Saturday, March 16, 2013

The tent in front of our building is fully operational.  Last night’s hubbub was not too bad.  Given the fact that our bedroom is at the back of the house and that there is a door halfway down the hall that closes off that part of the house, a goodly amount of the noise was muffled.  However, it should get louder tonight and for the next few nights.  Trainloads of people will be coming into the city today and will stay for the weekend or until the end of the festivities on Tuesday night.

Yesterday we did some shopping at the Mercado Central and because many people had headed off to see the mascletá there were seats available at The Market Bar.  We sat down for a bite, but it ended up being our lunch.  We had some bunuelos de bacalao and a morcilla scramble.  A British couple sat down at the stools adjacent to ours and we struck up a conversation.  It turns out they were spending the last day of a week’s vacation here in Valencia and they had enjoyed themselves thoroughly.  He is a retired professor who taught at Oxford and she is a lawyer.  They have since moved from Oxford and now live further south and a stone’s throw from the beach.

We spent the afternoon doing this and that as we waited for the plumber to arrive.  He needed to finish the repair on my toilet – the plunger had broken when he was investigating why water was not entering the tank and he had to order the part since the toilet in my bathroom is of a rather unique design.  When he arrived he finished the repair and replaced the membrane and the filter in the reverse osmosis water system in the kitchen.  Fascinating news, right?

Around 9:00 we went exploring and took a look at several of the fallas nearby.  We then found a seat in a crowded bar and ordered a couple of tapas and watched the world go by.  We were in bed by 12:00, just in time to hear the fireworks display that was taking place in the Turia.  It lasted a good twenty minutes and soon thereafter we fell asleep.