Thursday, June 21, 2012

We have spent the past few days in search of a new apartment that will be our home here in Valencia for the next few years.  We are hopeful that we will finish the process this afternoon, so stay tuned for details.

Sunday was rather uneventful.  We basically took life easy.  Susan worked on her next blog post and I worked a bit on my magic.  Lunch was Middle Eastern and Susan prepared some tabouli, tzatziki, along with grilled chicken breast.  What a treat!

Monday evening we met up with the Kellys who have spent a goodly amount of time abroad and are considering a move to Valencia.  Helen is originally from New York and has spent a great deal of time in England, France and Finland.  Chris is from England.  They currently live in Duxbury, Massachusetts and have just sold their small cottage in Calpe, which is located some 80 miles away from Valencia. They are friends of a magician friend of mine, Darío Piera who suggested that we get together for dinner and a chat.  Darío was present along with his wife, Laura.

Given the fact that many restaurants are closed on Monday evening, I chose La Fórcola as our meeting place.  With the exception of Darío we all arrived ay 9:00.  Darío was finishing up a class and would arrive some fifteen minutes later.  Sonia was on duty Monday night and we asked her to order for us and we ended up sharing five different dishes.  We started with a dish of goat cheese and eggplant that was followed by marinated salmon involtini, ravioli studded with mushrooms and served in a cream sauce replete with mushrooms and truffles, and a lobster pasta.  We all chose ice ream for dessert and we finished off our meal with a chupito.

Our conversation was lively and we tried to answer all the questions that we were asked.  Chris spiced up the conversation with several jokes and I ended up doing several magic effects.  It was close to midnight when we said our goodbyes.

Tuesday we went to A Taste of America to buy some Crisco so that Susan could make an apple pie to thank Jordi for spending so much time with her last Wednesday.  Since we were close to The Ginger Loft we decided to have lunch there and we enjoyed a cold corn soup spiked with avocado, chicken curry and Thai pork.  Mike and Santi are investigating the possibility of renting a space in Sitges, the beach town south of Barcelona, and taking their operation there for the month of August.

Tuesday afternoon Susan went to look at an apartment near the Central Market.  I decided to stay home and ice down the knee.  Susan called me to tell me that I needed to see the apartment because, with the exception of a balcony or terrace, it had everything we were looking for in an apartment.  I put on my sneakers and walked over to Barón de Cárcer where the apartment is located.  When I walked in I immediately knew why Susan had fallen in love with the place.  It has four bedrooms, a formal dining room, a living room and a designer kitchen that is probably as big as our current apartment.  The apartment is being rented furnished because the owners are moving to a chalet in Denia where the husband will now be working.  In essence they are renting their home in Valencia in which they have invested much time, love and money.

Yesterday we spent some time at the real estate agency that is handling the rental to go over the ground rules of our offer.  That afternoon we received a phone call telling us that the owners wanted to meet with us to ask some questions.  We were back at the office at 4:30 to meet with Alicia and Esteban and to answer their questions.  I think they wanted to assure themselves that we were trustworthy and would take good care of the apartment.  They were very satisfied with our answers and later that afternoon we received the rental contract via e-mail.

We had lunch at A Nou yesterday and enjoyed an arroz con langostinos y mejillones that was preceded by a trio of appetizers – a fried quail egg served on a coca with an accompanying triangle of cheese, half of a sweet onion hollowed out and stuffed with a beef mixture, and a serving of couscous with a mint, carrot and shrimp accompaniment.  Dessert was a panna cotta topped with a scoop of Bailey’s ice cream.

We had not seen Pepe for a while and were pleased when he called and invited us to join him and Jaime for dinner.  Pepe prepared one of his famous paellas this one with sepia and ventresca.  For dessert we had the apple pie that Susan had made.  We then spent close to an hour doing magic.  Susan was fading fast so around 11:30 we hopped a cab and made our way home.