I thought it might make sense to provide a few maps that will give everyone an idea of where we are that way when we discuss distances, places etc, it will make sense.

As Sue said in her last post we are staying for the next six months in Valencia, Spain. It is on the east coast, about two hours south of Barcelona, and about the same distance east of Madrid. It is port city on the Mediterranean, and to the north and west there are some large hills.

Within Valencia, we are staying in a neighborhood called Extramurs, that is just to the west of the old city. It is outlined on the map in red, and as you can see, it is a fairly large area. We are staying somewhere around the bottom of the “d” in the words Mercado Central de Valéncia. That is the Mercado (or mercat in Valenciano) that Sue mentioned in the last post. From our place to the mercado is about a fifteen-minute walk.

You can see Turia Park that Sue also mentioned, running right through the middle of the map. It is a great park to walk in and we did that a few times already.

Saturday morning we decided to explore one of the neighborhoods, so we headed north, crossed the park and wandered roughly parallel, mostly in an area called La Saïda until we reached the elbow of the park and then we crossed back through the old city and home. Sue had volunteered us (I volunteered me and asked Steven if he wanted to join) to help later that afternoon with a fund raiser for an animal shelter that she found on one of the ex-pat Facebook pages. We put on our walking shoes again and headed pretty much straight east through the old city, across the park and then toward the beach. We arrived right on time (which was 5 p.m.) and found that pretty much everyone else was working on Spanish time. So we waited around with the people who had planned it until their friends who owned the bar showed up. We (meaning mostly Sue) helped set up and did what we could to make ourselves useful. After everything was ready, we talked to a bunch of people, many of whom were expats, including one couple who were from Evanston (near Chicago). It was great to be out and social. It made me feel much better to know that they were all struggling with Spanish.

Sue and I had bought tickets to a pantomime for that evening. For those who are not well versed in British Christmas foolishness, let me enlighten you. A pantomime is a play, generally a children’s story – we saw Aladdin. They take the basic story, add a huge amount of music, whether it fits the story or not, a bunch of audience participation and slapstick humor. For more info follow this link. When done well, they are quite enjoyable. However, what we didn’t understand when we bought the tickets was that it was essentially a community theatre production put on by a local drama school. To say it was bad would be giving it a bit too much credit.

Luckily for us, we had 10 p.m. reservations for dinner at a restaurant about 20 minutes’ walk from the theatre. We slipped out during one of the minor breaks and headed for dinner at a Greek restaurant called Kuzina. The food there was great and our waiter was incredibly patient while I tried to order in Spanish. We finished up around midnight and walked through the old city back to our apartment. The city always seems sleepy when we wander around during the day, but at night the bars are restaurants are all full.

Over the course of the day we covered about somewhere between 9 and 10 miles, so not quite a death march, but a reasonable amount of mileage.

Sunday was a different story. We decided that it was time for a real death march, so we headed to a beach at the south side of Valencia. When we first mapped it Google wanted to send send us along what looked like a very busy road, so we played around with the directions for a little while and found another route that while a bit longer looked to be on smaller streets.

Boy was it ever, we headed southeast and pretty quickly left the city. We were maybe 45 minutes into the march and we had turned onto a series of one-lane roads which then became an unpaved road, then back onto a one-lane road though a few little villages, past some orange groves, a chicken farm (we think) and finally onto a walking and bike path that led us to the beach. Once we arrived at the beach we walked to the water’s edge, Sue put her hands in the water and we turned around and headed back. (You may already know that we are not excellent lay on the beach people.) We followed the walking/bike path back, and it became apparent that this was the original path that Google had provided. We were vaguely aware that it was the Valencia marathon, and had to cross the course at one point, early in the walk. However, on the way back, we ran smack into the finish line at the science museum. It was now about 2 p.m., about 5 hours after the start of the race so the area was teeming with people who finished the race or were waiting for someone to finish. We skirted along the museum campus (there are a bunch of museums there) and then had to find a way to cross the course again, in order to head to a restaurant for lunch. We found a spot where the barriers had been pushed aside so quickly ran across the street and into Turia Park. Our destination was a Lebanese restaurant called Beriut. We ate at another one of their places last week with Abi, and really liked the food, so we decided to stop there again. We arrived in about five minutes and it was nice to be sitting down! We had covered about 9 miles and were just a bit hungry. The food was delicious, I had shawarma, Sue had falafel.

After we were done, we stood up and stretched out our now really stiff muscles and headed back across the park and home. About 40 minutes later we finished the 12-mile death march and stood in front of our elevator silently agreeing that walking up the six flights to the apartment was unnecessary.

We collapsed on the couch and watched what nearly passed for American football (it was the New York Jets and they are marginally worse than the New York Giants who are terrible), but it kept our eyeballs busy for the evening.