Wednesday, January 23, 2019 – More walking, a little
riding and a very Valencian art exhibit to report.
On Sunday, we decided – well, I decided – that we
should walk somewhere we’d never been before. So we headed away from the centre,
past Avenida Peris y Valero, the major artery we cycle along to get to the
riverbed park. We chose, more or less at random, Avenida Dr. Waksman, a wide
boulevard heading on a diagonal southeast. It would take us down to the river, but
bring us out further east, at the Reina Sofia Arts Centre in the City of Arts
and Sciences.
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| Avenida Dr. Waksman - downscale suburbs |
Despite its proximity to the city centre, this area has a
very suburban feel, the feel of not very affluent suburbs. Boring high-rise
apartment blocks, empty lots, scruffy parks, shuttered shops, relatively few
restaurants and bars open this Sunday – at least in comparison to Ruzafa. There
was one long block with nothing visible but 30-foot-high walls with razor wire
on top. It’s an internment centre for extranjeros,
foreigners, I later learned from Google maps. This might explain why we noticed
so many black people in the neighbourhood. I’m guessing it’s where they intern
migrants before admitting them to the country or sending them back. There’s
also a police facility in the same block.
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| City of Arts & Sciences - Queen Sofia opera hall |
We walked into the centre along the river and then
back up to Ruzafa. It was not a walk I could recommend, but it was interesting
for affording a different, if somewhat unlovely, view of the city.
I sallied out after dinner for a walk around the
neighbourhood in search of sweets. The bakeries were all closed. The only
option was the Mercadona for Werthers and a chocky bar. Oh, well.
Monday, I wanted to re-explore some of our favourite
haunts in the city centre. I’m not sure why I always get to choose where we walk,
but Karen seems not to care as long as she’s walking. She does want to be in
the sun – is slightly obsessed with the sun, in fact – which can be problematic. It’s a big city with narrow streets and high buildings, especially in the centre. The sun doesn’t often make it down to street level, except in
the squares and along wide boulevards, which tend to be boring.
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| On Gran Via del Marqués de Túria |
We started by walking down Gran Via de les Germanies,
which becomes Gran Via del Marqués de Túria. It’s a boulevard, with a central
walkway lined with old fig trees, and separates Ruzafa from the historic
centre. There are lots of really gorgeous apartment blocks along this avenue,
including the one below, built in a vaguely modernista
style. We turned up Carrer d’Hernán Cortés towards Avenida Colón, noting the
modern apartment block near the corner with its elaborate religious decoration
on the front. According to Google Maps, it’s an old people’s home, presumably
one operated by the Catholic church.
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| Front of apartment block on Gran Via del Marqués de Túria |
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| Retirement home on Carrer d’Hernán Cortés |
We crossed Colón and zig-zagged along small streets
until we found one of my targets for the day, the lovely Plaça de Rodrigo Botet.
This used to be – may still be on a different day – a great place for
restaurants. One of the first places we found that we really liked was here. On
this day at least, it looked pretty dead, Some of the restaurants, including
the one we had particularly liked, appear to have closed. Surprising. We
continued down the narrow street that goes out the other side of the square. There used
to be restaurants along here that we liked too – including the one we came later
to not like because it was where
Karen got food poisoning in 2011. But it too looked dead. There was still a
nightclub but with a different name and more outlandish front.
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| Plaça de Rodrigo Botet |
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| Night club near Plaça de Rodrigo Botet |
A few blocks over, we came to the rococo Palace of the
Marqués de Dos Aguas, now the National Ceramics Museum. I never tire of looking
at it and trying to photograph it. The alabaster sculptures surrounding the
main doors, made in 1745, are by a Valencian artist, Ignacio Vergara Gimeno. Beautiful,
if over the top.
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| Palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas |
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| Palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas |
We wandered after that, zig-zagging around the centre,
along streets lined with ancient buildings, into pretty little squares, down
narrow alleys. We reached the Serranos gate towers from a different direction
than we have before, then ducked into Carmén.
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| Serrano Towers |
As always, I found more street
art to photograph, including a very sophisticated piece that went all around a building with a kind of "wainscoting" with pictures along it. We figured the
window with its obscene tableau of (mostly) naked Ken dolls must be at a gay
nightclub, shuttered at this time of day. (If you want to see what it shows, click on the picture to enlarge it.) We got back for a very late lunch.
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| Carmén street art |
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| Carmén: x-rated window display |
I went out later in the afternoon to look for sesame
oil for a dish I was making. Neither the Mercadona nor the Consum, the two big supermarkets near us,
had it. I found it a couple of blocks away at a little independent supermarket run by Chinese people. I
also found, in another Chinese-run store, the mouse pad I’d been wanting. My
mouse is happy now.
Yesterday, Tuesday, was a holiday in Spain, St. Vincent
the Martyr Day. We set out in the late morning and rode down to the Turia
riverbed, then along it almost to the Serrano towers. I think we’ve become
acclimatized. It seemed a bit cool for biking – even though it was bright and 14 or 15C.
The biking was a bit bumpy on the bricked pathway in the park. Why would
they not have put asphalt or cement down where they wanted cyclists to go?
We came up out of the riverbed and ditched the bikes,
then wandered from there, through the centre by a zig-zag route in the
general direction of MuVIM, the Museum of Enlightenment & Modernity. I was
looking again for some of my favourite spots, including one narrow alley near
MuVIM with some great street art. We didn’t find that one, but we did find
other remembered sites, and also found some new street art. The city was
definitely not busy today. Some shops were open but more were closed for the holiday.
There were people out and about, but there was no bustle.
We eventually, after a few wrong turns, found our way
to the museum. It’s an odd place. There is a permanent exhibition, a slightly
Disney-ish walking tour through displays related to the Enlightenment, with
live actors and animatronics. Very weird. You have to book an appointment to
see it, which we did the first year we were here. There are also several spaces,
most below ground level, for temporary exhibits.
The one we ended up viewing was Mare dels Desemparats (Virgin of the Forsaken), about “the
secularization and persistence of popular manifestations of religious worship.”
It mainly focuses on depictions of a particular incarnation of the Virgin Mary
– the Virgin of the Forsaken (or Disposssessed maybe?) She’s a patron of
Valencia apparently. The exhibit included an historical survey going back to
the 1400s. As is usually the case at this museum, frustratingly, the text on the
walls and labeling of artifacts is in Valencian and Spanish only. It was
clearly an expensively- and elaborately-mounted exhibition, but we didn’t
really get it. This was partly because of the language issues, but more because
– well, it was about religion. There were
some impressive figures of Mary, but in a style that to our eyes seems...gaudy. Plus,
we’ve seen lots of these things in churches in Spain and Italy over the years. Yawn.
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