The weekend came a day early for us. Stephanie—(quick digression, you see that “dash” just to the left? Sue will tell you that it is an em dash, (I will tell you that because it is; this – is an en dash and this – is a hyphen) and I never never never use them when I write, I just use regular dashes. She then edits my posts and says “You never remember to use an em dash;” however, the truth is that I never it knew they were different from the regular dash and now I just don’t bother, because I know she will fix it, (you can only imagine all the punctuation I have to fix. I guess those years as a copy editor have some value) but today—I decided to figure out how to insert them in WordPress and will try and remember to use them—or maybe not)…anyway—(it’s a guarantee that the AI checker has already decided that this was not written by a human. Why em dashes do that, I don’t know) Stephanie our relocation person, had a group outing (in case you forgot I telling you that our weekend started on Friday) to a winery for wine “tasting”.

The pickup point for the bus was a 25-minute walk or 10-minute bike ride at 9:50AM (OK, Steven, we use this style for times: 9:50 a.m.)—so basically the crack of dawn. We decided to ride our Valenbisi (you might think that it should be Valenbici, for bicycle, but it is Valenbisi, for Yes!) bikes over, so we found the nearest bike pickup, mapped an easy route, got lost a couple of times, and made it right on time. We put the bikes back into the return rack and met a bunch of new people, all ex-pats who worked with Stephanie.

We boarded the bus, and I checked the Valenbisi app to make sure that my bike trip and ended and—well, it hadn’t. So I ran back, (ran? anyway, I had to stop the bus from leaving without him) checked to make sure that it was locked in place—it was and tried to contact them to say why hasn’t my ride ended. However, you have to call them, which I didn’t want to do on the bus, so I put it down, and figured I would deal with in later. The bus trip to the winery was about 45 minutes and we met a whole bunch of people who were making their lives in Valencia, most from the U.S., Canada or the U.K., but a few from other places. There was lively chat on the bus and, all in, the ride passed quickly.

We arrived at Bodegas Vegalfaro and were promptly served glasses (multiple glasses) of cava, plus cheese and nuts. The owner gave a brief talk about the process of making cava, basically it is the same \as making champagne, but putting a label on it that says cava. (We all no that it aint champagne if it aint from Champagne) It was very tasty and served as a nice breakfast for me. We moved on to the mandatory tour of the vineyards, some of which were over 100 years old, and then saw the production facilities and the aging rooms (I think they have a name, but I can’t remember it). It was the usual vineyard tour, enjoyable, but exactly the same as those in Chile, California, Argentina, or France. (We can be obnoxious, can’t we?)

After the tour, we headed to a tasting room that was laid out for a barbeque lunch. We (the imperial we, meaning Sue) had told Stephanie that she needed a vegetarian lunch and she was told that wasn’t a problem. Well, lunch was served, it was sausages, bread and a chopped tomato spread (hang on, I haven’t used an em dash in a couple of paragraphs, so here is one) — a very delicious lunch for those of us who eat meat. Sue’s vegetarian requirement seemed to come as a surprise to the owner. He quickly got a plate of cheese and nuts and so Sue had a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch. (The Spanish don’t seem to understand no ham.)

One thing they did not skimp on was the wine. Bottle after bottle after bottle was opened and “tasted” as in full glasses for each tasting. After a couple of hours, 40 or so “slightly” inebriated ex-pats climbed back on the bus (many, including us) with extra bottles for our homes. We arrived back at around 4:30 and wisely decided not to ride bicycles home (especially since my previous ride was still ongoing). So we had a longish walk with a half case of wine. Did I mention that if you have a Valenbisi subscription, the first 30 minutes are free, then it costs €2.08 per hour?

We roused ourselves for an early dinner—8:30— at the nearest Indian restaurant to our apartment, Kathmandu, which is, according to Google maps, 86 meters (or 282 feet). It is also across the street from our gym, so maybe in the future I will get lost on the way to the gym 🤷‍♂️. One thing we find in Spain, is that even the Indian food, isn’t particularly spicy, so we have taken to asking the our waiter if the food is Spanish spicy or Indian spicy. We were told it was Spanish spicy, so we ordered it extra hot. It was perfect. It was deliciously spiced, and really spicy. We loved it, Sue even said that it was “quite spicy” which usually means that there is fire coming out of her ears and you can smell her brain boiling. It was yummy!

Saturday morning (ish), I tried to call Valenbisi, but after 10 minutes of being on hold, I gave up and figured I would try on Monday when I knew they would be open.

There was a street fair (there’s always a fair or festival) on the next block of our street. It was a paella block party for the local Falleros—the people who put on Fallas. We watched them set up in the morning (including towing a few cars) and as the afternoon rolled around the Falleros set up tables, cooked paella and hung out. There was a DJ playing music. Here is Sue dancing on our balcony in the evening. (One must dance to YMCA.)

Sunday was supposed to be a quiet day. We decided that it might be nice to walk to the beach, which is about 4 miles away. You know, a short, pleasant stroll and I made absolutely clear that we would be taking the tram or the subway home. The weather was perfect for a stroll, it started out cool in the morning (what, no em dash here?) about 17°C (60-63°F), then went up to about 25°C (75°F) as the day progressed. It is a pretty flat straight walk, basically, leave our apartment, turn left, cross the park, go a few blocks turn right and stay on that street until your reach the beach. We arrived sometime around noon, and walked north along the beach. There is a wide paseo marítimo (promenade) along the beach and we walked pretty much the entire length. We headed back towards the subway (the subway runs closer to our apartment than the tram, but you can get on the tram closer to the beach) through a couple of the beach neighborhoods, and stopped for lunch at the Mercabanyal, an indoor/outdoor food court near the beach. We had delicious baos and rested a bit. Once we were ready, we walked over to the subway, only to decide that we “may as well” walk the rest of the way because it was only another 3.2km (two miles). All in, 9.2 miles for a quiet a restful day.

Our friends Paul and Nancy are always doing interesting things. This weekend they were attending a reenactment of the of the British defeat by the Spanish in the Siege of Pensacola—yes, Pensacola, Florida—who knew and why would anyone bother? In 1781 it was just another mosquito-infested swamp. Anyway, we decided to join them, at the Military History Museum, which is across the park from us. The reenactment was schedule to start at 12:30, so started right on time at 12:50. It was good fun to watch— lots of loud noises and, of course, the British lost—what could be better? The museum also had a bunch of dioramas showing the Spanish conquest of the Americas using Playmobil blocks. Afterwards we wandered through the park back to our neighborhood and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant two doors down from our apartment. It was ok, but not worth returning to, so we will have to try one of the other two that are within about a block and a half.

At some point the clock on the bike stopped—no idea why—but I received a notice sometime Sunday night that I had a charge of €54.60 for the ride. I called them Monday morning and they agreed that there was an issue with either the way I locked it in or the locking mechanism, so they credited it all back.

And just for fun…here is a cannon firing from the reenactment.

I wonder if Sue will notice that I figured out how to use the em dash 😏(or at least how to create one).

Forget it! Grammar is way to hard. I am going back to my spreadsheets.