Spain

Geranium Madness

~ Melissa B ~ 1 Comment

In early May, the city of Cordoba holds a festival called simply Los Patios, when a few dozen private homes as well as public IMG_0334and private organizations throw open their doors , welcoming tourists and native Cordobans in to their interior terraces. The patios are lavishly decorated with flowers:
Vines and small trees trained to grow up the walls. Pots hanging from balconies and fastened to the walls. In wheelbarrows, barrels and a host of other conventional and unconventional containers, on floors, walls, ceilings, stairs and every conceivable space.

There are hibiscus, bromeliads, hydrangeas and a dozen other varieties of gorgeousness.  But above all, there are geraniums — of all sizes, colors and descriptions.  I had no idea that geraniums came in such a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Some look like little butterflies.  Some like azalea or rhododendron blooms.  They are pink, white, coral, red, deep marroon, fuscia and all possible shades in between.  They are single colored, edged, speckled, veined, splotched and eyed.  They are simply amazing and I’m in love with them.

 

 

I think I’m going to start collecting geraniums on my patio in as many different colors and varieties as possible!

 

 

 

 

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10 Things I Love about Spain

~ Melissa B ~ 5 Comments

1 and 2.  The sun and the sea.  Let’s call it a tie. It’s impossible to love one more than the other.

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My favorite view in Nerja.

It’s sometimes  said that Spain is a cold country with a lot of sun. That may be true of places further north than Nerja and the Costa del Sol. It certainly hasn’t been true here this winter. Most days the temperature has reached the mid 60s, and with the bright sun at midday, some folks sit on the beach or take a run in just tank tops and shorts.  It does cool off quite rapidly by about 4 PM, but rarely have I wanted more than a light polar fleece for the evening.

As for the sea, well I haven’t even dipped a toe in the Spanish Mediterranean yet, but it’s just lovely to wake up to view of the water, shining silver in the morning sun.  Or to walk to town along the beach, listening to the sound of the surf.

3.  The way Spaniards smile and encourage your halting, mispronounced Spanish. I haven’t yet encountered someone who responds with anything but delight when you attempt Spanish, no matter how badly mangled.  The locksmith grinned when I switched to Spanish after he had trouble understanding the English “five” in my phone number. The salesgirl at the Nerja bakery I patronize patiently repeats “ensaimada” with a smile when I try to order the fluffy pastry coil covered with powdered sugar.  And the dentist cheerfully gave me a lesson in rolling my “r’s” when I tried to pronounce the word for my new dental night guard.

4.  The art and architecture.  OMG. The buildings. The ceramics. The ironwork. The carvings and plasterwork. The colors. It’s completely over the top, a fantabulous tangle of Muslim and Christian styles piled one upon the other over the course of centuries. At first, it seems just too much to absorb, but as you quietly try to take it in, your eye alights first  on one exquisite detail after another. The craftsmanship is simply amazing.

The Alcazar
Decorative carved panels on a wall at the Alcazar.
An interior courtyard at the Alcazar
Inside the Alcazar.
Seville cathedral

5. Convent cookies.  As membership and donations to religious orders have dropped off in recent decades, convents in Spain have turned to their kitchens to shore up their finances, selling preserves and other goodies, especially cookies.  In Seville, a half-dozen or more convents sell their wares, including these traditional sugar-encrusted lemony goodies called yemas. Each cookie is carefully wrapped in tissue paper before being packed into a small lightweight wooden box.IMG_2476

To my mind, the best cookie is a mantecado, a soft crumbly butter cookie, often lightly flavored with lemon, almond or, my favorite, anise.  In the small town of Trujillo, a Spanish companion and I knocked on the door of the tiny Convento de Santa Clara to be greeted by a tiny nun. Wizened and hobbling on arthritic feet, she was at least 80, but smiled broadly when we asked to buy some cookies, please.  She asked where we were from, and when told I was from the U.S., invited us in to view the tiny church and its prized artifacts. Only six nuns remain at the convent, all of them well-advanced in age. The convent isn’t likely to survive much longer–a shame, if for no other reason than that the mantecados they lovingly bake six days a week are delicious.

It’s worth noting that, should you buy some of these cookies when in Spain, prepare to eat them all before leaving the country. They don’t travel well.  They are so rich with butter that they’re extremely fragile, and the slightest pressure turns the round disks into a pile of edible sand. (Did that stop me from scooping it up and eating it? Of course, not!) I suspect it would make a fabulous cookie crumb crust for a pie. Someday, I’ll try it.

6. The orange trees that line the streets and dot the plazas and squares in Valencia, Malaga, Seville and, I presume, elsewhere in Spain.  When in blossom or fruit, the trees perfume the air. I don’t know what happens to the fruit–some of it falls to the ground and seems to be collected regularly by the street cleaners. I’ve never seen anyone actually picking the oranges, but I suspect that urban foragers do a gangbuster business. The oranges aren’t sweet, but bitter and better suited to marmalade than juicing or eating out of hand.

7. The ceramics. The Spanish can make anything out of tile and ceramic.  And it’s always colorful and beautiful.IMG_2387

8. The way even small packages are wrapped and tied up neatly. A pasteleria (a bakery that sells pastries, as opposed to a panaderia, which sells bread) will carefully transfer your cream-IMG_1947stuffed goodie to a gold foil tray, then wrap it in paper and tie it with a ribbon or string. In Valencia, the clerks at my favorite pasteleria eschewed the string, opting instead to hold two corners of the wrapping paper in each hand and swiftly flip it over a few times, winding the corners into twisted horns that hold your package closed. No plastic clamshells for these folks.

9. Seeing nuns in traditional wimples and habits, complete with heavy cotton hose and sensible oxfords. I don’t know exactly why I find this sight so anachronistically charming, but I do. My Catholic friends who attended parochial schools tell me that I might not, had I suffered the knuckle-rappings they did as a child.IMG_2458

To me, a Protestant  growing up in a largely Catholic town, nuns weren’t an uncommon sight, but they were always somewhat exotic and foreign.  Warren, R.I., had a Methodist church, a Baptist church, an Episcopal church and a small congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It also had an Irish Catholic church, a French Catholic church, a Portuguese Catholic church, a Polish Catholic church and an Italian Catholic church. (As a youngster in 1960, I couldn’t quite understand adults’ comments that the country would “never elect  a Catholic (John Kennedy)  president”.  Why not, I thought?  Almost everyone in the U.S. is Catholic, aren’t they?)

10. The smell of leather. Walk along any reasonably touristy street and you’re sure to pass a half dozen or more small shops selling sandals, purses, jackets, luggage and anything else that can reasonably be made from animal skin. Vegans won’t like it, but to me, the smell conjures up images of ruggedly handsome men, wine or whisky in crystal decanters and old, beautiful books. Maybe that’s weird, but the aroma of leather makes me happy.

And 11 (you didn’t really think I could confine myself to just 10, did you?). Flowers blooming all year round–really!  This was taken in a park in Seville  on Feb. 19.

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Is Madrid “The One”?

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

We’ve only been dating for a day or two, but I have a good feeling about this relationship. As a potential long-term match, Madrid ticks a lot of the boxes.

  1. Physical attractiveness. Madrid has that particular handsomeness of so many Spanish men, combining a dignified aging with youthful vigor. Stylewise, Madrid is pretty interesting, too. Like the Spanish policemen who role up their sleeves just-so, Madrid can be a bit fussy, what with the Baroque palaces and manicured formal gardens. But just as the policemen’s muscled physiques and hip beards bespeak their more macho selves, so do Madrid’s casual outdoor cafes and tapas bars, not to mention the bull ring.
  2. An interest in culture–ballet, symphony and opera, as well as Broadway style theater and flamenco. But Madrid’s no snob. Along with the St. Petersburg ballet performances this summer, there’s a showing of all the 007 James Bond films along with a special on the costumes and sets for the movies. And of course, Madrid has plenty to offer in the way of art, architecture and history, as well.
  3. An amiable disposition. Madrid’s friendly and open, and loves a good conversation.
  4. An intriguing history. I think I could spend years getting to know it all.
  5. A mutual interest in food and eating well.
  6. Imagination and a good sense of humor. How else could you explain all the giant winged creatures, horses and chariots atop the buildings?
  7. A nice ride. I’d never have to drive again. Madrid just takes the wheel and whisks you wherever you want to go via Metro or bus.
  8. Our communication is good, too. Between my rudimentary Spanish and Madrid’s cosmopolitan grasp of English, we’re getting along fine.

Of course, Madrid  can be quite moody—extremely hot and bothered sometimes and very chilly at others. That’s a red flag, but it’s too early to tell if the big swings will be more than I’m willing to tolerate.

I wish Madrid were more green, too. Big shady trees lining long pedestrian walkways and a giant urban park are all well and good. But that side of Madrid can be a bit of a hassle to access, if you’re not careful.

And, well, there are signs that Madrid may prove to be somewhat high maintenance. Other dates I’ve had in recent months have been the complete opposite: It would take so little to keep up a happy domicile that I could easily dally with other suitors, skipping off for long weekends regularly. I fear that won’t be the case with Madrid. I’m sure I wouldn’t be tethered to my kitchen stove, but I probably would have to trade off some freedom.

Of course, it’s early days, yet; I’m far from ready to make a commitment. At my age, you really need to date for quite a while before you’re ready to move in together. Baltimore taught me that. And playing the field for the past five months has made me cautious about love at first sight.  Uzés, France just looked so good at first glance, it was hard not to keep my heart from bounding out of my chest. But with a little more perspective now, I can see that a pretty face isn’t enough to keep me interested over the long haul. Like many charmers,  Uzés is just too shallow. Mirepoix, with it’s lovely medieval arcaded town square—never was more than a harmless flirtation. As for Montpellier—such a strong candidate on paper: I stuck the difficult relationship out for two months, struggling to give it a chance and appreciate the good in it. But, come on, a girl just shouldn’t have to work that hard.

When the right one comes along, there should be some magic, some fun involved. The fact is, I wasn’t planning to meet Madrid. Browsing the Internet sites for a good match, Madrid looked too hot, too cold, too big and too expensive, so I never even tried to arrange a date. I just wound up stopping by for a few days on my way to another engagement. And whether it works out between us in the end or not, I’m sure glad I did!

Flowers and Fireworks, Las Fallas- Part II

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

I’ve already posted about two major parts of Valencia’s annual spring festival: the exuberant noise-making and the fabulous artistic creations of the fallas (giant sculptures) themselves. BIMG_0448ut there are other elements to impress visitors as well.

On March 17th and 18th, it seems like all 800,000 Valencians dress up in traditional native costumes and parade through the city streets.

The women and girls carry bouquets of red or white flowers, whiIMG_0456le some of the men wheel or carry huge floral arrangements. And by huge, I’m talking 6 or 7 feet wide and of a similar height.

Each neighborhood group winds its way to the Plaza of the Virgin, where the bouquets are used to form the robes of an enormous statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. The first group enters the plaza at about 3 PM each day. The last doesn’t arrive until well after midnight.

IMG_0434 Just getting the flowers placed is a ballet. Each bouquet is handed off to a helper who piles them by the side of the giant wooden structure. From there another helper tosses the bouquets to someone else, standing on a narrow ledge bIMG_0452uilt into the statue 8 to 10 feet off the ground. That person tosses the flowers up to someone clinging to the wooden struts near the top of the statue. And he hands them to someone even higher up who wedges them into the structure, carefully following an elaborate red and white pattern that’s different each year.

Nearly all of these helpers are male, though a few young women, clad in traditional men’s short pants and embroidered vests could be spotted.  One young lady was having trouble tossing the bouquets high enough to reach her colleague, and I was heartened to find that the crowd was encouraging rather than disparaging. She eventually got the hang of it.

IMG_0454 Meanwhile, the huge arrangements are massed together to the side and in front of the adjacent Bishops’ Palace. By the time all the flowers are in place on the 18th, the blocks surrounding the plaza are perfumed with their scent.

Across town, crowds gather every night on the sides of the old riverbed that now forms a miles-long public park curving around the ancient part of the city. For four nights in a row, the city sets off a spectacular fireworks display. On day 1, it starts at a relatively reasonable hour of midnight. By day 4, the show doesn’t begin until 2AM. I’m not sure anyone sleeps at all during Las Fallas.

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The fireworks themselves aren’t much different than those in New York or Washington or Boston on the Fourth of July. There’s the usual assortment of sparkly golden spheres, silver showers and colorful bursts. What is different here is the number of fireworks theIMG_0341y set off at the same time. There are times when you can see only a blur of light, there are so many going off at once. The Spanish also seem to like to set off rows of rockets that streak color from the ground up—sometimes crisscrossing in mid air—while simultaneously huge blossoms appear overhead. It’s a wonderful sort of chaos.

And finally there’s the light displays in the Ruzafa neighborhood. Traditionally,   each neighborhood strings decorative lights across their narrow streets, marking their territory with a distinctive design. Most of them are qute pretty and quite tasteful. But the CaIMG_0483lle Cuba and Calle Sueco are really something. Remember that Danny DeVito movie about the guy whose Christmas lights could be seen from space? He had nothing on the Ruzafa guys.IMG_0493

From a 100 feet away, one display looked like some sort of neon cathedral, soaring into the sky. It wasn’t until I was practically underneath it, that I realized it wasn’t just a two-dimensional lighted outline. It was a block-long canopy of coordinated lights. That was amazing enough, but when they started blasting the music and the lights began a syncopated dance, the crowd roared. Me, too.

Of Saints and Shoes

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

Easter and Holy Week in the U. S. are pretty wan affairs these days. The Easter Egg Roll at the White House, a neighborhood or family egg hunt and perhaps dinner with the extended family. For many of us, the highlight is sneaking some jelly beans from our children’s candy filled baskets or perhaps nibbling the ears off their  chocolate bunnies. For my family, at least, it’s also pretty nonreligious. Not so, in Spain, predominantly Catholic, at least nominally. Intricately woven designs made of palms make their appearance on the Sunday before Easter and concerts, processions, special masses and all maIMG_0715nner of holy business fill the next seven days. In Valencia, the highlight of Santa Semaña is the procession on Saturday evening, when the men, women and children of scores of religious fraternities march through the ramshackle maritime district of El Cabanyal. There’s a sameness to much of the procession, which was not yet finished when I and fellow American visitors Gerry and Dennis called it quits after more than four hours. But the colorful costumes and exotic religious nature of the event easily holds the attention of someone like me, whose religious upbringing might best be described as half-hearted. As children, my siblings and I were trotted off to my mother’s Methodist church on most Sundays, but her enthusiasm for organizing and enforcing our attendance waned as we grew older, and my father’s lapsed Catholicism did nothing to bolster it. Most of what I know today about the Bible and early Christianity comes from movies and novels – entertaining but not entirely reliable sources. So I was glad to have Gerry, a graduate of a parochial school education and product of a dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic family, as my guide to the various Bibical characters and saints marching by us. IMG_0699 croppedSalome—yes, she of the seven veils—was easily recognizable and clearly the prize role for the neighborhood sexpot. Though the Biblical Salome would have been a teenager when she danced for her stepfather King Herod and demanded the death of John the Baptist in return, the Salomes we saw ranged in age from a prepubescent 10-year-old  to a siren well past the likely age of Salome’s mother. All, however, strutted their stuIMG_0705 croppedff imperiously, uniformly posing with hand on hip and a haughty sneer on their faces. The Herods, the legions of Roman soldiers and the occasional Jesus were also easy to identify. Ditto, the personage Gerry refers to as the BVM—Blessed Virgin Mary, for those of us who didIMG_0711 croppedn’t have the benefit of a nun-led education.. There seemed to be multiple incarnations of her—one with a crown of thorns and another who clearly took pride of place in each fraternity’s group: of marchers.This Mary wears black mourning clothes and a long veil, topped with a halo, a combination which  I can’t recall ever encountering in Methodist Sunday school classes. In fact, I don’t remember Methodists making much of Mary at all, except in her role in nativity scenes. IMG_0710 croppedA slew of other female characters paraded by, some carrying grapes and others dates, bread, wheat, bandages and a cloth, which sometimes had an image of Jesus on it. The one carrying this I assume was St. Veronica, whose claim to fame was wiping Jesus’s face as he struggled to carry the cross up ;Mount Calvary. How does someone with a severely deficient religious education know this? It once came up in a semi-drunken game of Dictionary in college. (Did you know that a veronica is a handkerchief?) IMG_0735Like any good parade, this one also included some beautiful floats, many covered with flowers.. Each fraternity carries or wheels what seems to be essentially a mobile shrine, often with a statue of Christ on the cross or the BVM or some other Easter-related holy body.  Some of the floats are especially pretty after nightfall, when dozens of votive lights twinkle on them. And then there are the hooded guys. Their outfits would look an awful lot like Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods if it weren’t for the vibrant colors of most of them: green and yellow, royal blue and white; red and purple, etc. In this case, they wear hoods not to terrorize or to escape responsibility for their actions butIMG_0707 to symbolize their belief that the acts of charity they perform should be anonymous. So what does all of this have to do with shoes, you may ask. Well, you see, Gerry and I noticed that all of those guys marching in their rainbow-hued robes had shoes—sandals, actually—that matched their robes. Purple sandals. Teal sandals. Gold sandals.  Orange sandals. Where do you suppose they get them, we wondered? The colors were far more likely to be found in women’s shoes, but they would hardly be large enough. Though Spanish men aren’t typically very big guys, their feet still seem to be considerably larger than your average ladies size 8 or 9–or even a 10 or 11, which are hard enough to find my big-footed female friends tell me. It wasn’t until a few days later that the shoe dropped for me–when I found out that Spain, particularly, the area around Valencia and south of it, in the Alicante region, is a major world shoe producer. Though in total output it’s dwarfed by China, Spain is the 6th largest exporter or shoes and the 7th largest in per-capita shoe consumption. (And, yes, Virginia, the U.S.is number one in per-capita consumption.) IMG_0766So, it’s probably pretty easy to get mauve-colored man sandals made. And lest any of you conclude that Spain can only produce espadrilles or colorful chunky sandals, let me remind you that American fashionistas (including, notably, Sex in the City character Carrie Bradshaw) adore the designs of Manolo Blahnik. Though his company is now American, Manolo is definitely Spanish and got his start designing for Spain’s very style-conscious females.

Las Fallas — Part I

Image ~ ~ Melissa B ~ 3 Comments

It’s impossible to decide which aspect of Valencia’s city-wide festival is the most impressive: the explosive volume of the Mascletàs; the controlled chaos of the nightly pyrotechnical fireworks; the 800 or so elaborate IMG_0489monuments, some nearly 100-feet tall; the neighborhood light displays; or the thousands of traditionally clad men, women and children who march to the Plaza of the Virgen to offer flowers, used to decorate a 45-foot wooden statute. Add in the food—giant pans of paella in makeshift sidewalk cafes, churro stands, sausages sizzling over hot fires and more—and well, it just can’t be compared to anything in the U.S.To even come close, you have to imagine New Orleans Mardi Gras crowds and parades combined with the family atmosphere, IMG_0283 croppednoise and pyrotechnics of IMG_0287 croppedthe Fourth of July, plus over-the-top Christmas decorations and the religious pageantry of Easter. Then picture it all pumped up on steroids—for four days.

Though the details are lost in the murky history of the Middle Ages, the origins of the festival seIMG_0365em to be secular, overlaid with a significant veneer from the Catholic Church. Centuries before electric lights   lengthened the short winter days, Valencian carpenters and other artisans constructed parots, wooden supports for lanterns to allow them to work later into the day. When spring brought more IMG_0307daylight hours, they gave their workshops a thorough cleaning and burned the parots, along with any broken artifacts, leftover pieces of wood and other detritus from the winter. Over time, the night of the bonfires became a sort of celebration of spring, and children would go from house to house begging for any discarded items to add to the piles. By the mid 1700s, las Fallas had become a regular municipal event. Somewhere along the way, the tradition of the spring burnings was co-opted by the church and the datIMG_0439 croppede became fixed as March 19, the day of St. Joseph, patron saint of carpenters.

According to my trusty (and incidentally quite swoon worthy) Valencian guide to the most noteworthy Las Fallas monuments, the tradition of using the discarded parots to poke fun at fellow Valencianos is centuries old as well. Because the contraption looked rather like a pointing scarecrow, the townspeople began to dress them up, often adding features that identified them as a particular person. By the 16th IMG_0292_croppedand 17th centuries, if it was known, for example, that the butcher was having an affair with the baker’s wife, the parot was likely to bear more than a passing resemblance to the meat-cutter, with a heavy dusting of flour. Gradually the costumed parots evolved into tableaus of giant figures, typically surrounded by smaller ninots, or dolls.

The monuments wereIMG_0386 originally made of cardboard, paper mache and wax; in recent years, they are constructed of light weight lumber, moldable cork and polystyrene. Each of Valencia’s neighborhoods erects at least one fallas, and typically two—the main one and a smaller one for children, called the infantil. (WalkinIMG_0355 croppedg around, it sometimes seems there is a giant lurking around every corner; there are nearly 400 fallas in the city itself.)

Neighborhood associations work on their fallas all year-round, raising money to build them, hiring the artists who design and make them and helping to erect them. An estimated one million tourists flood the city for the celebration (more than doubling its regular population) and the event as a whole is big business. In recent years, an estimated 750 million euros a year is poured into the monuments, the fireworks, hotels and restaurants, transit, security, flowers, music and other costs.

Each neighborhood fallas has a theme and nearly all use the opportunity to issue stinging commentary on public affairs and to mock loIMG_0372 croppedcal, national and even international public figures.This year’s winning fallas (yes, this is a fiercely competitive exercise) espoused the idea that “everything is play-acting”, and the ninots surrounding a 100-foot-tall dancing couple included IMG_0375_croppedStalin, Hitler, de Gaulle, Kim Jong-il and other departed world leaders, dancing and drinking, suggesting that they weren’t really dead, but living it up in Benidorm, a popular Spanish resort town. Fidel Castro waited nearby to join them when his time came. The country’s major newspapers were  represIMG_0361_supercroppedented as fun-house mirrors, distorting the facts they reported. Even President Obama and global security interests got a ribbing.

Other themes: A future in which everything, including sex is pictured quite differently–look closely at this amorous couple!. (Indeed many of the monuments feature some pretty racy figures.) Also, the inevitability of change. And of course, what the Spanish simply refer to as “Le crisis“.

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The fallas are judged on creativity, skill and wit. But there are other criterion as well. Complex engineering is expected, for example, with cantilevered figures, mimicking the original parots’ cantilevered arms. Most importantly, they must be IMG_0303made entirely of flammable materials, because on the last night, the Nit de Cremá, a string of fireworks inside the monument is ignited and the structure is burned IMG_0512to the ground. The last to go are the winner for the year and the monument on the Plaza de la Ayuntamiento, the city’s main square. This year, it was an  enormous lion–beautiful both whole and when burning. By morning, all was cleaned up; not even the ashes remained.

Mercado Central

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

Valencia’s Mercado Central is reportedly the largest market in Europe. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the claim, but the place is huge—some 8,000 square meters of interior space. It’s also beautiful. And kind of creepy. It’s beautiful for two reasons. First, the building itself is lovely. Designed in 1914 and inaugurated in 1928, it’s a modernist wonder of steel, glass and IMG_0532tile work. Light floods into the market from a huge central glass dome. And second, it’s filled with the most gorgeous and colorful  fruits (fresh and dried), vegetables, herbs, spices and nuts you’ve ever seen. Huge pulpy red peppers. Fat bunches of  freshly picked onions—fresh white globes with long green tops, like some kind of mutant scallion. Grapes nearly the size of golf balls. Piles of bright red strawberries that not only look delicious, but actually smell delicious, too. Mountains of sweet oranges. And strange fat pods of what I assume is some kind of bean.

IMG_0408Wandering through row after row of produce stand, the choices are overwhelming. It’s simply way too much for even me, the consummate comparison shopper to assess the quality and prices of produce at each stall. I figure the best practice is to look for the stall with the longest lines of what are clearly locals and just buy there. It’s tougher to figure out a strategy for choosing among the dozens of sellers of Spanish sausages, hams and cheeses. both domestic and imported. The booths run the gamut from small and unpretentious to large and polished. I buy from a small place one day, and a large one at my next visit, before I find the one I’ll patronize from now on for one simple reason: It has a clerk who speaks English and doesn’t seem to think I’m nuts when I say, just give me a different kind of cheese and Iberian ham today from the ones I’ve already bought from you. I want to keep trying new ones!IMG_0422

Along with the produce and deli-type vendors, sellers of olive oils, wines, dried fruits and nuts, bulk quantities of spices—including the saffron essential for an authentic paella Valenciana—fill the central part of the market.  Around the outer edges of the building, it’s a different story. That’s where the creepy parts are—the butchers’ stalls, the poulterers and the fishmongers.

At first, it just seems as if the cases are filled with rows of roasts, chops, steaks, filets and chicken—whole roasters and the usual assortment of breasts, drumsticks and thighs. Then you start noticing items that aren’t usually found at your local Safeway’s meat and poultry section. Or even at that specialty butcher place up the street:

IMG_0412 Piles of chicken feet. OK—maybe that’s not too weird: after all, you see them in Chinatown. But chicken heads? What on earth do you do with a pound or two of chicken heads? Chicken carcasses with the heads and feet still on them, as well as a few scattered feathers. Plus geese, ducks, partridges, quails and a variety of other game birds. Then, there’s the whole rabbits, with their milky eyes staring out of distressingly skinned rat-like faces. Pig’s feet. Pig’s ears. Pig’s everything. And the larger, darker red versions from cattle. Livers, of course. But also kidneys, lungs, hearts, brains, thyroids anIMG_0654_2d what seemed like more organs than exist in your average farm animal. Plus something that looked suspiciously like some animal’s penis, not to mention the whole heads—both pigs’ and calves’.

Once, when I worked on Capitol Hill for a Senator from Nebraska, I toured a beef slaughterhouse and packing plant along with a group of other legislative aides. When it was over we all happily chowed down on thick grilled steaks. After walking through the butchers’ stalls in the Mercado Central, I was giving some thought to vegetarianism. It’s not that I’m bothered by the idea of eating what was once a live animal. Man is, by nature, a carnivore and has been hunting and eating prey for centuries. I have no illusions about where those sanitized deboned, skinned chicken breasts really come from. And, in principle, I applaud the idea of not wasting huge parts of a slaughtered animal.Still, the idea of eating lungs, eyes, tongues, etc. makes my stomach do flip-flops and renders the notion of swallowing even a mouthful of tender, flavorful filet mignon unappealing.

As for the  seafood area, it’s  an exercise in attraction/aversion. There’s the usual salty, fishy smell, of course, andIMG_0426 a general feeling of dampness.  Counters are covered in the most amazing display of sea life outside an aquarium. Tiny fish, intended to be deep-fried whole and eaten. Whole and filleted slabs of larger fish, only some of which are recognizable.  IMG_0428Spiny black sea urchins. Octopus and squid of various sizes and varieties. Teeny, tiny little soft-shelled clams and palm-sized oysters.   Piles of at least a half dozen different creatures which I know must be some  limb on the shrimp family tree  but are unidentifiable. Buckets of wriggling eels. Even as I nearly gag thinking of swallowing some of this stuff, I can’t look away, amazed at the sheer variety and novelty of what’s before me.

Settling In

~ Melissa B ~ 2 Comments


This weekend I stopped being a tourist. Well, not entirely—I still can’t speak Spanish and continue to gawk at 14th century buildings. But I did spend most of the weekend more or less as I would have in Baltimore or Arlington.

First, I did the laundry. But instead of shuttling the wet clothing from one modern appliance to another, I dried them the Spanish way: hanging them on an expandable rack attached to one of my apartment windows. I clipped my clean clothing  to the rack, which extends out over a sort of interior courtyard, silently praying that nothing fell. Four stories down, the interior space seemed to contain just some mechanical equipment, a few buckets and the like. Besides, I had no earthly idea how to get there, and I presumed it was accessed only  by the first floor apartment. Or perhaps even the neighboring building. Either way, I didn’t relish  trying to recover any escaped undies from strangers I couldn’t communicate with.IMG_0535

Electricity is expensive in Spain, so almost no one has a clothes dryer. Most households have washing machines, though—often located in the kitchen. Enjoying an average of more than 300 sunny days a year, Spaniards let Mother Nature do the job for free.

Domestic adventure, number two:  Grocery shopping. Flavorful cured Spanish ham and cheese with fresh bread makes a great supper, but I was getting a bit tired of it. Time to see what it’s like to have to find the specific ingredients I need to make a real meal. Fortunately, the Mercado Central is less than two blocks away from the apartment.

Reportedly the largest market in Europe, it’s a treasure trove of fruits, vegetables, nuts, dried beans and lentils, meat, poultry and seafood. Not to mention olive oils, breads and pastries, wine and cheese. (More on this marvelous market coming later.) But I’m a from-the-recipe cook and don’t often wing it with whatever I find in the market. Plus the cooking equipment in the apartment is minimal—one small and one largish pot, what appears to be a pressure cooker minus the top, and a small skillet or two. So I decided on soup.

I knew the market had bacalao, the Spanish name for the salted codfish that I recalled being sold in a small wooden box at Rhode Island grocery stores when I was a child. I’d only once found it in the D.C. area, using it to make a Portuguese fish and vegetable soup. I figured I could find a similar recipe online.

The cod wasn’t too  pricey at about  6€ for a bit more than half a kilo. But the vegetables were an unbelievable bargain.  Five carrots, two stalks of celery, two kilos of tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a couple of fresh onions. All for less than 4€ (about $4.50 at today’s exchange rate). Wow, at a farmers’ market in Baltimore or DC, that would have run me well over $10, and I couldn’t have bought just 2 stalks of celery. (The lady at the booth just breaks them off and breaks them in half to fit nicely in a bag.) Two more euros at another “exotic” produce booth where I bought a fresh fennel bulb, and another euro for a loaf of crusty bread and I was set. But the fruit looked too good to pass up. Ditto the piles of artichokes. So, I bought two kilos of sweet oranges (1,5€), a big box of strawberries ( another 1.5€) and five small artichokes (1€!) . The grand total for my haul: 15€.

Now, with the soup simmering on the stove, I’m ready for the last order of business this weekend: Catching up on Downton Abbey. I’d left the U.S. after the first four episodes of this season and hadn’t had the time (or inclination, really) to find out how to watch the show online from Europe. I knew that Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and other services weren’t available in Europe. But a little googling, $55 for a year-long subscription to  a VPN (virtual private network), which makes it look as if my computer is in the U.S.  and I was streaming Lady Mary’s latest escapades.  Four episodes later, and I was on to The Good Wife.  No more English language TV withdrawal pangs for me, and the retired life continues to look sweeter and sweeter!

Indolence and Noisemakers

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

It’s after 6 p.m.  I’m still in bed.  Yes, I was up and out last night till past 2 a.m. watching the spectacular Las Fallas Nit de Foc fireworks  (worthy of a post of their own). And no, I haven’t actually been asleep all day. Since about 10 a.m., I’ve alternately read or browsed the web for a few hours and drifted back to sleep to the sound of nearly constant firecrackers set off across the city. I was definitely awake at two this afternoon, when the last Mascletá of the officially four-day, unofficially two-week-long festival went off a few blocks away at the city’s main plaza.

Las Fallas, in general, and the Mascletá, in particular,  is a 12-year-old boy’s pyrotechnical dream. When I think of the mischievous delight my son and his fellow miscreants had in designing their own jerry-rigged noisemakers, blowing up everything from potatoes to discarded GI Joes, I know they’d give their right arms to be in Valencia during Las Fallas. (I strongly suspect that some young Valencianos have sacrificed body parts to the gods of loud noises.)

Everywhere, all day and all night, people set off firecrackers. Tots  throw and stamp on those tiny poppers. 5-year-olds and their dads light and throw what I recall as salutes.  Teens and adults set off explosives that sound powerful enough to take out a car or a small building. They seem to be constantly going off just a few feet away, scarring the dickens out of unseasoned visitors like me. Mentally, I hear the perpetrators, like the bad guys in an old Western, gleefully shooting firecrackers at my feet, saying “dance, tourist, dance.”

Every day during the festival, the city sets off  its own barrage of the loudest possible fireworks. Crowds throng to the plaza and the streets surrounding it awaiting the moment when the first nearly deafening boom announces the day’s entrant to what is essentially a competition for the best—that  is, the loudest, most pulse-pounding, smoke-billowing—Mascletá of the festival. The din lasts for at least five minutes, and the noise is amplified by the echoes off the buildings surrounding the Plaza. The ground trembles. Tourists are warned to keep their mouths open when at the plaza for the event, lest the pressure from the explosions damage their ears. No one talks about earplugs, however, and I notice what seems to be an extraordinary number of audiologists’ offices and hearing aid stores around this city. I wonder if anyone has done a study to see if Valencianos have a higher-than-usual rate of deafness?

The surprising thing about the Mascleta is that it’s not cacophony. There’s a rhythm to the noise, with waves of smaller, quieter fast pops, interspersed with and underpinned by crescendos of bigger explosions. It’s rather like listening to an all-percussion musical performance, and it makes you want to stamp your feet in unison.

So, after nearly a week of the noise and pageantry that is Las Fallas, as dusk arrives today I’m still lolling in my rented apartment, occasionally nibbling the sweet local strawberries I bought at the market yesterday and munching some of the fresh bread, Serrano ham and manchego cheese, I also picked up. I feel a bit guilty wasting this time in such a lovely city, lying in bed. But I’m also enjoying it, thinking “Ah, this is what retirement is about: doing nothing if that’s what I want to do.”

Still, it is the last night of Las Fallas. The night when hundreds of Fallas sculptures across the city are set alight; the last one, the huge lion at the Plaza de la Ajuntament, well after midnight. The last night to catch a glimpse of some of the spectacular Fallas I haven’t yet seen and to check out the reportedly fabulous light displays in the Russafa neighborhood. I guess it’s time to get up!

OMG-Spanish Hot Chocolate!

~ Melissa B ~ Leave a comment

Valencia is a city with an overabundance of food.  I’d swear that two of every three store fronts is a café, tapas bar, gelato stand or or some other sort of food seller. Tiny 5-foot wide storefronts sell sandwiches of fresh bread and delicious Spanish ham, beers and soft drinks. Only slightly larger take-out places showcase three-foot-wide pans of paella, dishing up lunches of authentic paella Valenciana (chicken and rabbit) to hungry passers-by.   And because this is the week of Las Fallas, Valencia’s incredible end-of-winter/beginning-of-spring festival, the streets are also lined with tents and booths selling freshly fried buñuelos (a sort of Spanish funnel cake), grilled sausages and more.

When I discovered the Valor café on the Plaça de la Reine, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.. Valor is, of course, a maker of Spanish chocolate and the café’s menu is nothing but this food of the angels. Chocolate granitas. Chocolate crepes. Chocolate gelato. Chocolate lava cake. Chocolate fondue. Chocolate everything. Since it was my first meal of the day, I decided to be temperate. I ordered by pointing on the menu to a picture of what looked like a cup of hot chocolate and a buñuelo. What arrived was delicious but nothing like what I was expecting. I’ve always believed in the rich variety of hot chocolate: the kind made with milk (preferably whole, not namby-pamby 2%, or even worse, 1%), a generous  scoop of high quality cocoa (can you say Ghiradelli?) and a big sloppy schlag of sweetened whipped cream. That’s a pale shadow of the Spanish stuff.

First, the hot chocolate here is dark brown, not the usual muted milky cocoa color. A rich bittersweet brown: the color of melted Lindt chocolate bars. Then there’s the consistency. It’s liquid, but barely. Pop this stuff in the fridge for an hour and I’m pretty sure you’d have fudge. Think pots de chocolate right when they come out of the oven and are barely done—the middle is still wet and liquid, but thick. Finally, a serving is substantial: an average sized coffee cup, not some dinky little expresso thimble.

When the waiter put my first cup in front of me, I was nonplussed.  Was I supposed to drink it? If so, how? I had visions of thick brown goop glopping out of my cup and down my chin. The presence of two packets of sugar and a spoon on the saucer further puzzled me. Did they think I could possibly want to make this stuff even sweeter and thicker?

So I watched and waited, looking around to see what others were doing with their cups of melted chocolate. Alas, no one at a nearby table had ordered hot chocolate. (Despite temperatures only in the mid 50s, Valencianos were queuing up at the gelaterias and ice cream stores). I knew you could dunk the buñuelo in it, thanks to a picture in the menu. So I settled for doing that while I tried to figure out if I’d look more foolish attempting to slurp up the stuff from the cup or asking for some hot milk to pour into it. Once I’d scarfed up about a third of the cup along with half of the golden crunchy goodness of the buñuelo, I was too stuffed to care about the rest anyway. So I just paid the bill and headed off to see the nearby Roman ruins.

By the time I ordered my next cup, I’d watched half a dozen people in the Horchataría de Santa Catalina order and consume hot chocolate. Yep, they drink it from the cup (makes a helluva milk mustache). They also spoon it up and dunk. Any which way, it’s wonderful.