We walked home by back streets, stopping occasionally to take pictures: of the street art, of course, and the stone carvings on La Lonja de la Seda, the medieval silk exchange across from the Mercado Centrale. We were back home a little after four. Karen, silly girl, challenged me to a Scrabble game. I won, again. Yawn.

La Lonja de la Seda

Today, a chilly overcast day, I ran in the morning, down to the river and back.

It was supposedly free-museum day, so after lunch, we headed back to the City Museum of Valencia, another art and historical museum in a restored palace – the 17^th century Palacio Marques de Campo – near the Basilica. Turns out the information at the web page I read was wrong: it wasn’t free on Saturdays after all. But the attendant offered us, without our asking, the “pensioners” rate of €1 – how insulting! Still, we took it.

City Museum of Valencia

The art, owned by the city, dates from the 15^th to the 20^th century, most from the 20^th. It’s almost all by completely unknown Valencian artists. Much of it is not very good, none better than second rate: muddy modernist daubings, dull religious subjects from past centuries or incomprehensible minimalist contemporary fare. I’m exaggerating only slightly. There is also an extensive display about the history of weights and measures in Valencia. Fascinating (not.)

City Museum of Valencia: one of the better pieces of modern Valencian art

It’s a weird little museum. But the real point for us is the palace itself, which is charming, with lovely marble floors and ornate ceilings, including a beautifully restored grand staircase dome. We spent 45 minutes there and then walked quickly in the chill late afteroon to the local Mercadona for some supplies, before scuttling home. We will not go out again; rain appears imminent. Tomorrow promises a return to milder, brighter weather.

Chapel in City Museum of Valencia

Later. About six, the first of the mascletas, noisy daylight fireworks shows, went off in City Hall square. We had not realized it was going to happen; information on the web about Fallas seems spotty this year. The display thundered on for almost a half hour, echoing off the buildings. We’re only about a ten-minute walk from the plaza so it was quite loud.

We also noticed that the fireworks shop across the street, apparently part of a chain, has just reopened; it had been shuttered since we arrived. It was doing quite a brisk business, especially after the City Hall show ended, to the extent that they had to control how many people at a time entered the shop. We’ll have to watch out for pesky niños and niñas lighting firecrackers and throwing them under our feet for sport; it’s a favourite trick to play on tourists at Fallas time. 

The madness has begun.

Down To The Sea On Bikes

The weather has been fabulous again: sunny and low- to mid-20s. We took advantage by going on a couple of grand treks – not as grand as we thought when we were doing the trekking, but still a fair distance for us: 15 kilometers of biking and walking on Monday, 18.5 Tuesday.

On Monday, we rode a long way around to get to the little residential enclave of Nazaret, beside the container port. (We read somewhere recently that the container port was built where there used to be a nice beach. Now, Nazaret is cut off from the sea by a huge fence around the docks area. Bummer.) The route took us along an expressway of a bike path following the inner ring road, through unpretty Valencian suburbs, and past the massive University Hospital. This may be the largest hospital complex I’ve ever seen, although I’m never sure how much of Sunnybrook in Toronto we can see from the street. It may be as big or bigger. This one looks brand new.

View back towards the city from railway overpass

The last leg took us down an almost rural bike path not far from the City of Arts & Sciences, along a canal and then over some railway tracks on a weird little pedestrian/bike bridge with ramps. It looked from a distance, and may originally have been, one of those 19^th or early-20^th century steel-frame foot bridges you see over railway tracks in England. Nazaret started just on the other side of it.

A once charming Nazaret home

Nazaret is separate from the rest of the city, although it’s only about ten minutes by bike from the place we stayed near the beach our first year here. (That place was on a major artery, Avenida del Puerto, that goes right into the centre.)  It’s even closer to where we ended up on our visit to the docklands last week. I wondered a bit after we finally reached Nazaret why we’d taken so much trouble to get there.

Typical tile-fronted Nazaret house

Architecturally, Nazaret is quite different from most of the rest of the city. It's similar to Cabanyal, with a lot of low-rise single-family houses. That said, I noticed this time that there are more mid-rise apartment buildings than I remembered. It also has a similar demographic to Cabanyal, at least traditionally: fisher folk and shipyard workers. It looks very poor and dishevelled. The city government has made some effort to pretty it up, but with little lasting effect. It is well served by public transit, probably because most of the residents now work in the city.

Possibly the ugliest little house in Nazaret - who would buy this? (Se vende means for sale)

We sat in the sun on a square and had a drink, then wandered about the town. Everything was shut up tight as it was siesta time. So it was even uglier than it is when everybody is out and about and the shops are open. The last time we were here, the market was open and bustling. This time: dead. It really is not a pretty place. The orange trees were starting to bloom, though, even though they’re still laden with fruit from the previous crop. These are not eating oranges, as I discovered on another occasion when I plucked one, peeled it and sampled the flesh - it was spit-out bitter.

We got back on the bikes and rode home along Avenida de Franca, which runs parallel to Avenida del Puerto and has a bike path all the way to the Turia: very boring, through block after block of massive apartment and office buildings. City planning here, unlike elsewhere, has not worked well. Many of the buildings present blank walls to the street. It’s a pedestrian dead zone.

That said, the bike path here is great. The bike path system in the city in general is phenomenal. It's the way every big city should be doing it. If you want to get an idea of how great it is, go to this page. The green lines along streets are bike lanes and paths mostly off-street. Some are separated from the roadway by low cement barriers or bollards. Some of those have a row of parallel parking between them and the roadway, often with a little space between were the cars are supposed to park and the bike lane, so bikers don’t get car-doored by careless motorists getting out of their vehicles. But in many cases, especially in the centre, the bike path is right up on the sidewalk. The boulevards on the many wide avenues in the centre are very safe for cycling too.

That map also shows the extent of the bike sharing system. The little green flags with a letter S are Valenbisi stations. On the bike ride to Nazaret, we “refreshed” our bikes three or four times. The way Valenbisi works is that the first 30 minutes are free (to subscribers, which we are), and then you’re charged I think it’s €1 for each 30 minutes after that. But it’s perfectly within the rules to stop at another station along your route, turn your bike in, and take it right back out again. This only takes a few minutes, and you’re on your way again.

Yesterday was the best weather yet: mostly sunny, 25°C, with only a light breeze. We shopped at the supermarket in the morning and then packed a picnic lunch (including beer and wine, naturally – no silly rules about not drinking in public here), and biked down to the beach.  We sat on a park bench on the boardwalk (actually a tile walk) and ate our sandwiches and apples. There were lots of people out, including some suited business types from the conference centre at Hotel Balneario, near the city end of the beach.

Our picnic spot

After lunch, we doffed our shoes and walked along the beach. The onshore breeze right at the water’s edge was quite chilly and we found ourselves putting our jackets and sweaters back on. Strange: 200 meters from the water, we hardly noticed the breeze. The chill air didn't stop a few hardy waders. 

We walked a couple of kilometers, into Alboraya, the next municipality north of Valencia. The beach front here has been heavily developed with masses of condo apartments, thankfully low- and mid-rise. The last time we were here, many of them seemed half-built, the projects abandoned. And many of the completed buildings appeared unlived in. This time, everything looks sprucer, and more of the apartments are clearly inhabited. There were new, and quite large and posh, restaurants attached to a couple of the condo communities. And they were fairly well patronized for a Tuesday in winter. The beach itself still isn’t quite as neatly groomed here as in Valencia, but we saw a tractor out raking it while we were there.

Panoramic view of beach at Alboraya

Beach front condos at Alboraya

We ended up walking about half-way down the length of the Alboraya beach, turned and walked to the first bike sharing station back in Valencia, took bikes and headed home. We biked part way, walked, then biked again. We were home by a little after five.

Yesterday, we walked over to Rusaffa market to buy tea for Karen – and sausages and mini spuds. We found a third specialty bulk tea place in the market - where there were none that we remember four years ago. Tea is a new big thing in Spain, I guess.

We also walked through our old neighbourhood to see the progress on the Fallas preparations. Things are moving along nicely: the light standards are mostly up, the lights stacked neatly on the sidewalk waiting to be installed. But no sign of the Fallas statues yet. There were two of the biggest and most elaborate right in this two-block stretch, plus a fantastic son et lumiere.

Fallas lights waiting to be hoisted into position

Rusaffa street art collaboration (SIDA = AIDS - a warning to the lovers perhaps)

Karen, doing research on Fallas 2016 events later in the evening, stumbled on a recent article about a residents’ group in this area requesting that a judge issue an injunction to halt the construction of the light show infrastructure. They claim it’s not being safely built, that it will be a danger to pedestrians and that the huge power draws from the light show could impact residents. 

We can certainly see what they mean about the framing not being built safely. We noticed that the uprights – extending up three or four storeys – are often made up of two 6x6-inch square poles, one above the other, overlapping, and held together by thick plastic-covered wires wound tightly around them. The bottoms of the lower poles sit directly on the sidewalk. The uprights are tied into the buildings as well. Still, it looks a little iffy.

I’m guessing that some of the new, more middle-class residents that have moved in with the ongoing gentrification of the neighbourhood are kicking up the fuss. If they’re successful – and so far, they evidently haven't been, because work was onging when we were there – then there will be a lot of disappointed Valencianos. The son et lumiere and the other light displays around the fallas statues in the neighbourhood are a major draw.

On a more positive note, it looks like we will get at least two night-time Fallas fireworks extravaganzas: the Crida, the official opening ceremonies at the Torre Serrano this Sunday evening, and another one closer to Fallas week, in the city hall square, at midnight. We went to it last time we were here and the square was jammed with people.

Lovely building across the street from the Norte train station

Two iconic Valencia landmarks: the bullring (on the left) and the modernista Estacion del Norte

We went for a brief late afternoon-early evening walk over into the centre and noticed that the cage around where they let off the fireworks for that city hall show are now fully erected. The fenced in area takes in most of the pedestrian square in the middle of the plaza, which is too bad. I found some new street art in the slightly depressed area between the central market and MuVIM. Lots of abandoned buildings and hoardings offer ample opportunities for the artists.

Detail of fountain in Plaza Redondo in the centro

A forking in the ways

Panoramic shot of street art in centro near MuVIM

We walked home through the Estacion del Norte, and marveled again at the beautiful mosaics in the traditional waiting room just inside the door.

Estacion del Norte

I went for a run today in the late morning, down Avenida Ramon y Cajal along the boulevard, into the Turia Gardens briefly then out and back by the same route: 4.5k.

This afternoon, Karen and I went for a long ramble through the centre and into Bario del Carmen, looking for likely restaurants for our lunch out tomorrow. We found some good possibilities in Plaza del Carmen and near Torre Serrano, but even in the centre, there were lots with menus del dia priced under €12. Restaurant prices don't really seem to have gone up much, if any, in four years. This is possibly because, with 2,600-odd restaurants, there is a lot of competition for the Valenciano diner's Euro.

Ornate building front on City Hall Square

We passed by the National Ceramics Museum at one point. It's housed in the gorgeous and beautifully restored 16-18th century Marquis de Dos Aguas Palace. Ines was telling us the day we arrived that she thought a lot of tourists somehow missed this landmark. It's hard to understand how that could be: it's one of the best things in the city.

National Ceramics Museum

We also went by the Valencia City Museum, housed in another beautifully restored palace. It hosts art shows and some historical exhibits. We thought of going in to have a look on our way home, but although it was free the last time we were here, it now costs €2 per person. Given that Karen was very tired, we decided to wait for another day, or for Sunday when it's likely free. 

In Carmen, of course we found new street art.

I think we're in for the day now...

A Restaurant Find

We’ve been getting out every day, but the weather has remained coolish – 15°C seems cool to us now – and sometimes overcast. What’s going on here, you ask? Worry not, dear readers, great weather is returning to Valencia. Monday – today! – it’s supposed to be 20°C and sunny, Tuesday, 22°C and mostly sunny.

On Thursday, as planned, we headed back over to Rusaffa market for an actual shopping trip. We bought...some stuff, can’t remember exactly: Pink Lady apples from France (which we bought regularly and enjoyed last year when we were in France), sausages, little new potatoes. Oh, fresh strawberries from Valencia region, which are very tasty and perfectly ripe. We had to walk it home almost immediately because of the sausages, but meandered through Rusaffa on the way.

I went out again later in the day to buy oats and flax from the Herbolario Navarro, the upscale health food store five or six blocks away in the centre. The Spanish don’t seem to have bulk food stores like our Bulk Barn and Bulk Barrel. Navarro is more like the health food stores we occasionally shopped in France. They sell some items we would find in a bulk food store, but also lots of very esoteric “healthy” stuff of dubious benefit – supplements and such – as well as organic produce, baking and even wine.

The oats and flax I buy in bulk at home for pennies come in small sealed cellophane packages at Navarro – 500g of large-flake oats, 150g of flax – and cost a relative fortune, twice as much in Euros as they cost in dollars in Canada. One task for today is to research the possibility that there are bulk food stores somewhere in this city. (Later: alas, it appears not.)

Near city hall

I had taken my camera (as always) and after the shopping, drifted over to city hall square. The light was fantastic – heavy overcast in much of the sky, but still fairly bright. Given the colour and darkness of the clouds, you’d think a storm was imminent. Some rain was forecast, but as so often, never materialized. I wandered through to one of our favourite little squares, Plaza de Rodrigo Botet (he was a local fossil collector). It has a nice fountain, trees, restaurants, lovely yellow apartment buildings. A few snaps, and home.

City Hall square

Plaza de Rodrigo Botet

Later that evening, from our apartment

Friday is now officially lunch-out day. We had picked out one that Ines recommended, in Carmen, and headed over there a little before two (lunchtime opening hour typically). When we found it, and looked at the menu board, both our reactions were, ‘Meh.’ It was one of those restaurants that has to be inventive for the sake of invention, a smarty-pants restaurant. We just wanted good plain Spanish cooking. We found a real peach of a place a few blocks away near Plaza del Tossal.

Casa Paquito

Casa Paquito is a small, intimate restaurant, typically Spanish, with dark wood tables, colourful tile wainscotting and old Feria (fair) and bullfight posters on the wall. The crowd, when the place finally starting filling up a half hour later, was young-ish and Spanish. We were the only gringos. The menu del dia was €12 for starter, main, dessert, drink and bread, and there were choices of five or six dishes for each course. This is the kind of restaurant we came to love when we were here before. The food is never spectacular, but it’s often, as in this case, fresh, good quality and very tasty.

Karen had a big plate of salad to start, steak for main course – which she said was tender and flavourful – and a to-die-for chocolate tort for desert. The glass of wine she ordered was twice the portion you’d get most places, and quite decent quality. I ordered a beer, which was a mistake as the glass held not much more than Karen’s wine. I had garbanzo soup, which reminded me a little of French Canadian Pea (hambone in the broth, I’m guessing), a lightly breaded scaloppini of chicken breast with a few fries and hunter sauce, and baked apple for dessert. Very satisfying.

Total bill with the extra glass of wine I ordered: €26, about $42. How much would that meal cost at home? Hard to say; it’s apples and oranges. A Canadian restaurant would serve more veg with the main, and the portions would all be at least half again as big. But we were quite satisfied and barely ate anything later in the day.

Carmen Church front

Feeling fairly mellow, we meandered through Carmen, snapping pics of the street art (well, that would be me; Karen would be the one standing half a block away, looking embarrassed). We ended back home by 5:30, had a long Skype (two hours!) with Caitlin, then settled in for an evening at home. My, how unusual!

If Friday is lunch-out day, Saturday and Sunday are free-museum days. On Saturday, we decided to take in the new exhibit at MuVIM, the Valencian Museum of Modernity and Illustration, which is only a few blocks away. It’s an interesting place, a massive, modern, arguably brutalist, building on the edge of the old centre, with lovely grounds dotted with remnants of Roman buildings. The museum has a permanent exhibit, The Adventure of Thought, about the rise of the Age of Enlightenment. It’s an unlikely Disney-ish tour through several rooms and levels, complete with sound, video, live actors and animatronics. We went the last time we stayed here. You have to call ahead and book an appointment to see it in English. Most of the rest of the facility is given over to art exhibition spaces. (I noticed this time, though, that they also have a concert hall, and are currently running a series of free classical concerts.)

Republican poster promoting foreign sales of local crop

The exhibit we saw was "La Modernitat Republicana: Innovacions yPerviviències en l'Art Figuratiu (1928-1942)" – that’s in Valencian, which Google translates as Republican Modernity: Innovations and Survival in Figurative Art. It’s about figurative art in Valencia, most but not all commercial or propagandistic, during the politically tumultuous period from the end of the Miguel Primo de Rivera dictatorship, through the short-lived Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of the Franco era. Much of the nuance in the ideas was lost on us unfortunately because there was no English commentary (and also because the Spanish commentary which we tried to read appeared to be written in dense curator-ese, aka baffle-gab.) Never mind. We liked much of the art, especially the Civil War-era posters.

After the museum we wandered a bit in the narrow little streets in behind the museum. I wanted Karen to see some of the street art I had photographed the week before when I was out on my own. I’m beginning to think my initial judgement about the quality of recent street art here was premature. There is some pretty cool stuff, and still lots of it, because there are still lots of hoardings, blank walls and hidden little alleyways where the artists can work uninterrupted.

On Sunday, I went for a run. I picked up a bike on Ramon y Cajal, the wide boulevard a few blocks from our apartment, rode to the river, then jogged about three kilometers around to Marques del Turia, another wide boulevard that goes back into the centre. It was a 5K run altogether, with another kilometer or so of walking to get home.

The river park was full of people, including lots of families: picnicking, biking, jogging – zooming by me as if I were standing still – and playing sports. I saw a couple of soccer games but also, a little surprisingly, a rugby match. The river park system is fantastic. I ran along a purpose-built hard-packed crushed-tile jogging path. There is also a separate bike path and more than one walking path. Each has a different activity-appropriate surface. They take fitness and recreation very seriously here.

On the way to IVAM - Bridge of Flowers

Green parrot (presumably not native) in Turia Gardens

Ancient coke bottle cap in ruins in Turia Gardens

In the afternoon, we walked by a fairly indirect route – out to the river and then around much of the same route I’d run in the morning, only in the other direction – to IVAM, the Valencian Museum of Modern Art. It’s another fabulous institution, housed in another striking modern building on the edge of the old centre. At any one time, it’s showing three to five different exhibits. Right now, there’s a long-running show, drawn from its own collection, of sculpture by Julio González, a Spanish artist of international stature. IVAM has the largest collection of his work anywhere. There’s an exhibit of work by Grete Stern, a mid-20^th century Argentinian photographer of German extraction, and another of work by Harun Farocki, an Indo-German film maker and installation artist who died young a couple of years ago.

The one we saw, “Between Myth and Fright: The Mediterranean as Conflict,” just opened. Like the MuVIM exhibit we saw the day before, it’s a show that explores ideas through art. The first part considers the links and commonalities among Mediterranean cultures, and looks at the 19^th and early 20^th century idea of the Mediterranean as a mysterious, magical, mainly benign force. The second part explores the more modern take on the middle sea as a theatre of conflict, especially focusing on migrants and refugees from south and east. The first part is mostly paintings, the second mostly photos and videos.

Photo of Athens from IVAM exhibit

This was not an art-for-art’s-sake type of exhibit; few of the works on display were conventionally beautiful, and some of the videos struck us as more documentary than art. There is one long piece, for example, featuring a Tuareg (North African nomad) man talking to the camera about his life and work in people moving – not people smuggling, he insists, because he doesn’t move people across borders. It’s a bracing exhibit. And IVAM is a tri-lingual institution – Spanish, Valencian and English – so everything is translated which makes it a bit easier for the language impaired. And the commentary, even in translation, made more sense than most curatorial commentaries.

We walked home through Carmen and the city centre. End of weekend. End of post.