Café de las Horas
Most cities have a special drink or dish that they are particularly proud of and every visitor is urged to partake in them. Valencia has a few: this is the home of the paella and its cousin, fideua (basically a paella with pasta instead of rice), buñuelos (donuts), and horchata, a drink made of tiger nut milk (yes, it’s a thing). There is also the famous agua de Valencia served at many of the fancier bars around town, the most famous of which is Café de las Horas, just around the corner from here, right by Plaza de la Virgen. Sagrario has been talking about this place a lot (the owner is a friend, it seems), so it was very exciting to find out that we’d been invited for some sort of private event around noon on this first day of December. (It’s really hard to believe it’s already the first of December and I really should be in Malaga right now, but no, I’m still here.)
When getting ready to go to Café de las Horas, we were told to dress up sexy and a 1920s style though where I would get this sort of getup I’m not sure. I certainly don’t travel with many period pieces … I mean, I could probably pull off something in my summer wear but this is still December, and no matter how warm it still gets during the day, this isn’t sandal weather. Sagrario, of course, has her whole wardrobe to choose from so both Gulcie and I looked like her poor step-sisters but whatever, this was all in good fun.
Upon arrival at the Café it became clear that we were there to observe a very special photoshoot: there was a table set up in a corner where four mature women in lingerie were seated and posing while “playing” cards. It all had the vibe of an old saloon in the Wild West and the women were most certainly meant to look like ladies of the night. Once I took a good look around the setting of the shoot in the Café de las Horas made a lot more sense; the place already looked like a very fancy saloon or bar from the 1920s. It was quite amusing watching the (I’m told) famous French photographer direct his Spanish models to do this or that when the only common language the five of them had was basically just gestures. At one point he even came over to us and with obvious exasperation explained to us (in French) how difficult it was to get his point across to the non-French-speaking women. The fact he was telling this to two women who also didn’t speak French was also lost on him. We certainly did get the gist though and nodded appreciatively.
The whole session, or the part we saw, took maybe half an hour after which the ladies allowed us to take some more informal photos, mostly with the owner of the bar who was also dressed up for the occasion. We were told to please not post any photos of the actual scene as they’re going to be part of some exposition in Paris, but a photo of a photoshoot isn’t quite the same so here is a taste (a few more in the Gallery):
Since it turned out to not be a good time to be drinking agua de Valencia, which is basically cava, vodka, gin, a bit of sugar and most importantly, fresh orange juice, we ended up having some coffee and some dessert. So I still have to taste this famous drink everyone raves about and is probably totally overpriced everywhere since tourists don’t care if they pay $15 for a cocktail, right? I will report back on that …
