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?!"

Sagunto? Sagunt? Saguntum? My Arse...

The controversially refurbished Roman amphitheatre at Sagunto

A beautiful town that boasts a range of names over the years - from the 'Roman 'Saguntum', the Valenciano 'Sagunt' and the Castilian 'Sagunto', this settlement, famous for it's sprawling castle, was once known only as Arse! Try telling the to seven and nine year-olds with a straight face! Only yesterday, we were visiting the 'Colon' district of Valencia (more later), so we're unsure as to which parts of the anatomy are next, and whether they will follow the slang or medical terminology!


Brian, Chris and Jo - spot the ruin!

So, Sagunto (since we are attempting to learn Castillian Spanish at the moment), or more precisely the castle ruins, was the destination of today's visit. Inspired by research for Chris's Roman project at his new school, we drove 25km up the motorway from Valencia to pick our way through the town and into the hills where the ruins remain to this day, covering a stretch of around a kilometre, and seven sections representing different periods in the castle's history. We were even tackled by local gypsies on our descent, who explained that this castle was where the battles with the real El Cid had taken place, not the castle of Peñiscola, used as the backdrop for Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren's 1961 film of the same name, some 100km or so to the north (and which we had visited last year).


Liz and Jo amongst the ruins

Around half way up the hill stands the recently refurbished Roman amphitheatre, which remains a controversial building since the original ruins are more than dominated by the twenty-first century brick and concrete that now encase the original, turning it once again into a working open-air theatre. As with most people, we were in two minds as to whether the building should have been upgraded, but contented ourselves with the fact that there are plenty of other examples of Roman amphitheatre ruins around Europe, so turning one into a functioning building again is, perhaps, acceptable.

Definitely a worthwhile visit - and the views from the top, looking north towards Castellon and south back towards Valencia, are truly stunning.

The rest of the week


IVAM - the contemporary art museum

With Chris and Jo at school all week, we've been out exploring when not engrossed in work. We managed various trips to pick up necessary items of shopping - schoolbooks for Chris and Jo and other household items for the apartment. On occasion we have managed slightly more cultural trips including a visit to IVAM, the contemporary art museum (aka Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno). We felt the building somewhat over-compensated for the art, but it looks like we managed to visit in between exhibitions as a couple of the galleries were roped off. However, a future visit might be needed!


Museo de Bellas Artes

We also managed a cycle along the Turia riverbed one evening after school to the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts) which houses a spectacular range of artefacts and paintings. With only an hour or so of daylight (and a dodgy rear puncture on Jo's bike - now repaired!), we felt a little rushed and will return again soon. In this case not only were the objects and paintings fascinating, the building itself has undergone a stunning renovation - worth a tour in itself.


Mercado de Colon

Yesterday we managed to discover another little gem quite close to the apartment. the Colon Market is another stunningly revamped building (style and money seem to be in great abundance wherever we look) which houses an impressive-looking food court at ground level, with the ever-present El Corté Inglés filling up much of the below-ground level. And what's more, Colon Market is right in the centre of the shoe-selling district. Why do I get the feeling we'll be paying frequent visits back to the area in future?!


A trip up the coast to Port Saplaya

To round the evening off, we met up with friends, Manoli, Angel, Susana and Sandra for a short drive up the coast to Port Saplaya. Yet another hidey-hole of creative genius, Port Saplaya is a residential district out on the coast, with a range of attractive apartment blocks built up around a series of man-made canals, all of which lead out to the sea. For boat-minded people, what better place to have a holiday or weekend apartment and a mooring outside the front door than Port Saplaya? There's a small sailing club at the entrance to the canals, so again, another visit is called for during office opening hours, to see if there's a chance we might get some sailing practice in.

Looking forward to the week ahead, Liz and I are looking forward to a concert at the Palau de la Musica tomorrow evening, featuring Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition along with Mozart and something more contemporary. It will be our first venture into another of Valencia's great iconic buildings - again, a stone's throw from the apartment. Just what we need during an otherwise busy working week!