Three days after Myra and Richard departed we met Michael Stelluto and Laura Flessel at the airport upon their arrival from Boston, MA. We took them on the Metro, 12 stops to our station - Colón. Easy on and easy off (no transfers) and we are a minute walk to the Metro station.
It has been wonderful for us to have so many of our family and friends visit us (10 people over the past 8 weeks).
I want to digress for a moment as it relates to having family and friends visit us. We both read a book called "Dancing in the Fountain: How to enjoy living abroad". It was a wonderful book which we enjoyed....but one of her suggestions that we both laughed at was to only rent a one bedroom apartment. Her reasoning was that if you have a 2 or 3 bedroom, as we do, you will have a never ending amount of visitors. This has been our experience, however in our case we have encouraged and very much welcomed everyone!
So after they got a little settled they wanted to take a short walk to get some air and get a feel for Valencia. By now we have developed a kind of "Beth and Howard visitors" guided tour of Valencia (if you are interested in a little history of Valencia check out these Wikipedia details) . So we turned left on Calle Colón and walked the 4 block to Plaza de Toros de Valencia (this link tells about the heritage and collective memory about the uses of the bullring throughout Valencia's history). However this link shows the pretty pictures.
During our walk we saw this poster, which we thought was nice, considering, for the first time in all of our lives we were all going to the bull fighting together on the day listed - October 9th
We continued our walk next door to the Valencia North Train station (Estació del Nord), this link has some nice photo's, just click on the images to enlarge them.
As the sun was beginning to set we walked to Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square). City Hall is beautiful and the square in front of it is where we have seen day time fireworks, the Grease karaoke and many events. its open and a great place to hang out and people watch. We continued down to the San Vicente Martir, who is the Patron Saint of Valencia. This link talks a little about him but also lists the Festivals in Valencia. Just to see Plaza de la Reina, before heading home as jet lag was catching up to Michael and Laura.
Saturday, October 8th - we decided to take it easy today due it being Michael's and Laura's first full day. So we did what we all love to do walk. We walked to Plaza de la Reina and then to see the narrowest building in Europe just around the corner. After seeing this building we stopped for a coffee and snack at Horchateria de Santa Catalina. We had horchata, and churros and thick hot chocolate.
From here we headed to Plaza de la Virgin. This plaza is where had our first Valencia experience when we first arrived (Our Lady of the Abandoned or Our Lady of the Forsaken) called Virgin de los desamparados she is the Patron Virgin of Valencia. The story goes like this....
"In 1409, a Valencian priest confronted a mob who were preparing to lynch a mentally-ill homeless man Santa Catalina. Father Jofre exhorted the mob to take pity of the poor soul, instead of stoning him to death. He would later base an important sermon on this and, as a result, Valencia would become the first city in the world to open an asylum for the mentally ill. The asylum was run by a group of nuns, whose symbol was Our Lady of the Forsaken. Over time, this symbol grew in importance and today Our Lady of the Forsaken is Valencia's most well loved and famous icon. It's important to remember that she embodies Valencia's historically unique role in caring for society's most down-trodden members"
OK sorry to have gotten side tracked but that first experience was so moving for us to be part of and witness what the people of Valencia are like it moved us close to tears.....
So we walked through Plaza and down towards the Torres de Serranos. There was a little fair here today as this weekend is the celebration of Valencia's Independence Day.
From here we waited in live to get into the Palace of the Generalitat. It is currently the headquarters of the Generalitat Valenciana, the government of the Valencia region, but throughout the history Valencia the building has been home to the following institutions:
- House of the Delegation of the General of the Kingdom of Valencia (1421-1705)
- Real Audiencia (1750-1923)
- County Council (1923-1982)
- Popular Executive Committee (1936-1937)
- Valencian (1982-present)
After this visit we went home for lunch and a short siesta. Around 7pm we left for another walk, this time through the Turia river park as we past the Palau de Música (Palace of Music) we saw a video set up outside. It turns out that the Orchestra of Valencia was playing a Memorial concert inside the Palace of Music and they were streaming is live outside, where they had provided hundreds of plastic seats to watch it.....so we did!
After watching a few songs we walked over to have dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant called Lambrusqueria.
Michael enjoying Italian dinner at Lambrusqueria in Valencia.....he looks so happy and very young!
The night was capped off with Beth, Laura and I walking down to just above the Turia River Park to walk fireworks at mid-night!
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9 - INDEPENDENCE DAY - It is known as Nou'd - Octubre - The Day of Valencia - The date on which commemorates Jaume I the Conqueror officially entered the city of Valencia in 1238. He finished the dominance of Arab King Abul Djumayl Zayyan. It was the day of Sant Donis.
Here is a listing of the program of events for this special day.
We started our day by walking to the Ayuntamiento to see the display of The Senyera (The Flag) of Valencia. "A few days before the 9th of October, the Muslims of Valencia extended the "senyal King" on the walls of Valencia in surrender. The Senyera is the main protagonist of October 9th".
Putting out the original old Flag of Valencia, with much pride
Looking across Ayuntamiento towards where the Flag is being placed. All of this in the foreground are for the "day time" fireworks which we saw a little later this afternoon.
After the hanging of the Flag their is a parade or march of people to the statue of Jaume I (King James I) to lay flowers around it.
Below is a short example I found on YouTube of the day time fireworks. You mostly feel and hear these fireworks, with a few exceptions of some red or green smoke!
Also today is a special bull flight in the Plaza del Toros. On our way to the bull ring we saw some of the people who where going to walk in the Festes de Moros and Christians in the Cap i casual. This tells you a little bit more about the event.
Here is a video of the event if you would like to see what it was like.
We missed this parade as we went to the special bull fights. None had ever been to a bull flight and I can confirm that none of us (Michael, Laura, Beth and Howard) will NEVER go again. It was brutal, for the bull.
The Matador's however show so much pride, but just this year for the first time in 30 years that a matador de toros was killed. It happened on live TV, with his wife in attendance. The video also talks about the San Fermin (Running of the Bulls) which we attended this year, I was going to run again - I ran in 1980, but I'm glad I didn't as the saying goes, it's not like it used to be.
In any case, In Spain, there currently is a lot of controversy over bull fighting. As we entered the Plaza del Toros, there were protesters across the street.
What struck me most was the elegance and pride the Matadors de Toros displayed.
I read that the purpose of a bullfight is to create beauty. And that it really is known as La corrida de toros. The article above says "that it grew out of knights on horseback jousting bulls."
"Now it is a three-act drama that centers on a man on the ground, dressed in all the pomp and circumstance of Imperial Spain, in which he tries to create moments of beauty in a dance with death, as represented by a wild bull, before killing it in a ritual sacrifice."
"The corrida is not written about on the sports pages of Spain's newspapers but reviewed alongside ballet performances and theatre productions"
"Only Hollywood actors and fútbol stars of clubs such as Real Madrid earn more than leading matadors"
Some of our photo's
102 doesn't really have a chance but those horses do take a beating!
Monday and Tuesday, October 10 & 11 - back to our schedule gym, walk with everyone meals. The only exception was on Tuesday night October 11th I went to Temple after starting my 24 hour fast (nothing including water) for Yom Kippur!
Wednesday, October 12th - still fasting as we fly to Bari, Italy!
