Valencia is a pretty city located on the Mediterranean Sea. It’s Spain’s third largest, and seems to be a destination for British tourists, British college students, and British retirees. There’s a huge tourist industry there now, but historically Valencia has been a port city, with accompanying imports (fabric, we assume—see below) and exports (oranges).
We stayed in a nice but somewhat moldy (=sneezy) apartment in one of the shopping districts. This particular shopping district seemed to specialize in fabrics and high-end wedding gowns (yum!). The fabric stores – and there were tons of them – had everything from cheap cotton to gorgeous silk brocades. After two days of lobbying by Nora, we gave in and let her select a remnant (she chose leopard-print spandex) to take home. Nana, she’s bringing it to CT so you can help her learn to sew on your 1932 Singer Sewing Machine.
The shopping, more generally, was pretty unchanged from what it must’ve been like 50 years ago. In addition to fabric stores, there were glove stores, fan stores, sewing machine stores, and more. Valencia also has a large central market with meat, cheese, fruits & vegetable, and fish stalls. Jon pretty much parked himself there in the mornings and Heather finally located some excellent cheese.
Valencia has a phenomenally large complex called the “Ciudad de Arts and Sciencias” (city of arts and sciences); all the four main buildings look something like giant abstract fish. We went down to the aquarium portion for a day. It was fairly small by US standards (we recently went to the new GA aquarium, which rocks!) but did feature a dolphin show complete with “Aqua Man” –like riding of dolphins by people.
In the late afternoons, we went to the beach. It was in the high 80s, so the kids got to swim and dig in the sand. All in all, they did pretty well for having only one towel and no beach toys whatsoever. Here’s some pictures:
(Seth is in the no-way-I'm-letting-you-take-my-picture phase -- thus the shot of him fleeing).
Finally, Seth had been complaining of a head and earache since last weekend. Mostly he hadn’t needed ibuprofen, but by Thursday night he was up quite a lot; Mommie spent parts of the night being breathed upon and clutched by him in bed. Seth's comment on the experience when he woke up Friday, delivered with utmost seriousness: "Let's do that again. Every night. OK Mommie?"
Jon called the doctor Friday and found, much to his surprise, that the doctor in Valencia makes house calls. For $100 (reimbursable by insurance) one came and prescribed a whole array of medications – antibiotics, decongestant, and something to alleviate the stomach issues that come with the antibiotics. Seth woke up Saturday and reported that “My ear feel better. Not all better. Just better.”
In other news….
1) Nathan’s proven himself to be a champion eater. He’s willing to try almost anything, and in a 24-hour period quaffed down calamari, whole baby squid, green beans and couscous, half a jar of olives, black pudding, a feta wrap and paella. The only rejection so far has been the local drink – Horchata – on account of being too sweet. We have started to call him “Grampy” after my father who’s pretty much got the same eating habits.
2) Heather discovered that cabbies make easy marks for practicing her Spanish.
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