[title type="h5"]
Day 9: Monday, June 1, 2015.
Valencia.[/title]
After six days within the gravitational field of Great Britain, we penetrate the hegemony of Spain. Valencia is the first all-day port on our sailing itinerary. The Marys intend to spend all the time allotted to it. What, exactly, are they looking for? They don't exactly know. The first stop as we begin walking about is a kicky store aimed at young women. The Marys wonder why I don't find their quest interesting enough! They need shoes, a dress, and a few other odds and ends, and spend about fifty Euros on them.
This would hardly be worth mentioning were it not for a problem that crops up in this simple transaction. We discover not only that few stores in Europe accept American Express--our main spending card--but that they don't especially like Master Card either. I have the cash to cover the girls' purchase. But at the first respectable ATM I see, I take out two hundred Euros just to make sure that the problem isn't the account balance.
Valencia is much more beautiful than we expected. The word has been that Valencia has taken a back seat to Barcelona for so long that it has dwindled. Nowhere do I see any evidence of this.
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Serrano hams in the Valencia food market.[/caption]
Indeed, it seems to me that the fresh-food market shames in size and variety any other I have seen anywhere. This is not produce meant to sit in a produce rack for weeks, but veggies at the peaks of their goodness. Mary Leigh buys a number of unusual tomatoes, in many shapes and colors. Also here are fish and shellfish that exceed the total inventory of every seafood market in New Orleans combined.
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Valencia oranges.[/caption]
I am interested in Valencia oranges, which have spread the world over and are easily available in the United Staed this time of year. The fruit vendor in the market has juiced some of his naranjas, and the drinking is what I wish I could have every day of my life. He tells us that if we go out to the orchards, we will be astonished by the beauty and sweeness of the oranges.
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One cannot escape hamburgers.[/caption]We hang around the market for nearly an hour. We don't have to go far before we find a restaurant district, serving paella, tapas, pastries, and sandwiches. Interspersed among these local specialties are--you can't escape them--hamburgers. And not the ordinary kind, but the better-burger thick-meat sandwiches with with better buns and dressings.
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The first four of seven tapas I eat in Valencia. [/caption]
All that is forgotten when we find the main target of my reconnaissance: a tapas bar, the culinary greatest idea to spread from Spain to the rest of the world. This one is a bar in the more conventional sense. But on the counter are plates of some three dozen appetizer-size dishes. Most of these are set atop (and sometimes athwart) what look like crosswise slices of poor boy bread.
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A well-stocked tapas bar. They kept bringing more items from the kitchen every few minutes. [/caption]
I select seven items: a cold, poached small mackerel on a thick, chunky mayonnaise. A salad of chicken with lots of herbs. Cold tuna seared that the edges. Poached mussels in a tomato sauce. Another herbal salad with a white fish. And, inevitably, slices of Serrano ham. All of this is at least as good as it looks, which is to say very. The Marys take not so much as a bite. Not only does that leave them bereft of one of the great culinary thrill of Spain, but stuffs me beyond the capability of further eating for awhile.
Nevertheless, we find between a hamburger joint and a pizzeria, a take-out paella stand. Of course, they go for this. I am very surprised to discover that the chicken-and-sausage Spanish answer to jambalaya is actually excellent, even served out of a plastic container. Which, delightfullly, is shaped exactly like a paella pan.
Mary Ann now books a taxi to drive us around the town and show us the things only the locals know. His English is sketchy but his knowledge is excellent. He drives us alongside a river that has been redirected, widened, or eliminated, depending on the other needs of the area. This takes us to the opera house, among the most striking buildings we have ever seen, flanked by a number of other structures by the same architect with at least as great an impact. For starters, these edifices are enormous to the degree of a pyramid or the Eiffel Tower. The Marys walk all around the Opera House, and it takes them about forty-five minutes to do so.
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The Valencia Opera House.[/caption]
How does this magnificence live in a country whose economy has lately been called "the next Greece"? How is it that the entire city is extraordinarily busy, clean, imaginative, and impressive? Not even Mary Ann has a logical answer to this. Until I can find out how this dichotomy of apparent affluence and well-known debt can exist, I will keep in my mind the idea that Valencia is a city in which I would greatly enjoy living.
I had put the word out to the Eat Clubbers that I would probably be lunching in a restaurant in the Hotel Neptuno, not far from the ship dock. We ask the taxi driver to take us there. We find not one but three Eat Club couples there. One of them is the Gutierrezes, who we have encountered twice already today in various parts of Valencia. And this is no small town. The Marys and I eat more paella, bringing the number of pans of the stuff for the day to three.
I was the first to arrive at the restaurant among our trio. The girls wanted to check out the beach, was more than a little beautiful. I sat with the Gutierrezes until they arrived. Then a slip-up occurred in their paella order, resultin in the chicken version they ordered going to another table, with a panful of seafood paella going to the Marys. Mary the Younger doesn't eat seafood. Another pan would have to be prepared. By now we were running short on time. I like a substantial buffer when it comes to such deadlines. Being left behind by one's cruise ship is no fun. You never know what's going to happen. In this case, not only the paella massacree occur, but when we finally got a cab, he had no idea what a cruise ship dock was.
We didn't have to run, but the timing was too close for my comfort. The Marys, on the other hand, kept their cool, and berated me for being a worrywart old man. It wasn't the first time such an impasse came up. MA grew up being tardy for school on a daily basis. I'm on the radio. Showing up late is a disaster for me. How will we ever work this mismatch out?
