Valencia Cathedral, Jardins Real

-
Monday, Feb. 11 2019

Micalet Tower

We head out to see Valencia Cathedral and take a slow route on back alleys. When we get to the main square, there are emergent clusters of tour groups. I suspect cruise ships, but it might also be buses. At any rate, we are early enough to not feel that crowded at all. By the time we leave at 11:30 or so, people are lining up to come in, but the crowds are still largely focused on the Plaça Reina. 





The cathedral is an interesting blend of Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque. The site is quite ancient—developed over a temple and then church, mosque and now Cathedral. Its main boast is the Holy Grail (pretty good, I suppose). There are also some impressive relics and artwork, including one gruesome Goya.






We take a stop in a café to have coffee and try the local pastry, fartons. They are roughly the shape of a straight cruller with texture of a French pastry. We take time to finally carry out our accumulated bottles and then go shopping at El Cortes Ingles. 

We take our goods back to the apartment and then go to bask. We hadn’t counted on the wind picking up, but still enjoyed the warm sun on the bridge of flowers before setting off for another garden, just adjacent to the Turia. 



The Jardin Real is lovely and on the site of a former palace and former zoo. There is a combination of lovely garden statuary and tacky repurposed zoo enclosures. We enjoy an aviary filled Australian birds where the native parrots fly over and mock their caged cousins. We watch ducks communing and swans having sex.


At home we have a lovely sunset. Kitty cooks lasagna. We listen to music and drink wine. Lovely day. In some ways, our lives are settling into patterns. In other ways it is still extraordinary to look up and see yourself surrounded by multicolored geraniums.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albufera de Valencia, El Palmar

-
Image
Wednesday 2/13/2019 We had long planned a day trip to a nearby region that balances rice fields, a fresh water lake, salt water estuary and bird habitats. The region is protected environmentally, and what tourism there is revolves around eating paella and slow motion boat tours through the wetlands. The bus ride takes about 40 minutes from our neighborhood. It's a dismal landscape, but saved for me by the extensive woodland near the shore. There are occasional modest condos, yellow and clustered in the pines. It recalled the coast of South Carolina. The day is sunny but with a light breeze. The town is sad, with algae-filled canals lined with little paella joints with plastic chairs set outside in the brilliant sun. It's warm enough to eat outside, so we head for the recommended "Bon Aire" restaurant for our required paella. Thus far we have avoided paella in our trips to Spain. Last year we had rice and lobster in BCN and then this year I had some amazing black...
Read more

Fire and Rain

-
Image
It's a rainy day, one of the few we've experienced in BCN. Last year it drizzled one evening. Prior to that, nada . My usual issue here is too much bright sun, which can make the photography challenging. But today we expect a steady rain through the day. This means we can slow down a bit and have a leisured morning. Kitty fixes French toast with our leftovers and we drink coffee and catch up on US news. Our plan had been to go to a flea market, but we decide to head to a museum instead. One would think after so many trips here we would have been to the big regional (Catalonian) museum. We've walked around it a few times--once on our way to the Botanical Gardens, again when we went to see the fountain show (pretty, but tacky with illuminated fountain play linked to a soundtrack), and last year to capture a beautiful sunset, but we never actually ventured inside until today. The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya is housed in a beautiful palace, a centerpiece of the...
Read more