If you’re walking down a street in the older parts of Valencia – this one perhaps – look around you.
Look at the drainpipes. At round about head height. You might find someone like this…
Keep looking. You’ll find lots more. I don’t know why they’re there, but I’m enjoying hunting.
Valencia is paella’s capital city. And l’Albufera is its birthplace. Here’s why.
When I was last in Valencia, I was captivated by Albufera Natural Park, with its dunes, Mediterranean forest, and above all, the immense lagoon of the Albufera. Water is king. I had to show Malcolm.
Once, l’Albufera was open sea. Rivers such as the Turia dragged silt and mud to the coast, and gradually this patch of sea became a lake. A saltwater lake. Aquifers beneath gradually sweetened the water. And over the centuries, man intervened, claiming shallow waters for paddy fields. Rice, rice and more rice grows here. Here’s a paddy field, resting for the winter.
Water both shallow and deep ensures this place is a Mecca for birds. Northern birds fly south to winter here, birds from Africa come too.
Locals spend their summers cultivating rice, and their winters fishing the rich waters of the lagoon for carp, eels and other fish, sharing their catch with the bird life.
We explored some of the park before moving on to the small town at the edge of the lagoon, El Palmar. No need to ask what we had for lunch. There were all kinds of paella on the menu, but paella it was. Eaten in the open air – 18° in January seems miraculous to us.
Then a boat trip. We had to have a boat trip. Restful, restorative…. a wonderful afternoon, shared with herons, egrets, cormorants and all kinds of ducks. A truly special day. Camera photos once I get home. For now, we’ll make do with the phone.
It was back to work as usual for Team Barcelona on Monday, so we left them to it and came to Valencia.
It’s lovely to be back, revisiting old haunts from last November, and making fresh discoveries. Pottering down streets in long-established communities is the best: grand imposing doorways; delicately wrought balconies; elegant stucco. Or these days, street art. Here are a few examples I snapped this afternoon.
Meeting friends for a meal, with an hour to kill before your restaurant opens? Or linking up with them for an hour after work? Here in Barcelona, you may well head for a vermuteria. There’s vermouth of course, served simply with ice and lemon or in exotic combinations. You can have wine or beer instead if you choose. Order a dish of olives or a simple tapa. But best of all, enjoy the friendly atmosphere, and relish a cosy convivial moment in a place that may well have been around for over fifty years. And will still be here in fifty more.
Today is the day when the Three Kings – the same ones who visited the infant Jesus – begin their journey to visit all children in the Spanish speaking world to deliver presents to them. We watched the Carnival parade they brought with them as they passed through Barcelona earlier this evening. Dancing, singing, exhuberant and imaginative displays had us enthralled for an hour or more. It was never like this in biblical times, I’m sure.
Ragtag Prompt: Three. https://wp.me/p9YcOU-lb
Do you remember our last trip to Barcelona? How my bag, my purse and contents, my camera, our passports …. and all that. …. got stolen?
Well, ahead of this trip, I replaced my bag with one with a doughty zip and secret pockets. And off we went.
Our flight accomplished, we met Emily at her office after a couple of bus journeys. I opened my bag. Hang on. Where’s my purse? Someone – and we both think we know who: that amiable woman of middle years who stood near us on the Number 7 – unzipped my bag, removed my purse, and zipped the bag up again. Without either of us noticing a thing.
So guess who spent her first morning back here down at the Police Station practising her Spanish?
Catalan hospitality at its best
Today’s Ragtag prompt is . ….hospitality.. https://wp.me/p9YcOU-ln.
I spent a lot of 2018 being angry: most of you know why – the ‘B’ word. While our rage motivated us to take action and become more politically engaged than we’ve ever been in our lives, we were also probably largely impotent to effect change.
So in 2019, I at least am going to look after myself a bit more. How about spending a bit of time with Vermeer, that supreme documenter of everyday life among the Dutch merchant classes of the seventeenth century? He takes us into comfortable homes, and shows us simple moments of domestic life: a woman playing the lute, a servant patiently pouring milk. He shows their faces, expressive and full of inner light and makes us wonder about them and their thoughts. He makes the ordinary extraordinary.
I’m revisiting Vermeer and his work thanks to an exhibition curated by the Mauritshuis. No, I’ve not been to den Haag to visit this museum since about 1970. But in a pioneering project with Google, it has brought together every surviving Vermeer painting for the first time and exhibited them on-line.
Here, I’ve been enjoying looking again at all his work. I can examine any individual work in great detail, or consider recurrent themes that Vermeer returns to: paintings within the painting: musical instruments; maps…. I can read articles about his technique, his influence on pop art…. I can lose myself for as long as I wish in his world, and return as often as I want to.
Sadly, neither my computer nor my phone are as state-of-the-art as they could be to get the most out of all the features offered. But I’m happy enough. While I’m in the company of a young lady playing her virginal, observing a tired maid snatching a quiet moment’s sleep, a young woman making lace, or a reflective astronomer I’m not engaged in twenty-first century life for a while.
And that’s all to the good. Happy New Year!
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
I didn’t intend to post this evening, but the sunset, even though I couldn’t actually see the sun, seemed cheerful and optimistic despite the whisps of forbidding grey which kept on drifting across the pastel pinks . This is England after all. This is our weather. And our current state of mind.
I whipped out my phone to record the clouds. It seemed a good opportunity to wish you all a happy new year, wherever you are.
Goodbye 2018. We’re driving off and forward to 2019.
We travelled to London for Christmas quite late in the day on the 22nd. The moon was all-but full as it rose, at first barely peeking over the tree tops before eventually soaring high above us, in a clear black sky. I tracked its progress. Only my phone was to hand, but rather than lamenting the poor quality of these images, I liked the somewhat abstract quality they had. Here they are.
Then the next day, off we went, with Tom, Sarah, William and Zöe, to the Natural History Museum. More fool us for assuming it would be nearly empty so near to Christmas time. Outside though, was a man with a bucket of soapy water, and a couple of sticks linked with string, intent on play. He made bubbles. Lots of bubbles. I loved the abstract play of soft pinks and blues and sinuous curves set against the clean lines of the museum buildings beyond.
Here then is my contribution to today’s Ragtag Challenge: Abstract.
Click on any image to view it full size.
I pushed myself out of my comfort zone recently in my writing group. I wrote two bits of doggerel for Christmas.
Perhaps I can use them as my Christmas and New Year greetings to you all.
The first is a cinquain….
… the second a calligram.
My anthology is not appearing any time soon. Happy Christmas!
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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