One of the defining features of Las Fallas are the ninots– dolls– constructed by different neighborhoods and groups.  They’re currently on display in an exhibition, but they will be installed in the streets soon. Two will be chosen to be saved, and all the rest will be burned (in the streets) at the conclusion of the festival.

Since we’d been to the museum to see the previously saved ones, we thought we ought to go to the exhibition and see this year’s offerings. Bottom line–I find most of them creepy in a Disney meets horror movie clown kinda way, and I don’t understand most of the messaging. But for the record, a few photos.

One theme is especially popular this year:

R here. I particularly like this one of a crazed tourist bursting out of a social media post:

Oh, and we got soaked walking home, but the rain made the streets shine with the Fallas lights.

This, btw, is the opera house – in the form of a space aged Conquistador’s hat – that forms the centerpiece of the vast Cuitat des Artes y Ciencias complex, by controversial rock star architect Santiago Calatrava. Looks amazing; 3x over budget; everything leaks.

Where do you go when you can’t process any more glorious Renaissance art? The Rice Museum.

Rice, as the exhibits noted, originated in China, but was introduced to Spain by the Moors, who planted it near Valencia in the 8th century. Since then it has become an absolutely integral part of life here, giving rise to the well known Valenciano Paella and many less well known arrozes, both wet and dry.

The museum is located in an old rice  mill and houses all the original and lovingly restored machinery accompanied explained by audio guide.

This particular mill was the first electrified mill in the area. As an early adopters of such a new fangled–and expensive–technology, the owners decided to buy only two motors. As a result, the mill is a 3 story marvel of gears, drive shafts, and belts. Rice entered as paddy rice, went through cleaning sieves, hullers, polishers, and baggers, and left as the makings of deliciousness.

We have been eating (and eating and eating) many yummy things. To recap:

Breakfast pastries

Or second-breakfast pastries, if we have eaten some egg and toast in the apartment before going out. R maintains the croissants and pastries here aren’t as good as those in France, and he may be right, but they’re still mostly pretty tasty. There was a bakery right by the school that made excellent empanadas with a multi-grain crust that managed to be robust without being dry or leathery. They also made delicious tiny croissants and passable chocolate chip cookies. We enjoyed an oversized cookie that I thought would be an almond meringue, but was more like a snickerdoodle with almond flour. Very sticky base. We were trying to peel it off the paper, and leaving quite a bit behind, before I realized the paper was rice paper and edible.

Our (and València’s) favorite coffee is the cortado,  espresso with a little steamed milk usually served in a glass.

Fartons and horchata

If there is a signature sweet of Valencia it is a farton, usually served with a cup of horchata. Honestly, didn’t really work for us. A farton is a stick shaped pastry that resembles, more than anything else, a very cottony hot dog bun, dusted with powdered sugar. They are meant to be dunked in horchata, which here is a sweetened drink made from ground tiger nuts and cold water (in Mexico, horchata is made from corn). I can see how maybe this would be a nice sweet in very hot weather (its very light in the stomach), but otherwise I feel like there are better options.

Bocadillos

A signature Spanish snack. Very plain crusty bread (think baguette) made into a sandwich with thin shavings of ham. Maybe a thin slice of cheese. Filling, and the ham is excellent, but overall it’s very dry and hard work. No pic here.

Tapas and “El menu”

And here’s where things start getting especially yummy. “El menu del dia” is the preset lunch option at restaurants. Usually 2 or 3 courses, with a drink included. A budget friendly way to eat a variety. Artichokes, asparagus, bocarones, patatas bravas (roast potatoes topped with aiolli and spicy red sauce), olives, paella. And in the non-Spanish, but still excellent, category, are pizza Napoli, Moroccan tagine, and pastas.

Cheesecake

Cheesecake is a big thing here, and one of R’s favorite things. Usually it’s made without a crust. Basque cheesecake is usually cooked until very brown on top, while other styles are judged by how much they ooze across the plate when sliced. R is trying as many as he can squeeze in. Still hasn’t found the perfect one, so experimentation will continue.

On the left, above, is the best use of a farton I’ve tried–fartonmisu, a tiramisu made with a farton. Yum.

València’s huge Gothic cathedral is really three sites – the cathedral itself, the museum within it, and the bell tower. The latter is supposedly a must-do for healthy thigh-burn and views of the Cuitat Vella; alas the weather, cloudy the past few days, has turned to rain and they’ve closed it.

The cathedral itself is (deep breath) an 18th C Neoclassical renovation of a 13-16th C partly Romanesque but mainly Gothic structure built over a 10th C mosque built over a 6th C Visigothic church built over a 1st C Roman temple. (Dates approximate. The smart money says there’s a 50,000 BCE Neanderthal cafe and gift shop further down, still waiting to be discovered.)

The exterior shows a variety of styles; inside, it’s glorious and feels mostly harmonious even though the C. 18 “improvements” are very obvious:

We often avoid audio guides. On this occasion we got one in English and one in Spanish but rapidly abandoned the Spanish one – too much work given the challenging acoustics and complexity of the information. The density of historical detail here made the English guide well worth it.

The historical riches are astounding, e.g. a couple of Goyas displayed without fanfare in one of the umpteen ornate side chapels, the elaborate stone pulpit from which St Vincent Ferrer preached in this very spot around 1410, and gorgeous C16 frescoes of musician-angels that were only rediscovered in 2004.

The museum is contained within an outer part of the cathedral. Tremendous riches in painting, sculpture, gold, etc., acquired in large part by gift from kings of Aragon, Castille, etc.

The grand finale, in a magnificent Gothic side chapel that would do as a small cathedral in itself, is (don’t say “supposedly” around here) the Holy Grail – brought from Jerusalem to Rome by St. Paul and thence eventually (insert vague history stretching over several countries and a dozen centuries) to Valencia. The gold is medieval – the Grail is the red cup you can just see in the middle.

Two rose windows that the audio guide barely bothered to mention:

K here. We spent the better part of 3 hours here, slowly wandering, listening to the guide, marveling at the magnitude of it all. I kept wondering how much more rich and layered it might have been if I knew more Bible stories, more Catholic saints, more art history, more architecture. One could have picked any spot in the cathedral and spent an hour with an expert digging through the details. But then again, even without the extra depth, my brain reached saturation.

Bonus pics.

Kerry and I have both noted that even in everyday life it’s easy to lose track of what you did / saw / ate even yesterday; speed-tourism in a foreign city only exacerbates the problem. So here, at 10 pm, are some very quick highlights in an attempt to pin down some of the past 48 hours or so.

Going up the Torre Serrans (note K at bottom left):

Visiting the labyrinthine ruins of Roman Valentia at the Almoina Archaeological Museum.

A very Spanish dinner around the corner involving boquerones (white anchovies in vinegar) served over potato chips:

The Fallas Museum, containing every ninot saved from the flames each year since 1935 or so…

and oil portraits of every Fallera –

and the official poster for every year –

Next, one of Spain’s greatest personal art collections, in the Centro de Arte Hortensia Herrero:

(Recipe: make $3 billion in the supermarket business; spend a lot of it on art; buy a ruined C.16 palazzo; spend $50 million just on the restoration; reinforce the walls because one of the Anselm Kiefer paintings is in fact mostly lead, and weighs 4 tons.)

Next, built between 1490 and 1550, the spare, beautiful Lonja de la Seda or Silk Exchange:

Next, the not at all spare (actually, Baroque on steroids) but even more beautiful Parroquia de San Nicolas de Bari – which the artist mainly responsible for restoring the Sistine Chapel described very reasonably as “the Sistine Chapel of Valencia”:

Next – OK, you can’t win every game – an hour at Centro Carmen, a modern at museum from which I don’t have a single picture because I felt that every single multimedia conceptual installation (or whatever) in there was achingly pretentious, self-regarding,  derivative, bordering on self-parody crap…

And finally a return to the Museo de Bellas Artes, where among many other things we saw this Crucification triptych with an absent Christ, c. 1570:

This Velasquez autorretrato:

And this modernist head of the Spanish novelist Vincente Blasco Ibáñez:

The Roman colony that eventually became Valencia was built on a river island. By the Islamic era, it was ringed by large walls–with 7 gates–and the edge of the city followed the curve of the Turia river. A small moat around the walls helped protect against innundation.

(Note that there was an Iberian settlement here before the Romans, and no doubt someone else here before that–Wikipedia only takes me so far.)

Over the centuries, the proximity to the river was both a strategic benefit and a flooding risk. This came to a head in the mid-1900s when two devastating floods lead to the moving of the river to a new course going round the south side of the city.

The redirected river did its job of protecting the main city during the Valenican floods of 2024, but adjacent communities to the south were devastated in one of the worst natural disasters in recent years. More than 230 people died after an intense storm dropped nearly a year’s worth of rain in a day.

The old river bed was abandoned for years, with various mayors periodically surfacing a plan to turn it into a motorway better connecting the port and the airport. Thankfully, that idea never succeeded and instead, the river bed was converted into a long narrow park curving round the old town.

The park stretches more than 9km and features a series of green spaces. Gardens, soccer, baseball and rugby pitches, fountains, playgrounds and green spaces are criss-crossed with a series of walking, running, and biking paths. (Note to the tourist–make sure you’re walking on the right one. Those folks on their bikes and motorized scooters move fast, have the right of way, and don’t appreciate their commute being slowed by clueless wanderers.)(Guess how I know this?)

We have so enjoyed having this green corridor as a way of moving through the city and have delighted in all the ways the space is used. If you have to move a river, this is an excellent way to make use of the river bed.

R here. Loads of music practice in the park too. Whether this is normal or preparation for Fallas we’re not sure, but we sat on a wall for 20 minutes listening to these guys:

There’s a wonderful playground / play structure in the park called Parc Gulliver, consisting of a giant (40 meter?) tied-down Gulliver on which the city’s Lilliputians can play.

For you literature nerds out there: it’s Gulliver’s 300th birthday this year. Gracias a Sr Swift: one of the dozen or so greatest books ever written, IMVHO.

During 2 weeks of language school, we did a lot of walking to get a sense of the city but didn’t have the time or energy for art galleries, churches and museums. “No problem, we have a whole week after that.” Now we are on Tuesday of that week, have just created a Google map marking the major museums and sites we don’t want to miss – and there are 23 of them. So far we’ve “done” three and a half.

Kerry and I always notice that we seem to walk faster than most of the people around us. On you marks. Get set. 💥

Later: today we did the Fallas Museum – where they keep all the prize-winning ninots from previous years, the ninots indultat that were “indulged” by not being burned at the end of the festival.

Nice lunch at a Moroccan restaurant. 

Later still, to the National Museum of Ceramics – but alas I think we were too tired for it because we both found ourselves drifting around saying, “Hmm, gosh, even more eighteenth century soup tureens in this room. Are your feet tired too?” 

We came outside to strong wind and our first (light) rain in three weeks, and retreated to an Italian place for asparagus pizza with beer.

After our trip to El Museo de Bellas Artes, with detour to Hospital Clinico, we decided we had earned a nice lunch. Thanks to a restaurant list shared by Mario at the school, we decided to go Italian at Prosciutteria Tommaso. Got in line for lunch around 3 (very Spanish) and were seated – at a nice corner table upstairs, surrounded by art – around 4. What followed was indulgent and delicious.

We started with mussels and a zucchini carpachio with thin shavings of parm, dollops of roasted tomato and a scattering of arugula.

Followed this with pasta carbonara with truffles and tortello verde (spinach stuffed oversized tortellini with gorgonzola sauce).

Washed it all down with two generous glasses of wine each – Albariño for K and Tempranillo for R.

Finished “lunch” around 6pm and enjoyed our gentle walk home, floating about two inches above the park. Ahhh.

(For the record, I should note that we shared an apple around 9pm and called it dinner. It was enough.)

We were in the Museo de Bellas Artes, gawking at the incredible art, when we heard a crash. Turned in time to see another visitor, intent on crossing the room to see a painting more closely, flying over the low bench in the middle of the room.

(R here: I turned the corner into that room just in time to hear a crash and see a woman suspended improbably in mid-air above a stone bench, face towards the ceiling. It looked a bit like an action shot from a rugby match.)

Joan (whose name we later learned), hit the marble floor hard. Fortunately, she did not land either head first or with wrists extended. Not so fortunately, she gashed her shin and landed with all her body weight on her right shoulder.

Using our best school Spanish, we were able to translate between Joan and the security guards. Ultimately the guards called an ambulance, but because Joan and her husband Eric didn’t have their travel insurance documents on them, I rode with Joan in the ambulance while R and Eric went back to their hotel to collect the papers.

The driver/medic spoke limited English, but between her English and my Spanish, we worked it all out. She was very patient and introduced me to a new Spanish phrase–con dos, somos uno.  Roughly, with two, we make one. The local version of “it takes a village.”

Joan and I arrived at the very crowded local hospital and got her checked in–super easy process. Eric and R arrived shortly thereafter, and we said our goodbyes after connecting them to the triage nurse who spoke English.

Joan later sent a picture of herself back at her hotel, sporting a spiffy new sling. Turns out she fractured her humeral head (top bit of the arm bone) and is not thrilled about losing her golf game for a while.

All in all, we were impressed with the system; the ambulance driver even made sure to pick a hospital that would be easy for R and Eric to get to from the hotel given the road closures for Las Fallas.

(R here again. Joan had managed to get within one room of the painting she really wanted to see, Juan Bautista by El Greco. K made sure later to go back and take a picture of it for her.)