These items of total delight did not fall from the sky. They were brought by Inge, my best friend for more than 15 years now.
She left us earlier this week, after a stay of 5 days.

She arrived on the last day of Las Fallas and therefore had the great chance to see a glimpse of this pretty unique yearly festival. A pretty important glimpse at that, because the last day is the day of the cremas, the public burning of all the puppet structures that have been set up in more than 300 locations in the city! Earlier I already put photos online of the fallas tour we made.

Below I have added a video impression of the fireworks show that rang in the crema of the last falla on Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

We did quite a bunch of nice things together with Inge and because she already had visited Valencia before, we also could do some things that are most of the times not included in a first visit.

On Friday we took her to the Museo del Carmen to see the same exhibition of drawings we saw with Pam. In the evening I cooked her favorite Chinese dish: coca-cola chicken.

The next day we took the train to X‚àö‚Ćtiva to see the castle on the top of the hill there. I already visited in November 2008, but for Mia and Inge it was a first timer and because the last time we didn’t have time for the Moorish part of the castle, for me this time was again very nice and interesting!

Back in Valencia we had a great tapas dinner at a restaurant that Inge went to on her first visit: the extremely popular Bodeguilla del Gato.

On Sunday we had a long walk up and down the Turia and visited the Oceanografico that is part of the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. We saw a great dolphin show and we saw two walruses mating, which was quite funny to watch. The only part that left us not impressed was the penguin area, where we immediately had to think of the not so happy zoo-scene in the movie Happy Feet.

In the evening we had dinner at Sagardi where we ate a whole bunch of the most delicious pinxtos! Especially Inge loved the strong cider there too, a combination that ensures that many people return to that restaurant after their first visit.

The days were flying by with so many things to do and Monday was Inge’s last day already. Mia had to go to school and because the weather was absolutely gorgeous we went to the beach, where we sat on a terrace enjoying the sun and each other’s company the whole afternoon.

All in all we enjoyed Inge’s visit very much and in a couple of months it is our turn to go visit The Netherlands…

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PS yesterday I had a go with Google’s Picasa 3 and I am using the great Shashin plugin to show the photos above that I uploaded earlier.

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Nit de Foc is held on the night of the 18th onto the 19th of March and is a 20 minutes fireworks show in the riverbed of the Turia.

We had chosen a great spot near our home, basically one bridge west of where the show was held. We went there with two classmates of Mia with whom we also spent the early part of the evening in a nice restaurant very near our home.

It was absolutely amazing to see so many people, literally thousands and thousands, on the streets, bridges, everywhere, staying up for this yearly fireworks show.

Because my best friend Inge is arriving tomorrow from The Netherlands for a long weekend visit, we decided to go home, but the party here in Valencia is not finished for basically the rest of the night. And tomorrow will be the crema: burning of all the more than 300 fallas that are spread out over town, with at around 1am the crema of the falla on Plaza del Ayuntamiento followed by yet another fireworks show…

The photos below are just very few impressions, underneath them also a video.

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Yesterday Mia and I saw our first bullfight ever and it was a spectacular event!

During Las Fallas there are bullfights every day in Plaza de Toros and we were lucky enough to get tickets to a fight where matador David Fandila or “El Fandi” was performing his arts!

We arrived early at the arena, because these days with the Fallas things tend to get very busy. Earlier today we planned to visit the Mascleta, but thousands and thousands of people had the same idea, so we could not see anything.

Although I bought seats for the sector-sol of the arena, we were sitting in the shade, probably because it is still early in the year and the sun has not reached the top of the sky yet.

It seems that also the Spanish people don’t want to miss a second of the bullfights as everyone was in on time…

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The Plaza de Toros was built in 1850 and currently seats almost 13,000 people.

The Spanish style of bullfighting, the corrida de toros (literally running of bulls) or fiesta brava (the ferocious festival) takes place in 3 stages:

1. tercio de varas
2. tercio de banderillas
3. tercio de muerte

Of course the bullfight is most dangerous for the matador, but – as we saw yesterday – also in the tercio de banderillas accidents do happen and can be very painful. When a banderillero that was part of the cuadrilla (entourage) of Juli‚àö¬∞n L‚àö‚â•pez “El Juli” tried to plant the two banderillas on the bull, his vest was caught by a tip of the bull’s horn and it ended in misery for the guy. We actually thought he was dead instantly, but we read today in the newspaper that he survived the incident; although barely…
You can find a great photo-series here.

The first fight with matador Finito de Cordoba was not great; he needed to long time to kill the bull and the audience was not amused, which resulted in lots of “boo’s”.

However the rest of the show and especially the second performances of El Juli and El Fandi were absolutely amazing!

El Juli was spectacular by turning 360 degrees with the bull following him and El Fandi started his tercio de muerte by sitting on his knees while the bull stormed at him!

We took quite some photos and you can find the entire gallery here.

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However my brand-new camera got stolen yesterday while I was having drinks with Ivan and his father-in-law.

It was “fished” right out of the pocket of my coat that was hanging over my chair. The thief actually “did” both my pockets as the map in my other pocket also was gone. Pure opportunism.

One of the staff of Lisboa, the bar where it happened, told us that petty crime like this sees a sharp rise in Valencia during the Fallas.

As Mia put it: “po cai mian zai”, an old Chinese saying that means something like when you lose fortune, you avoid disaster.

Because I bought tickets for our first bullfight for tomorrow, I will have to buy a new camera today

We have to admit and can confirm that a Mascleta definitely has more ear-deafening fireworks than anything we have ever heard in China!

Difficult to describe:
Thousands of people were gathered on the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (the City Council Square in Valencia). I had read somewhere that people would start gathering from 13:30hr onwards and when we got there a around that time it was already pretty packed.

A few “warning”-bangs scared the hell out of the crowd and helped in building up anticipation. Music was played and on the supreme spot, the balcony of the City Council, we could see people dancing.

At exactly 14:00hr the fireworks were lit, the choreographed explosions series took off and for the next 5 minutes people could just watch in awe! It was almost impossible to speak unless by yelling into each others ears.

And at 14:05hr it all ended with a grand series of incredible loud bangs and thunders up in the sky followed by a big applause from the people.

Then it was all over and people went all back to where they came from. We headed for lunch to a little tapas place opposite of the Mercado Central: deep-fried shrimps and sardines in oil with olives, delicious. Mia finally starts to like this type of Spanish food (all the bread-based tapas such as montaditos, bocadillos and pinxtos are not her favorites), so that is great as we will have to sample lots of them!

Below some of the photos I took and 2 videos I shot. The videos actually give only a tiny glimpse of the event as you cannot hear the deep base thunders that were constantly being fired off…

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Pam arrived on Thursday afternoon and after freshening up we went to meet Mia on the terrace of Lisboa. It was great seeing each other again, last time I saw Pam was in September on a boat in the Amsterdam canals.

That afternoon we climbed all the stairs of the Micalet (Valencian, in Spanish: Miguelete) to have a great view of Valencia.

We had a tapas dinner at Tasca Angel and went for another drink on Plaza Negrito.

The next day was “tourist-day”. Mia went to school and Pam and I went on a long walk through town. We visited the Mercado Central (Central Market), La Lonja (Silk Exchange), the Plaza del Torro (bull ring) where posters hang to announce the bull fights during Las Fallas – Mia and I are planning to see our first bull fight in the next few weeks.

After a quick comida (lunch) in the sun on a terrace in Ruzafa – an old area of Valencia that is becoming hip and bohemian with all kinds of restaurants and little bars – we walked to Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) with its beautiful architecture. We had another drink on a terrace in the afternoon sun and walked back home through the Turia – the riverbed turned massive park – and the Jardines del Real (the former gardens of the Palace of the King), which are next to our home.

In the evening Pam invited us for a fantastic dinner at Tapa2 Gastronomik, a “fusion-tapas”-restaurant recommended by a friend.

Saturday was a rainy day, but we still managed to do some fun stuff, see the Torres de Serranos (one of the old city gates) and we went to Museo del Carmen to see a fantastic exhibition of 80-something drawings by the masters. The drawings come from a private collection of 19th and 20th century artists such as Van Gogh, Miro, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Gaugain, Renoir and many, many more.

Of course is a visit to Valencia not complete without eating paella, so we had that as part of our lunch in a small cafeteria nearby the Mercado where Pam also bought her own paellera (paella pan).

We skipped the dessert that was part of the menu del dia (set lunch) and instead went for a horchata with fartons (horchata is described in linked post, fartons are the sweet and sugared bread-sticks that you dip in the horchata) and chocolate con churros (cup of melted chocolate with sugary deep-fried bread-sticks).

The rest of the afternoon we lazily spent at home and Mia and I cooked dinner in the evening. Early Sunday morning Pam went back to The Netherlands after a quite intense and fantastic 3 days! We were still so absorbed by her visit that we didn’t even realize it was March 1, the start of Las Fallas and totally missed the first Mascleta.

So I will leave now to pick up Mia from school and we will then go to Plaza del Ayuntamiento (the City Council Square) to see (and mostly hear) our first Mascleta. From what we have heard this type of fireworks is way more intense than that of Chinese New Year…

More photos of our days with Pam here.