You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 21st, 2008.
This past weekend was spent in the relaxing Mediterranean resort city of Valencia, due to our twin desires to A) see the third largest city in Spain, and B) get the hell out of our wretchedly dirty apartment and take a real shower where we weren’t afraid to accidentally bump our naked butts in to the wall and come down with some bizarre skin rash.
We caught the train on Friday after class, and although it was advertised to take 3.5 hours, for some unknown reason it actually took 5.5, putting us into Valencia at roughly 2:30a on Saturday morning. Upside: we weren’t in the smoking car!
On Saturday we rose around noon and headed over to the Mercat Central, a sprawling public market offering aisle after aisle of vendors selling all sorts of fresh produce, meat and seafood, all in a cool 1920’s modern style wrought-iron and stained glass building. After a “most satisfying repast” at an outdoor cafe in the courtyard of the market, we took advantage of the density of the old city, hitting all the major sites in only a couple hours. These included visiting: the Lonja, a 16th century neo-Gothic mercantile exchange built by the local silk merchants; the Cathedral, including surmounting the ridiculously tall Micalet, its Moorish minaret re-appropriated as a bell tower; the Ceramics Museum; the city’s oldest Horchateria, and strolling along the Rio park, which is the old course of the diverted Turia River, repurposed as a central green / park area. And since most of the monuments are only a few steps from each other, we ended up passing the same group of Italian tourists 4 times in different parts of the city. Weird
After such an exhaustive tour, we opted to take advantage of the general cleanliness of our hotel room and ordered room service and watched a movie. It was actually really good, except for the damn exchange rate. I swear, it gets worse and worse every day. What’s going on in the States that’s screwing that damn thing up so badly for us (I mean aside from that whole War on Terror quagmire thingy)?!?
Sunday was another gorgeous day (in contrast to the rain, wind and general misery experienced by Madrileños this weekend…hehehe), so we took off intending to go to the Aquarium part of the City of Arts and Sciences, a super-modern complex designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava which looks like a cross between the Death Star and Sea Lab (I tried to take some pix of it, but the scale prohibited me doing it justice. It’s wicked cool.). We never actually made it to the Aquarium, however, because as we were leaving the hotel, it dawned on us that our return train to Madrid was of the 6-hour regional variety, departing from a station on the other side of town. Though we originally decided this would be a good idea, as it saved a couple of euros, we figured out that between the cab fee to get to the station and the misery of sitting in an uncomfortable short-haul seat for 6 hours (or more, based on past precedent), it wasn’t worth it. We subsequently had to go back to the train station and fix our tickets to get on the 6:50a train this morning. That chewed up the time that we had planned to spend at the Aquarium, and as we were walking up to the ticket counter (which took about an hour of walking around the complex to finally find…damn construction), they were shutting down. Oh well. We took it as a sign that we should go to the real Aquarium—the beach.
We sat on the rocky retaining wall of the jetty by the beach admiring the vistas for about an hour, after which, we opted to continue sitting by the beach, but instead of on a hard rock, we sought out a comfortable chair. In a bar. With cold, cold beer. This locale also offered us a good 45-minute game of “Guess the Nationality” of the boisterous crowd of Aryan-looking tourists across the way from us (we settled on Dutch).
Later on Sunday evening, as we were walking back to the hotel after a fantastic meal of paella in this dope little 8-table restaurant right next to the Cathedral’s bell tower, we were talking and realized two things:
1. despite the two bottles of wine we enjoyed over dinner, we were not in fact, drunk. Rather, our perpetual immersion in Spanish has rendered us linguistically handicapped. We’re not drunk, we’re just losing our English.
2. Valencia is a really cool city. It’s similar to Savannah, GA, but less rednecky and more cultured. It’s a beach town / college town, but with the size, cultural opportunities and industry to offset the potential limitations of your average beach / college town. It’s kinda like a tuxedo-print t-shirt. It can be formal, but it’s here to party.
-bdmc
Our house back in the States finally closed on Wednesday and the new owner took possession immediately (we’re still debating whether she really has ownership yet though…you’re welcome, Tom).
It’s a little surreal to be completely homeless. We had four great years there, replete with a near-total overhaul of the joint to the point where we knew each and every nuance of her ol’ bones; we were on a first-name / know-your-drink basis with the bartender of the local dive bar (conveniently located two doors down) and super-chummy with a squad of great neighbors (G.E.S. Forever! Rap Tor Lux Lucis! (coat of arms forthcoming)). But fate couldn’t be escaped and it would have happened eventually anyway. At least this way we got to blow the dividend check on world travel (hey, it’s better than our alternative strategy of a truckload of coke and taking over Client #9’s, uh, service providers…) Honestly, once the offer went in and we got past the inspection, it was pretty much a done deal in our minds; the closing was just a formality.
We have, however, been on the look out for the perfect replacement place, and we think we’ve found it:
Just kidding. That’s the Palacio Real in Madrid, one of the umpteen palaces throughout the country at the king’s disposal. This one is so big (it’s the largest in all of Western Europe) that it even has its own distinct climate zones: it was cold, windy and raining in the courtyard 5 minutes before this shot was taken outside the side door. Ahh, the power of an unlimited monarch.
-bdmc
