Moving Again!
Yes, it is time to move again, albeit this time not to a different city, but to a new part of València. While my original plan was to spend the winter (i.e. the three coldest months of December, January, and February) in one place, preferably in Andalusía, it became rather obvious early in my stay here that I like this city very much and one month just wouldn’t be enough. Since it really didn’t matter if I stayed two or three months further south, I decided to extend València for another month. I have already booked a place in Málaga for the time over Christmas and New Year but finding new lodgings in or close to Ciutat Vella proved tricky. I had a place all set and then the woman cancelled for personal reasons, then the next two or three were not good, either bad timing, or miscommunication, or some other weird excuses. Finally I booked a place right in the heart of the Old Town, one I had looked at earlier and initially discarded because it was a 3rd storey walk-up; feeling a tad desperate I decided, what’s a few dozen steps after all, I only have to get the two suitcases up them just the one time. All other days I will get extra exercise so it can’t be all bad. My host, Sagrario, was very quick to respond and I felt good about my choice immediately.
My move-in date was Saturday, October 31st, but before then I did a little more exploring of my old neighbourhood. I certainly couldn’t leave the area without taking a photo of the church across the street, the bells of which kept me company daily. I also decided to take a gander at the Polish restaurant, U Polek, that Ewa has been raving about. It seems she and her other Polish friends have been going there quite often, including dragging along (rather willingly) their Spanish teacher, Pablo. It was time to visit this place and check it out for myself.
I took the #30 bus (of early-arrival-and-causing-panic fame from the previous posts), and easily found the restaurant located in the Ciutat Jardi neighbourhood. Unfortunately for me, however, I arrived a little too early, totally forgetting that most places open for lunch not at noon as I’m used to, but rather at 1:30pm (or occasionally at 1:00pm, but that’s rather rare), forcing me to hang around and not look too conspicuous while doing so. Yes, I did not want to seem too eager, lol, I’m silly that way. Fortunately for me there was a little park right across the street where I read my Kindle for a while trying to ignore my rumbling tummy.
When time finally came to go inside, I was very pleasantly surprised: the place was very charming and very Polish, with typical decorations all around. The place is run by a Polish woman (duh) and her daughter who have been in València over 16 years now and love it here. Not surprising, really as this has been a sentiment I’ve heard a lot. I ended up ordering some mushroom croquettes (delicious) with a cup of typical Polish barszcz (borscht), placek po cygańsku (potato pancake with meat and mushroom sauce), and a delicious cheesecake with a meringue topping for dessert. All in all I had a very good meal and, since I was the only customer pretty much the whole time, I was able to chat with the owner/cook a bit. I definitely plan to come back … the specials change all the time so it will be nice to check out more typical Polish dishes over time.
Pictures of meal coming back soon!
On the way home, decidedly very full, I stumbled upon a lovely little park with a lovely little palacio, both located in a somewhat incongruous location, i.e. between very busy roads. I’m not really sure why that surprised me, since parks are common around here, but for some reason I didn’t quite expect it, nor that the palacio would be so pretty. The trees always surprise me a bit here, so few look familiar, and this one was also rather unusual. I couldn’t tell if it was on its side because it had recently fallen over or if it had been growing like that for a while, but it was very large. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this in my photos yet, but I do take many with trees, from various angles. Or maybe you haven’t noticed that because I don’t post many here, but believe me, I take a lot of them. I may have to start tree gallery one of these days.
Moving day went rather well. I was packed the day before so I really didn’t have to do much in the morning except put away the last bits of stuff. Ewa had offered to go with me, since I was taking along not only the two suitcases and my large knapsack, but also an extra bag of food I had managed to collect. Plus I knew I would need help getting all that stuff up to a third floor apartment. We took a taxi over and landed at the Plaza de la Virgen, since the cabbie couldn’t get us to the actual street — the streets in Ciutat Vella are not very suited to cars and few venture in beyond the main roads, cabs included. Since I had already scouted the area on a previous visit, I knew exactly where to go. Once on Carrer dels Juristes we had to wait for Sagrario’s friend to come and open the apartment for us, since Sagrario was away. Anita was very friendly, and apparently a previous guest of Sagrario’s who had also stayed in the room I was going to be in. She also very kindly helped with my other suitcase, since Ewa charged ahead with the first one while I huffed and puffed with the knapsack. I am so glad I only had to do this once … I’m sure moving out will be way easier. I was beginning to question the wisdom of bringing two suitcases but I’m sure it will be all worth it in summertime when I’ll have real fashion choices. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
After dumping the suitcases, learning the layout of the place and which key is which, we decided to head out and explore the area a bit. I had walked through here before, but there are so many little streets around that it’s practically impossible to remember which ones you’ve already seen. The area we walked through the most is called El Carmé or El Carmen, the northernmost part of the Ciutat Vella. One of the things very common here are murals which unfortunately have to coexist with a lot of graffiti. One day I will do a gallery just for the street art I’ve found, but for now, there is a sampling in the Gallery for this post. I really enjoy spotting dogs around town but sometimes I notice pretty kitties, too. This particular one really goes with the building, don’t you think? Cats are not nearly as popular as dogs, apparently, seeing how many live outside is parks and gardens, so seeing one well taken care of made me feel good.
Or, perhaps, the neighbourhood in general is friendlier to cats, since they built an actual House of Cats and put in on the map.
Another cool thing about this place is that it’s totally OK to just walk into buildings, as long as the doors are open, of course. So that’s what I’ve been doing as often as I can. In this case, I wandered into Casa de les Roques, a museum housed in a 15th-century building where wooden ceremonial carts from the Corpus Christi festival are stored. Carts and large effigies are used for various types of parades and processions and I guess they have to be stored somewhere between events. Just like the large ones we saw in Morella, there were a few hiding in this museum as well. I so wish I had a chance to see these things paraded outside again and not gathering dust inside. Soon, I hope, soon.
I can’t believe it’s the end of October already and I’ve been here 2 whole months. On one hand time seems to fly by but in all honesty, it doesn’t feel like it’s really flying. Yes, I have done a lot of things, but I do everything at a very relaxed pace, and I definitely take time for myself. This means time doesn’t have the sense of slipping by … it seems to have slowed down for me and this is precisely what I have wanted to happen. I read somewhere a long time ago that to slow time down back to what it felt like when you were a small child, you had to approach each day as a day of firsts. The reason summers seem to last so long when you’re young is that you don’t have a plan for each day (hopefully) yet you learn and discover new things, often just by doing “nothing.” This has become my modus operandi here: enjoy doing unplanned things and see where the feet take me, quite literally. So, while two months may have passed, I truly feel like it’s all just began.
