Castles (and smoke!) in the air

Xativa Castle

Recovering from the mid-life crisis of my birthday the previous day, might best be described as 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'! Sunday last, we decided to pay a visit to 'Titanic - the Exhibition' - a more-or-less year-long audio-described tour of photographs and 'memorabilia' from one of the world's most notable human catastrophes of the last century. Situated underneath l'Umbracle - yet another Santiago Calatrava architectural masterpiece in the City of Arts and Sciences - the Titanic tour was a triumph of presentation and fascinating for people of all ages, as the whole event was seen through the stories of those who survived and perished on that ship. A great way to spend a couple of hours. In the evening, we returned to the nearby Hemisferic, Calatrava's IMAX cinema-cum-planetarium to see the documentary film about the rediscovery of the Titanic wreck and the first few submarine trips down to the bottom of the ocean to recover some of the many artefacts. All in all, a thoroughly worthwhile event and the exhibition remains in Valencia until March 2008, so any of our guests visiting us before Spring next year will be offered this treat!

It's been an interesting week for several reasons. Firstly, unlike the UK, Spain seems to plonk its Festivals (Bank Holidays) wherever they fall in the calendar and in this case, we celebrated Valencia Day (Día de la Comunidad Valenciana) on Tuesday and Spain Day (Día de la Hispanidad) on Friday, so with two non-contiguous holidays, the children have had a disjointed school week. On top of this, it is 50 years this week since the great River Turia Flood (13 and 14 October 1957), and as if to mark the event (we did, but more of that later), Thursday night saw the heavens open and torrential rain, thunder and lightning storms over many hours on Thursday night to Friday morning, with the resultant flash floods and on-going blustery weather. I should hasten to add that, having watched archive footage of the '57 flood, the squalls of this week bore no comparison.


Chris, Sandra, Jo and Susana at Xativa Castle

So, Valencia Day: With our friends Manoli, Angel, Susana and Sandra, we made our way inland to the city of Xativa, around 40 kilometres from Valencia, to walk around the castle which provides both a beautiful vista of the city below, and is itself, a stunning, restored and well-maintained gem reflecting Xativa's past importance as a major city from the Valenciana region.

Now, we drove to the castle after deciding that the festivities of the day would not be overly grand in the city of Valencia itself. We heard later that, well, "they sort of blew up the city centre at lunchtime!" which seems to be code for the local practice of igniting fireworks whatever the time of day or night. Mascletàs (as the daytime fireworks are known) are let off around 1pm or 2pm at various times of year, notably Fallas in March as well as Valencia Day, and, it seems, almost any other day when there are a few spares kicking around. They are loud - deafeningly loud - and we didn't miss out by being 40 kilometres away in Xativa - they've heard of them there too!


Marching bands celebrating Día de la Comunidad Valenciana

However, if disappointed not to have been "blown up" in Valencia at lunchtime, we ambled our way down to the Turia riverbed by the Palau de la Musica at dusk for the finale celebrations of the day, to see local dancing, marches and music. We did wonder why we appeared to be going in the opposite direction to the children and young families who appeared to be leaving the festivities. "It's over", said Liz. "Let's just go there for the walk then", said I.


We saw the knights on horseback

A colourful and eventful evening was obviously on the cards, and pretty soon we discovered why the young children and families had beaten a path home not twenty minutes before we arrived...


Human sparklers like you've never seen before

Quite who had been employed to walk around as human incendiary devices, I am not sure but it made the most spectacular sight, though the acrid smoke was more than many could take after a couple of minutes and I found myself diving for fresh air after every few camera shots. I kept thinking, "I wonder what the Health and Safety Reps back in the UK would make of all this. Has anyone done a risk assessment?!"