Or home, temporary home

We’ve been here about a week now, and like everywhere else we’ve been (except Santiago) we’ve fallen in love with it. We have a pattern of investigating real estate, discussing how we would make it work, dreaming of life in _____ (fill in the blank), talking through the practicalities and then Steven turns to me after a few weeks and says, “You now we’re not moving here, right?” We haven’t gotten to that point yet, but I am sure it is coming.

We do really like it here. It seems a bit sleepy, but there are plenty of restaurants, cafes, parks and museums, plus the Mediterranean. We arrived last Sunday, so everything was closed except the corner markets. Luckily we live just a few blocks from an Indian restaurant, where we’ve already eaten twice.

The supermarket is full of food we are used to except peanut butter. Apparently the Spanish don’t eat peanut butter, but we have already rectified that through Amazon. Also, no stuffing for Thanksgiving, but all the fixings were available at the Central Market or Mercado Central or Mercat Central in Valenciano, a language which seems like Catalan to us non-speakers. Speaking of language, if you know anything about Castillian, you know that you have to say “Vale” at the end of almost every sentence and also if you have nothing else to say.

We met our upstairs neighbors in a squishy ride up in our elevator (the elevator is a story for another day). He is Canadian and she is Dutch, but they were living in Oregon and have recently renovated an apartment here, where they plan to live. They are very nice, so now we have friends. Yay! We’ve already been out to coffee with them.

Abi arrived Thursday and we had a very American Thanksgiving of some meat that may have been brisket although meat names in Spanish are difficult, stuffing and Brussels sprouts. Oh, plus football.

Friday, we made our way to Turia Park, which used to be the path of the river. Unfortunately, the river often flooded and finally, after a particularly bad inundation, the river was diverted to the south. The park snakes about 9 km (5.5 miles) around the old part of the city and contains botanic gardens, trails, soccer fields and zoo and ends at the City of Arts and Sciences, which we have not been to.

We wandered around the old town on Saturday and found that a reservation is a good thing if you want to eat lunch (at 2 or 3) on the weekend in a touristy area. Old town Valencia is a bit like old town Nice, but the streets are wide enough for a car to pass through without pedestrians having to press themselves against the buildings.

Sunday we did a modified death march — about 8 miles. We stopped at a flea market and saw the junk people here buy. Guess what? It’s the same junk that people buy everywhere. From there, we headed to the beach. It’s a lovely sand beach with a wide walking path. Abi’s friend had sent us a list of places to eat, so we had very delicious tapas and also learned that tapas salads here are large.

Today (Monday) is a work day, but Abi and I managed a walk up Quart Towers or Puerta de Quart or Torres de Quart, one of two remaining gates of the walled city. The view was worth the 160 steps, but Steven definitely wouldn’t have liked it (I made the responsible choice too stay home and work) .

OK, I still have some writing stamina, so the elevator: Everywhere we go, the elevators are decidedly unsophisticated. Tiny, weird, missing inside doors, whatever. This one comfortably holds two, maybe three people (two Americans or three Europeans). But that’s not the weird part — it has no memory. What I mean is, it only understands one command at a time, so if it is in use and you call it, it won’t respond until it brings its current passengers to their floor, the in-use light goes off and you push the button again. You also can’t tell it to stop at two different floors because it will only remember one. Sorry kids who like to push all the elevator buttons, your little trick won’t work here!

The restaurants

When we have a guest, we tend to eat out more. Here are the places we ate while Abi was here:

• Indian Garden (for the second time): Down the block, a big plus. Good food, friendly staff
• Charlie Brownie: Around the corner and who could resist that name? BTW, the brownie was worth it. The food is sort of internationally inspired tapas. Yum
• Beirut Ruzafa: We were wandering and got hungry. Middle Eastern is always a good veggie (pronounced with a hard G here) choice. We were not disappointed
• Filos: Good, not great, tapas, but cozy atmosphere
• La Llimera El Cabanal: Great tapas (try the pumpkin hummus) a short walk from the beach. We liked that the waiter asked what order to bring the tapas out since sometimes one of us gets to eat while the other sits and waits.