It is about 6:30 in the evening on our third day here in Valencia… a city unlike any place I have ever been.  We are staying in the Barrio del Carmen, a funky, hip, sort of grungy maze of streets.  There is a lot of street art and a lot of bars.  There are renovated buildings, and squats.  Or at least I think they are squats, since they don´t have any windows but people seem to be living in them.  It is edgy, and cool here.  

Make your way out of the maze (not easy, let me assure you, even with a map) and you arrive in a much cleaner part of the city with a lot of marble and baroque architecture.  Then head a little farther and you get to the La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, the Calatrava complex of stunning modern buildings.  All of this is accented with some icky 1970´s apartment buildings and a lot of greenery, since the entire riverbed that runs through the city is now a public park.  Then you get to the sea, with a long promenade running along the beach.

It is a lot to take in and a lot to see, but we have been doing our best.  I can’t stop taking pictures of graffiti, signs, buildings… it is one of those places where you just want to look at EVERYTHING. 

Our apartment is amazing – on the top floor of the building, with views over the city rooftops.  We have two decks, one of them not unlike a ship´s deck complete with loungers.  Mom is up there right now, lounging.  We are only a five minute walk from the Mercato Central, a huge indoor market with dozens of stalls.  Don´t like the ham at this stall?  No worries, there are twenty more stalls with twenty more kinds of ham each.  There is a stall that sells snails, one that has Asian foods.  One that has a bunch of different prepared paellas.  It was the first place we went on Saturday, right when we got here, and we went back today.  I have to stop going there though, it is dangerous.  I can try but I doubt I will be able to eat a kilo of cheese in the two days we have left.  Even with four bottles of wine to wash it down.

It has been amazing so far.  Tonight we are staying in for dinner – I want to drink red wine and look out over the rooftops, and we’ll eat eggs with mushrooms, spring onions and sausage from the mercato.  Cheese and chocolate, too. 

My time here at the internet cafe is about up – more later.

 

 

 

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