We joined a group from the school to walk to La Crida, the official opening of the month long festival of La Fallas. Our guide/teacher warned us it would be crowded. “If you get lost, well…you’ll be lost. But you are independent, so I won’t worry. Have fun.”

As a group we joined the thickening hoards moving towards the big road on the edge of the old city that leads to the city gate where the ceremony would take place. We joined the road, and about 50,000 people, squeezing into the larger crowd straining to see the tv screen broadcasting the events at the gate some 6 blocks away.

After spending 20 minutes mushed against a parked police car – in a fog of cigarette smoke – R and I split off. We pushed and shoved our way through the crowd and climbed the barricade on the other side of the road to reach the space on the sidewalk above the river park. From there we had some breathing room and a somewhat better view. 

We still couldn’t see the gate and stage where the ceremony was taking place, but we had a better view of the screen and fireworks. And what a show. It started with the orchestra, which played for the acrobat riding a gigantic illuminated dove that flew over the crowds.

Dance performances and a round of fireworks introduced the fallera mayor and the fallera infantil (the adult and child “princesses” of the Fallas) (princess isn’t quite the right word, but close) who would (in their best Valenciano) declare Las Fallas open. Everyone sang the Valenican anthem – which, unsurprisingly, is about how Valencia is the best city in the world and how wonderful it is to be Valencian – and another round of fireworks closed things up.

Our guide from the school, Victor, had explained that the symbolic reopening of the gates recalled the era when they were used for real every day. If you got in before nightfall you had the protection of the city; if not, you were left out in the flat, treeless, featureless campo and had “only the protection of the moon.”

Valencia is home to a centuries old festival called Las Fallas.

We are going shortly to La Crida, the official opening of the 4 week long event, but in the run up, the city has been getting gradually noisier all day, with periodic loud (LOUD!) fireworks and groups of falleros and their families and friends (and musicians) making their way towards the festival.

Falla is a Valencian word for torch; the essence of the festival is that many elaborate statues are created out of wood, fiber etc., and the best voted on. The best go into a permanent museum collection and the rest are burned in enormous bonfires, and amid huge fireworks displays, at the culminating “Crèma” in mid- March.

Captured a small bit of video of one of the groups :

This is just one of about 10 groups we’ve heard/seen today.

K looking pleased with herself because we found a tiny sidewalk restaurant where the menu del día was both cheap and entirely in Valenciano:

Beer. Sun. And the main courses turned out to be enormous.

There was something quintessentially European about the fact that our table on the sidewalk was wedged up within about 3 inches of two cars, both so tiny that you could almost have parked them on the tabletop.

R deemed his bowl of muesli insufficient for attentive museum going.

Perfect weather and finally less wind. We have both felt extremely tired; one major culprit is the struggle with the infernal Spanish distinction between the pretérito indefinido and the pretérito imperfecto – “the hardest thing in the language” according to la profesora, who is probably only trying to make us feel better. But another culprit is that my “allergies” turn out to be us both having caught colds – me while traveling and K from me. (Last time it was K catching Covid while traveling and me catching it from her. This is better, but still seems to demand 9 hours sleep every night – which I’m getting, and K is trying and failing to get.)(K here. All this is exacerbated by the local heavy use of air freshener and scented laundry detergent, alongside enthusiastic cigarette smokers.)

Lunch was a simple menu del día eaten outside at a local cafe, with our Swiss friend Fabienne.

This afternoon we mastered the bus system well enough to take a 20-minute ride to la playa. Sunny, but a bit of a cool breeze. A few brave people kite-surfing or even swimming, but not many.

We walked a mile or two north on the beach and then all the way back to the residence, about 6 miles through a surprisingly rural area on the edge of the city, followed by modest apartments near the soccer stadium and then a very fancy neighborhood north of the center.

We’ve just stopped at the appropriately named local supermarket, CONSUM, and got ourselves fixings for dinner including a bottle of vermut.

Later – K is cooking something healthy involving chickpeas and spinach, which is a good thing because I’m over here drinking vermut while eating the two delicious local cheeses that the woman at the counter recommended.

Again too tired to write much – a combination of class, homework, walking miles and having a strong spring allergy reaction to something – so this is mainly pictures.

Yesterday a long walk through Parque Turia to the city mega-project that is the Cuidad des Artes y Ciencias. To be explored properly later:

Today between classes I was puzzling over the abundance of interesting street art and the much greater abundance of (some political, mostly not, all pretty ugly and incompetent) graffiti:

For lunch we went to the gorgeous Mercad Central and managed to take away only a few things for lunch, not (as was tempting) everything:

An excellent day, but too tired to think or write much. 4 hours of classes felt – for me anyway (R) – like having a very large new road tunnel built through my head.

The school is in an amazing new building that was built in, on, through and around the ruins of the old “Muro Musselman” that once divided the Muslim quarter from the Christian and Jewish quarters of the city. A beautiful, high-tech, modern facility with lovely interesting classrooms and all the tech you could ask for, but in extraordinary combination with the remains of the old architecture.

After a lunch of last night’s leftovers back at the student residence we did a bit of tareja (homework), then found this corner of el escuela for a sunny reading nook:

Early this evening one of the teachers took us on a windy (it’s been very windy) tour of some València highlights. The city has seven gates and this is the main one:

The sunset colors were gorgeous

Off to bed, but a few bonus pics:

K in the residency kitchen:

These, by the way – sweet laminated pastries dusted in sugar – are fartons:

We crawled out of bed quite late (not used to shutting down bars on Saturday nights!) and made our way outside. Since we’re here for 3 weeks, and spending the first 2 of those in language classes, we decided today would be a non-tourism day to rest and recharge. Started with a traditional Spanish breakfast of tomato, ham, toast and cortado, the top local coffee choice served in a glass.

Walked up to the school building (about 10 minutes from where we’re staying) so we can find it tomorrow when we have to be there early. Then began meandering aimlessly, drifting down alleys, crossing big boulevards, and eventually eating lunch in a small cafeteria. Not brilliant, not terrible, just plain  “milanese” (fried fish / cutlets) served with friendly smiles and patience with our faulty Spanish. Made less serviceable because our waiter spoke Valenciano – “yo soy” sounds something like “shgo jhoy.”

More wandering, this time through the long curving park made from an old river bed that defines the northern edge of the old city. (The river was rerouted decades ago to minimize flooding. A series of huge stone bridges span what are now pools, lawns and bike paths).

Back into the old town, a few grocery stops so that we can manage dinner and breakfast a la casa, and home for naps.

Cooler. Sunshine. The packing puzzle to satisfy Ryanair. Getting to Ryanair. Flying Ryanair. Hello Spain!

Brunch with Clarissa at the Ritz – not that Ritz, but a tiny and very friendly cafe up the street from her house on Chiswick High Street. Students, families, large tattooed lorry drivers, all crammed into a space maybe 300 feet square – it feels like a microcosm of the city. Coffee, eggs with Heinz baked beans, fried tomatoes, toast and bubble and squeak – all for about eight quid, a steal by London standards. No doubt it would have been fifty each, and much less friendly, at that other Ritz. The man who runs the place is so nice, and I want to write a review saying “Is this possibly the best breakfast in London?”

Afterwards, a lovely sunny walk down along the river towards Barnes Bridge.

And then the odyssey of getting from SW London to Stansted, which is quite a long way north of NE London – oy. Long tube ride. Can’t work out where to catch bus. Walk nearly a mile in wrong direction, then back. Still in time, but bus never shows (and is, as we discover later, running an hour late behind an accident). Share an Uber with two equally stranded Chinese women and, having paid in advance for the bus tickets, get to the airport well over budget but on time. Thousands of people packed shoulder to shoulder in the terminal.

Quite tasty food at a surprisingly authentic-feeling Lebanese restaurant in the terminal – at which, ok, our server was Romanian, but funny and sweet – then joined the scrum  waiting to board.

Amazing how many places Ryanair cuts costs–paper-thin seats, no seatback pockets, no free beverage service, extra short seat belt straps, but we made it nearly on time with all our luggage.

Taxied to our student residence hall (lovely) and ran back out the door to try to find something small to eat. At nearly 1am, even Spain was calling it quits, so we ended up with a very light “meal” served by a delightful Frenchman who hugged and kissed us as he booted us out at closing time.

It somehow seemed like an appropriate start to two weeks in student housing.

On the way across St James’s Park we passed Horse Guards Parade just as the guard was changing:

We were headed for the National Portrait Gallery, which is a  favorite place for me (R) and one Kerry really wanted to visit. But first we had to refuel in The Crypt under St Martin in the Fields, and then do a quick stop at the National Gallery – same building as NPG – so that I could visit van Eyck’s mysterious Arnolfini portrait, which I’ve been reading about. Alas a scrum –

but a chance for a quick visit to some other nearby masterpieces like this:

And so to the NPG, and some visits for what feel to me like old friends:

And just possibly my favorite object in the entire place, this astonishing plaster bust of the writer Colley Cibber, done almost 300 years ago now by Benjamin Rackstrow. Cibber was said to be one of the wittiest and most charming men of the 18th century; I can stare at this indefinitely, with the sense that he is on the very point of catching my eye and offering some surprising, mildly acidic comment on the times.

Afterwards we walked back past Buckingham Palace to the Tube, with a chill threat of sleet in the air, and home for dinner with Clarissa, Adam and Ella.

And from K, a few bonus pics