Exploring the City of Valencia

Glamourpuss
Originally uploaded by jovike.

Day 2: Breakfast in Cerveceria Bocateria, around the corner in Calle Antonio Suarez. This place is recommended: they do a bona apple tart and coffee for brekkers and at lunchtime something more substantial.

The picture is Espe on the Puente Exposition, a bridge that goes over the former course of the river Turia, now the Jardin del Turia because all the space has been converted to parkland. From there we traversed Calle de la Nave, Calle Bonaire and the Calle Comedias on our way to the Calle de la Paz and the Place de la Reina: half a square because the rest of the space is a different square, in front of the Cathedral.

Valencia is similar to London in that half the shops -- especially the shoe shops -- have a sale on. Sales are called rebajas (Spanish) or raixas (Valenciana). Also many houses and flats have balconies, but even though it is much hotter than London, people do not sit on them, just like in London.

In the Cathedral which was built between 1262 and 1702 we did the audiotour: one English, one Spanish, three euros and leave a credit card or something of value as deposit for the magic speaking boxes and headphones.

After refreshments in the Plaza de la Virgen we also visited the Basilica.

Espe is Catholic and she was hoping to find a cathedral that is up and running, to buy prayer books and so on. Although this is supposed to be a strongly Christian country, most of the churches are locked shut and do not publicize the times of services. The shops that we have in London around our cathedrals that sell plaster saints and souvenirs are not present here. In the UK churches are open and well attended: I often wander into strange churches to see the architecture, artwork and local history or just to look for the green man. We did find a church service in Valencia later in our holiday which held a very swift mass; the congregation was small, female and elderly.

Other contrasts: graffiti in Spain is usually confined to garage doors or run-down properties. In London this could be any large surface regardless of the cost of removing the scrawl.

In Valencia, pipework and garage doors are also often covered with stickers advertising the services of cerrajeros who are plumbers and electricians.

We wandered around before arriving at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento where we checked out the impressive main post office or Correos.

At 20:30 you find us at table 21 in the cafe on the top floor of El Corte Ingles in Calle Sorolla Colon. Espe was amused by the powerplays of the waiters and I watched a group of women assemble one-by-one for a meeting, sitting in different places before recognizing each other and commandeering a table by a window.

El Corte Ingles is like a cross between WH Smith and Debenhams that sells almost everything. Valencia has several branches and the two in the centre of town have different departments to each other, ie electrical goods in one but not the other. The largest branch has eight floors. They are pretty good for books and DVDs. I got a box set of Kojak in Spanish for Espe. I didn't get The Godfather because that was an outrageous €78. I also lingered over the Mont Blanc counter. Mont Blanc make expensive pens and gizmos in shiny black.

Supper was at Joe's, 18 Avenida Aragon, Valencia. I don't know why we went in here, perhaps reassured by the solidity of the coloured glass frontage which obscured the comedy within. The joke at Joe's is that they have only a €15 set menu but they won't tell you what is on it. A group near us left before eating when the waiter refused to produce a menu. We had a go, seeing there was plenty of food on people's tables. New courses keep appearing, about fifteen altogether. I was full halfway through. The waiters have fun. A lot of food goes in the bin. I don't get it. Taberna Joe: For stout trenchermen only.

Off to Valencia!

Day 1: Espe and I are off on our hols. We're staying in Valencia, Spain, for a fortnight.

Valencia is the capital of the district of Valencia in Eastern Spain. Like Catalonia, it has its own language similar to Spanish. Valenciana is no easier than Catalan, and street signs could be in either language, so Avenida del Puerto could be something like Via de Porto on a map.

We set off early, intending to relax for an hour or two at Heathrow before the flight was called. Our journey was uneventful, via WAGN into London, tube to Paddington and Heathrow Express to the airport. All the time the weird intelligences on the seventh moon of Neptune were making their final plans, but we were unaware of this.

The Heathrow Express train is quite fast, quiet, but has "entertainment" in all the carriages. The BBC supply a news service to the train, and also on-screen is a long list of things you are not allowed to do read in an almost patronizing manner. After twenty minutes of this, the train is about to arrive and we then discover there are carriages that are "entertainment-free" Aaargh!

I enjoyed looking at all the shops in the airport, not buying anything except a small food dictionary and then we had coffee and croissants.

Iberia flight 4151 was shared with BA, but was OK. One man was quite faint, and the stewards had to lay him down on the seats next to us. Alcohol was rubbed on and he survived the flight.

The heat hits you when coming out of the air-conditioned airport. We grabbed a taxi and arrived at the Hotel Puerta Valencia in half-an-hour. Taxis are cheap here. The first thing we did was upgrade our room to one of the 7th floor balcony apartments. Cost us an extra £13.21 a day.

We ate at La Sídreria (cider apple) around the corner. Espe asked for a simple salad and we got enough food to last me for two days: it contained fish, meat, eggs and cheese as well as vegetables. This restaurant is a bit pricy: for entertaining only.

Try out balcony. Seems to work. The Goons could have filmed their The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film here. As there is a mezzanine level here, we look down from nine storeys high at the Avenida Cardenal Benlloch below. This is a busy thoroughfare and even has traffic late at night, which you can hear as all the buildings along the avenue are several storeys high. Luckily our glass partition to the balcony has double glazing, a rubber blackout sheet, nets and heavy curtains.

Sleep. Good hard beds here. Good sleep.

Still here!

My fourth encounter with a terrorist bomb in London was yesterday morning at 08:49.

I wasn't sure whether it was a bomb at first, despite my experience of them. I realize now that the bomb in the tunnel near Aldgate tube station that shook our building was right under us, and the airborne shockwave that came out the station entrance hit our windows at the same time as the bang.

For a while I thought a Metropolitan Line train had hit the buffers. Reports came through of power surges causing explosions or a train collision, then that there had been an explosion.

We had to evacuate. As my company followed its disaster recovery plans and we walked across London, we could see the police invoking their emergency procedures. Roads were quickly taped off and traffic was being directed around affected areas; paramedics were driving along the pavements and other pedestrian areas where the road was clogged with traffic; police commandeered red double-decker busses to carry the walking wounded to various hospitals.

I'm in a DR site the other side of the Thames. I got to stay in a posh hotel last night. By next morning, everyone who works in my company was accounted for.

Click on the photo to see a set of pictures of Aldgate and people nearby, now expanded to include some of the tributes left at the scene.

Update: In September I visited an academic at the LSE who is researching bloggers for his PhD thesis. He asked me what I was trying to convey in this posting. I said I just wanted to show how Londoners are getting on with things and not killing other people in revenge. (However, I posted the above before the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.)

Video Set?

Doctor Who is back tonight. Hope you have your videos set! I think I have.

I'm just old enough to have seen all the episodes, except for a few when I was on holiday bacause in days of yore the season was much longer. I hope this new effort is at least as good as the recent Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) which I quite liked.

I'm resigned to there being no regeneration scene, Ace disappearing without explanation (she got turned into a Cat Person in the last episode), and doing a complete story in 45 minutes probably makes sense for America where they have even more ad breaks than we do, but an hour or ninety minutes would be better, or maybe having several production teams to make enough new Who to show it 24 hours a day or perhaps wire it directly into my brain...

Everyone is talking about their favourite Doctor Who eras, so here's mine: Patrick Troughton; T. Baker; Hartnell; Pertwee; Davison; C. Baker; McCoy; McGann.

Ah, England, without Doctor Who to hurry home in time to watch on a Saturday evening? Impossible!

Meaning of Life

My To Do List is a thick wad of folded papers, this week in my bag, last week in my jacket pocket. In my mind the tatters are strewn in a line along the remote corridor of an abandoned asylum.

Most of the sheets contain really important things I have to do, like: clear two rooms of clutter, dig a pond, cancel my contact lens supply and even more paperwork like changing mortgage repayments, among interesting links for this weblog. The links' currency is devalued monthly -- but they will soon disgorge into your browser as three large posts I am working on -- and the physical clutter in the two rooms has a depressing effect because I heard from feng shui adherents that that is the effect it is supposed to have, whereas, in fact, fifteen-year-old copies of New Scientist are a joy for many reasons even if I do have thousands of similar items to wade through: to clip some art for Flickr or some future design; to read about the dreams we had before the latest bunch of politicians bollocksed it all up again -- I call this 'perspective'; most importantly just reading outside the narrow agenda of 2005.

But clearing the decks at my level of discrimination and information gathering and organization will take years and is frankly not worth it, even though a clever and balanced John Keogh may emerge who could clear the room at parties. Doing important things like getting the roof fixed or converting the attic (all happening next week!) is worth it and so is learning Dreamweaver even though I prefer to use a text editor, so I can be a webmaster if I grow up because that is what the industry demands. Unfortunately prevarication and procrastination are the order of the day here: did I really need to spend a whole day (last Wednesday) downloading large pictures of obscure 1970s album covers to merge with my music files in anticipation of getting an iPod photo? Well, I enjoyed it!

I've started reading again, unknowingly prompted by my old mate Fresco who has a third book published -- as editor this time -- which made me realize I hadn't finished his last book which was elevating my alarm clock. I really ought to review it now: damn, another item for the list. Oh yes, and I ought to start writing again, I used to be quite good at that.

Anyways, before I knew it I, last month I also polished off a Poul Anderson, a Mat Coward (Hi, Mac Howard!!) and I am now reading a Stephen Laws.

I made three mistakes with the Laws: firstly when I bought it from New Worlds (downstairs at Murder One in the Charing Cross Road) it wasn't as cheap as I thought it would be given that they are closing down the sf department when they move to new premises over the road (yes, another blow to literacy, only the fifty-ninth in my lifetime, but what is Maxim Jakubowski up to? There remain two other shops in London where you can buy new sf hardbacks but I won't tell you where they are in case they get closed down too. Any road up) but I bought it anyway. Secondly, the book wasn't in the 'Used Sale' although you could see that some lunatic had scored the back cover with hundreds of lines by using it as a base for some craft project or perhaps ritual pentagram drawing. (Craft - that'll keep'em off the streets. Nice one, John Lewis. They've got a whole department for that sort of thing, you see.) Yes, a horror novel handed down from some authentic nutter! But when the clerk queried whether the book was used, I said no, solely because I found it in a rack of new books. I'm too honest, me. Mad, more like. Thirdly, I had noticed two Stephen Laws books there and I selected the one called Spectre, even though the other volume looked newer and more collectible, albeit slimmer. Now I am a few chapters in, I find that I did not buy a new work: I have this title at home in a different edition and I read it in 1986. What am I about.

About 12 stone, that's what, the heaviest I have ever been. I'm eating healthy food but too much of it probably, not drinking enough water and not exercising enough. Python's Meaning of Life ended like this. I ought to phone my Mum more too.