In Valencia

In Barcelona, as we’ve no doubt mentioned, we were on the fifth floor - officially the fourth floor, since the Spanish call what we call the first floor the E floor (don’t ask me what the E stands for) - but anyway, there were 83 steps up to our apartment. We know this for a fact because Celia counted them every time - up and down.
In Valencia, which strikes me as a very pretty city, with real style - and rather more aggressive traffic than Barcelona - we have an apartment with around 40 steps. 40 steps are a lot less than 83, believe it or not, and Celia has not counted them every time. Once was enough.
The other difference, however, is that we have the whole apartment to ourselves. Unlike our place in Barcelona, which was part of a system called The Loft, where unused apartments were rented out to as many people as they could get into them, (and where they must have made well over 200 euros a night, and still couldn’t supply toilet paper), here in Valencia, the owner of this apartment has rented out the whole place to us (two bedrooms, laundry, bathroom, kitchen, dining-cum-living room) for 75 euros a night. Not only do we have privacy, but it’s a lot less noisy (and far fewer steps - did I mention that?)
Moreover, it’s well-decorated with a modern painting over on one wall (looks as though it’s an original, too), a large hanging version of Da Vinci’s man in a circle (or is it two men in a circle - or one man with four arms and four legs?), a really comfortable couch, an equally comfortable armchair (in which somebody is currently asleep), good beds that neither squeak nor roll nor anything else that beds shouldn’t do, an equipped kitchen (it has a toaster! and an electric kettle!! and much more), a television and a DVD player - and about a dozen DVDs. In English. (We watched Finding Neverland again last night.) On the walls are other decorations: Spanish decorated plates, or little round ceramic sculptures; there are plenty of standard lamps and a general air of comfort. And a washing machine. Wow! No more laundrettes for a bit.
So pleased with the place was Celia that she remarked: the pièce de résistance (she lapses into French on special occasions) would be if the laptop could get on the Internet here. And it does! We’re using some apparently free WiFi without difficulty. Which means we’ve spoken to most of our kids today again, via Skype.
Our intention in Valencia is to rest. Which is why we’re here for a week. We’ll take a couple of trips out of town on the train (we’re getting to the point where we’ve got to use some of them up) but in general we’re not going to push ourselves. In spite of being on holiday, we’re actually tired…
Incidentally, when we were in Rome, we booked into an expensive hotel thinking that for once we'd treat ourselves. It proved to be very ordinary: a room with a bed and an en suite. And seven towels in the en suite. It cost us an unbelievable 140 euros a night. Yet here in Valencia we have a whole apartment for 75 a night. It's hard to get a balance, that's for sure.


Incidentally, I now discover that the da Vinci isn't called a couple of blokes in a circle, but The Vetruvian Man. There, isn't the Internet just wonderful for educating us?

Wireless, market, church, library.

Celia and I went into Norwich today, intending to have a look round the place, but also to try out our wireless laptop, which we haven’t managed to do so far. We paid for three hours of use on wireless with The Cloud before we left, but I’m not entirely sure we need it. Time will tell. Anyway, today we sat just near the market in Norwich and opened up the computer and voila! we were online. It wasn’t quite as easy as that, but it was pretty straightforward.
By the time we’d got all that sorted out, and rung one of the kids (Celia was going to Skype him, which was the idea behind the excursion with the laptop, but then realized he isn’t on Skype!) and walked from the car park and back to it within an hour, we didn’t get much else done. However, we reparked the car in an area where there were no restrictions, caught a bus back to town and walked about without the weight of the laptop or the backpack – both of which we’d brought with us on our first trip in. Sounds complicated? Yup, we seldom do anything without complication.
Anyway, the market has all been upgraded, and all the stallholders now have permanent wooden stalls, closed in above, and closeable at night with shutters and such. This means that many of them look much more professional than in the past. The secondhand bookstall, for instance, was so tidy I didn’t want to disturb the displays. Didn’t buy anything from there but did buy a copy of Dombey and Son (which I think I’ve already got at home) from an op-shop later on.
I did get a watch from one of the stalls – again, it was much more like a little shop than a market stall. The watch is very similar to the one I’ve had since Celia went to England the time before last (around twenty years ago). My old watch has suddenly come apart, which is distressing, as I’m not a person to change watches at the drop of a fashion. I’ve only ever possessed two: one I got for my 21st and the other one I just mentioned. Now that I’ve said that, it’s possible I did have another earlier one: I seem to remember a rather ugly thing I was glad to replace with my 21st birthday present.
The weather continues to be mild and often hot, and we both came home exhausted from traipsing around and not really seeming to achieve anything much. I did have a look around the library, and even joined up on the off-chance that I might borrow something from there during our stay. The library is only seven years old, with a great deal of glass, a huge covered forecourt (there was a careers display going on while we were there) and three stories high. When you look out through the glass from the inside you can see the wonderful old church of St Peter Mancroft just in front. (It’s next to the market.) The church has all these plates in the floor where either people have been buried or that are just memorial stones; I’m not sure which. It also has three marvelous series of stained-glass windows; stone heads sticking out from below the upper-level windows, and a blazing gold altar of carved statuary. Quite a place.
There isn’t a saint called Peter Mancroft, by the way. The church was originally St Peter and St Paul, but St Paul got dropped at some point and the Mancroft bit was added. It’s thought that it relates to the name of a person who owned the piece of land where the market is now situated.
The other remarkable thing about Norwich is that much of the original city wall is still standing: it wouldn’t actually keep anyone out, but it’s been there for an awful long time.

First London days - part one

Arrived in London late on Wednesday. Nearly didn’t get into the country because the customs official I met up with decided that I really was some ancient terrorist (something that I felt my passport photo made me look like) and questioned me pretty thoroughly about what I was going to be doing, whether I had any money, how long I was staying, whether I’d be working, whether I’d be bleeding the country dry or not and so on. Celia had gone through customs with ease, and we only found out later that I should have gone through with her. Instead I started out in a queue of some 200 people. After she got through (in the British line) she waved at me to move into another lane, and, after I’d finally figured out what she was on about, I got into a lane with no one in it!
Anyway, we got out of there, found our bags without any problem (which I regarded as a miracle in itself), and didn’t even have to go through any bag search or whatever. But then the fun started. Remember that we now carrying: a lap-top in a case with umpteen cords for cellphones, lap-top, Ipod and so on; Celia’s handbag; her backpack; my backpack (full of books and such); and pulling two suitcases which between them weighed 40 kg.
We discovered that it was better and cheaper to get the ordinary underground (from Heathrow) directly through to Kentish Town (where we were going) rather than the ‘Express’. This meant changing at Bank (if I remember rightly – things are getting hazy by this stage) and going onto the Northern Line. That would have been okay, except that at the changeover of lines we found we had to climb up two flights of stairs because there was no escalator!
Anyway, we got to Kentish Town and I pulled out my instructions for finding our friend’s flat. Somehow I missed the fact that it was only two blocks away from the station (at least we were going in the right direction) and as a result we were still trying to find the street several blocks later. Someone took pity on us and re-directed us back along the road, by which time we were at a point of exhaustion. It was very muggy (and remained so during our three days in London) so we were sweating profusely.
But! We finally got to the flat, dragged our bags down the stairs to the doorway, and voila! our friend’s son greeted us with great friendliness, even though the last time he saw us he was only four…

Champing at the bit

I'm at the point where I can't wait to get away, now. Not that I'm not enjoying being at my daughter's place; we feel at ease there, and it's not like we're 'visitors.' And the agents who are looking after the house have already rung twice about things; I passed the woman onto Celia the second time. She'll sort 'em!

I don't feel as though my house is home anymore – no doubt it will be once we're back and settled again – but in the meantime, we're in a kind of limbo, and still not thoroughly packed. At the last stages of leaving home, we still hadn't decided exactly on what we're taking, and so we have some clothes that we'll be leaving behind. It's hard trying to think about dressing for six months.

I don't remember having this kind of indecision when I first went to England, forty years ago. Being young, I probably ignored all my mother's advice about what I should take, and took things that I thought were important, such as books, and music and so forth. This time, the books are a bit thinner on the ground, and there's no music. But there is a laptop, a thing that hadn't been imagined in 1967, and there are clothes. Probably a better selection than I had previously, but still probably too much.

Connectivity

My wife has spent an inordinate amount of time on the Net searching for ways to be able to use our laptop while we’re away. It won’t be a problem when we’re staying with people – we’re assuming they’ll have internet access – but when we’re not with rellies, we’re not quite sure what we’ll do. The laptop is wireless enabled, so internet cafes are presumably an option, but short of travelling around the streets searching for someone who’s got wireless and then piggybacking we’ve struck no gold so far.
We did look at mobile connect, a little device that fits into the laptop and enables you to use your mobile phone as a receiver, but this looks to be a quite expensive approach. We may just have to check things out when we get there and see how it goes. Prices in the UK are quite a bit higher than in NZ, for internet access, but being without it for long periods means I won’t be able to enliven the reading world with my regular posts.
And we can’t have that now, can we?