Marty Kaplan's Blog

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.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

It was Fajita Friday at the Kaplans the other day.  I picked up some tortillas at the local corner store and Susan cut up onions, tomatoes, and two kinds of peppers and cooked them up along with pieces of sliced steak and the addition of Spanish paprika that gave the dish a bit of a kick.  Salas and guacamole are available locally, but I had neglected to pick them up. Even without those two additional ingredients the dish was superb.

Later that afternoon we walked to the Cines Yelmo to see Wes Anderson’s latest film, “Moonrise Kingdom”, with Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand.  It is a quirky little film that follows the adventures of a twelve-year old boy and girl who run away together because they just don’t seem to fit in anywhere.  We enjoyed it very much and the two young leads were superb.  Here is a link to the trailer in case you are interested.

After the movie we walked back home and ended up at Cervecería Las Torres, which has undergone a total transformation in terms of the design of the space, as well as the menu.  They have hired a chef and now are offering some high quality dishes at very reasonable prices.  We were there for a drink and a nibble and we sated our hunger with a plate of puntillas that were cooked to perfection.  From there we walked back home and spent the evening reading and working on the computer.

We had lunch at home yesterday and it was a salad.  We ate light because in the evening we had been invited to the Oberles to meet Brian’s parents and to join them for a barbecue.  We brought a couple of bottle of champagne with us to celebrate Olivia’s upcoming graduation from St Andrews and Susan brought along her laptop to share the picture she took of Jordi at work last Wednesday.

We had an enjoyable time meeting and chatting with Angela and Paul.  They are both retired teachers.  Her field was music, although for a time she taught kindergarten.  Paul was a professor of education who taught at the college level.  They are both retired and they split their year between Michigan and Florida.  Interestingly enough they both have pilot’s licenses and have flown extensively.  Paul was the youngest licensed pilot in Michigan and interestingly enough he got to his high school classes via plane.  He took off from the improvised runway on the farm where he and his family lived and set down the plane in a field that was adjacent to the high school.

We chatted on the terrace for a while and when Brian lit the barbecue it was time to retire indoors.  Thirty minutes later we were called to the table to enjoy a sumptuous meal of grilled shrimp and salmon, along with a saffron rice, cole slaw, and corn on the cob.  Brian had also prepared a fruit salsa to accompany the salmon. Dessert was a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with fresh strawberries.  We finished off the meal with a champagne toast.

In the course of the meal Brian and Ofelia shared with us some of their unique dining experiences when Brian was stationed in Sri Lanka.  Their host at a dinner party had charged his help with setting the table clearly indicating the plates with which the table was to be set, as well as the silverware that was needed for the meal.  He stressed that a napkin should be placed to the left of each plate.  When the guest sat down to the meal the plates and silverware had been placed correctly and the napkin was placed to the left of the plates.  However, the problem was that the help had placed sanitary napkins to the left of each plate.

At another dinner party where a whole roasted fish was to be served, the lady of the house had instructed the cook that when the fish was brought to the table she was to place sprigs of parsley in the gills.  The hostess clarified the word gills by indicating they were like the fish’s ears.  When it was time for the fish course the cook ceremoniously brought in the whole roasted fish and there was the parsley carefully tucked behind the cook’s ears!

The last story involved a dinner party where there was a pass through from the kitchen to the dining room.  The lady of the house had instructed the cook that when she rang the bell at the table she was to serve the meal by using the pass through to get the plates from the kitchen to the dining room.  The bell was rung and nothing happened.  The bell was rung a second time and nothing happened.  The hostess made her way to the pass through to see what the problem was and there was the cook trying to fit herself through the pass through so that she could serve the meal.

When we had finally composed ourselves I brought out my magic and did seven effects in total.  They all played well, although there was a slight hiccup when I did the last effect.  I gave it another try and this time the outcome was successful.  After the magic we retired to the terrace to enjoy the cool breeze and while seated we were treated to a brief fireworks display.  We chatted a while longer and as 1:00 o’clock approached we asked Brian if he would be so kind as to drive us home.  It was a little after 1:30 when we walked through the door and it was close to 2:00 when we finally shut off the light

Friday, June 15, 2012

Things have been rather low key the last few days.  Tuesday we had lunch at El Molinón and that gave us a chance to catch up with Wilma and Quique.  We had a rather light lunch because we were going to have dinner with Brian, Ofelia and their daughter, Olivia.  Olivia has graduated from St Andrews this year and will be returning at the beginning of next week for the graduation ceremonies.  Brian’s parents are flying in to Valencia to spend a few days here and then the family will fly off to Scotland on Sunday. We arrived around 8:00 and sat on the terrace and chatted for a while.  At 9:00 we headed out to a nearby restaurant called El Rus, which is notable for its sandwiches.

We ordered several appetizers, one that featured sundried tomatoes with a variety of toppings to add to them, a cream of garbanzos and an order of shrimp skewers.  The shrimp skewers never arrived and that sort of highlighted the problem we encountered here, to whit, horrible service.  When we told our server that we never received the shrimp her response was, “You should have told me.” If she had bothered to come by the table to see if all was in order we would have told her, but she somehow seemed to have faded into the woodwork.  We ordered a variety of sandwiches.  Brian had the hamburger; Olivia had a chicken sandwich; Susan and Ofelia shared a sandwich that featured smoked tune and I ordered the shish kebab pita.  The pita was disappointing because rather than being filled with slices of lamb they appeared to have used lamb crumbles.

We passed on dessert and coffee and decided to head back to Brian and Ofelia’s place for coffee and magic.  I performed several effects, one of which I had learned the previous night at the Colombini lecture.  Susan was quickly fading and so at 11:00 we decided to call it a night and Brian, once again, was kind enough to drive us home.

Susan left the house early on Wednesday to meet up with Jordi Morera and go with him to the Central Market as he shopped for the elements of what would be the day’s menu at Carosel.  She spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon chatting with him and taking more than two hundred photos for what will be her next blog post.  It seemed logical to have lunch there so, after our new refrigerator was delivered and I had transferred everything from the old refrigerator to the new I made my way to the restaurant.

We ordered the menu of the day and we started with a cream of corn soup, a deconstructed tortilla española, a coca topped with two kinds of sausages and an escalivada.  We both ordered the fish as our main course and we received a perfectly cooked piece of merluza that had been prepared on the wood-burning grill.  We had homemade ice cream for dessert and, of course, we had coffee to finish our meal.

Yesterday featured a visit to the Central market to restock the refrigerator.  We bought ham, turkey, cheeses, eggs, fruit and vegetables and we filled the rolling cart to overflowing.  I had not been to the market for a while and, as always, it was nice to chat briefly with Cristina and Amparo.  Once we had put everything away, we headed out to El Cuento for lunch.  Susan started with a green apple salad while I opted for a burrito de ternera.  Both were quite good.  My main course was an arroz meloso de mariscos and Susan had a dish comprised of eggplant, fresh pear and cheese that was then oven baked.  Our dessert was fresh watermelon.

We spent the rest of our day at home.  I wanted to finish the 900-page book that I was reading and when I turned in at midnight I had achieved my goal.  The book is called Las Doce Llaves and it is an adventure mystery that is set here in Valencia.  It deals with the search for the twelve keys that locked the twelve gates to the city when Valencia was a walled city.  The twelve keys when assembled would unlock one of the greatest treasures known to mankind.  The book takes the reader to some of the most historic places in the city and imparts snippets of history along with the adventure.  The book has a little bit of everything – adventure, mystery, romance, murder – and, while not great literature, is a most enjoyable read.

Sandía

Burrito de ternera

Ensalada de manzana verde

Jordi and Friend

Vino Turbio

The ladies at the Flea Market

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Susan had a rigorous workout at her Pilates class yesterday morning while I continued the ice and elevation routine.  I got in three mini-trips yesterday with the idea of exercising the knee while not overdoing.  My walk to and from the CIVAC meeting was pain free.  Obviously, that is a good sign.

We had lunch at La Fórcola and opted for the menu of the day.  Susan and I both started with the salad and then moved on to the pasta dish.  We both chose ice cream for our dessert and finished our meal with coffee.  While we were there we made a reservation for next Monday evening when we will meet up with a couple, Helen and Chris Kelly, an American couple who are flirting with the ide of moving to Valencia.  Darío Piera, whom I have known for fifteen years, gave them my e-mail address and told them to get in touch.

I headed out to the CIVAC meeting a little before 8:00.  Aldo Colombini and his wife, Rachel, were lecturing and I wanted to get there a bit early so I could get a good seat.  I have not seen Aldo for a while.  He used to live in Los Angeles and worked the Castle frequently.  He has since moved to Ocala, Florida and both he and Rachel have been touring the world in what has been billed as their farewell tour.  They are quick to point out that they are not getting out of magic.  They will continue to make new effects and DVD’s from their Florida studios and they will make appearances at magic conventions.  However, lecture tours for them will be a thing of the past.

Aldo and I chatted on many occasions and had lunch together a number of times.  The last time I joined him for lunch he was meeting with my good friend, Robin Robertson.  At that point in time Aldo, Robin and Peter Duffie were working on a book together.  Their partnership lasted for the one publication and then there was a parting of the ways that was not very amicable.  Amazingly, when I walked up to say hello Aldo immediately recognized me.  We chatted for a while until it was time for the lecture to begin.  The crowd, which is the largest I have ever seen at a lecture, finally settled down and the lecture began.

Pepe approached me as the lecture began and asked if I would be willing to translate for Rachel since she spoke no Spanish.  He also asked his son, Jaime, to do some of the translation, also.  This was a new experience for me since I have never done translation at a magic event, but it went off well.  I translated Rachel’s first effect and explanation and Jaime translated her closing effect of the first half of the lecture.  I was the translator for the second half and Aldo also used me as a resource when he got stuck for a word here and there.

At the end of their lecture they offered their lecture notes for sale, as well as a number of DVD’s.  Sales were brisk.  When the lecture was over we all sat down at the tables and continued our conversation over sandwiches and beer.  I sat next to Aldo and Rachel and we chatted for another hour or so.  They are currently on a twenty-seven stop tour of Spain and are about halfway through.  Their American tour took them to eighty-two different stops.  They will return home until September when they will visit Germany where they have fifteen lectures scheduled and that will be the final stop on their farewell tour.

At 11:00 PM I left the party and headed back home.  When I walked through the door Susan was reading and watching an episode of CSI Miami.  She headed for bed a little before midnight because she is to meet the girls from her Pilates class at 9:30 tomorrow morning as they make a visit to a nearby Mercado.

Monday, June 11, 2012

The weekend started off on a sour note.  Rachel phoned us to tell us that she had to put down Barak, one of her two dogs.  He seemed very lethargic in the morning so Rachel took him to the vet who determined that he needed surgery and when they opened him up the vet suggested to Rachel that the best course of action was to let him sleep forever.  Let’s hope that this will be the last bit of bad news that will affect Rachel for many years to come.

Soon after Rachel’s phone call we noticed that the temperature in the refrigerator was rising rapidly and when we tried to reset it the refrigerator heaved its last sigh.  The freezer was still working, but that was the extent of the good news.  We called Miguel who has purchased a new fridge for us that will be delivered on Tuesday or Wednesday.  We have turned our fridge into an icebox and will not have to dispose of too many items.

I am still taking it easy with my knee and trying not to do too much.  There has been noticeable improvement and I now have more flexion than I have had in a long time.  For the time being, I have stopped taking Advil, but I am still using ice and elevation as a precaution.

Zahava and Klaus joined us for dinner on Saturday night.  They had recently returned from an extended stay in Canada where Zahava spent some time with her daughter and saw some patients and Klaus did some teaching. The bottom line is they were glad to be back home in Valencia.  Susan prepared a very refreshing salad with a medley of salad vegetables and orange slices.  Our main course was from The Silver Palate Cookbook and it was a pasta topped with a sauce of fresh chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic and Brie.  It was delicious.  Dessert was a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with fresh pitted cherries and accompanied by almond cookies.  At 10:00 they along with Susan made their way to the corner bar to watch the end of the Germany-Portugal soccer match.

Yesterday we had lunch at A Nou.  We started with a bowl of clóchinas and then enjoyed a seafood fideuá.  We had fresh fruit for dessert and then we enjoyed a leisurely coffee.  Javi poured us a chupito and we lingered a bit before we headed back home.

In the evening we decided to take in a film at the Yelmo Cines.  The film is entitled Y si todos vivimos juntos (And if We All Lived Together) and it is a French film that stars Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin among others.  It deals with the problem of growing old and the quality of one’s later years.  The trailer that we saw made it look like a comedy, but it is far from that.  It is an enjoyable watch, but it is far from being a great film.  Although we took a cab to get to the theater we walked home.  We watched TV until midnight and then we went to bed.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Rosa came to clean a little before 1:00 and we left shortly thereafter.  We decided that we would have lunch at La Comisaría so that Susan could run her blog post by Eddie for his approval.  Also, she needed to double-check some of the names and dates in her article.  On our way we stopped off at Miguel’s to get the phone number for a friend of his who rents both short-term and long-term apartments on Calle Botánico, which is just around the corner from us.  We will take a look tomorrow or Saturday.

It was close to ninety degrees as we continued on our way and we did our best to stay in the shade.  When we reached the restaurant, Eddie was outside having lunch with a friend.  He finally got permission to have outside tables and all five of them had their own umbrella to keep the sun at bay.  It was cooler outside so we sat at one of the new tables.  Before we ordered, we chatted a bit with Eddie and Susan showed him her proposed blog article and he made several corrections.  He also, showed us the new advertising flyers that he was putting together in hopes of stimulating business from the locals as well as the tourists.  The graphics are stunning and very attractive.  Here’s hoping they do their job.

Ana waited on us and that meant that we would have both excellent food and excellent service.  We started off with a plate of grilled vegetables that included tomatoes, onions, green peppers, sweet potato and zucchini.  They were topped with a tomato foam and they were warm and crunchy and not at all rubbery as this dish sometimes can be when the vegetables are overcooked.  Next came our langoustines that are first rolled in rice crackers and then cooked to give them an extra textural dimension.  They were served with a plum sauce.  Lastly we enjoyed a plate of sashimi that was served with sliced bamboo, Chinese sausage and a dab of wasabi.  Heavenly is probably the best descriptive adjective to use.  While we were finishing up the sashimi Ana delivered a gazpacho shooter and it was truly amazing helped by the fact that it was made with organic tomatoes.  Dessert was a pudding made with mango and passion fruit.  We split that because we were rather full. After our coffee and a chupito we made our way back home where Susan uploaded her profile on Eddie to her blog http://www.vistasdevida.com/ Be sure to check it out.

Last night the veteranos met at Paco de Andrés house with the goal of visiting with his family and picking up the material that some of the members had lent to Paco.  We were there for an hour and a half and afterwards we headed back to the Cuchara Mágica for sandwiches and conversation.  We shared a few magic effects and afterwards I chatted with Pepe about the effects that I would teach for Magic Agora.  The decision has been made to include a number of magicians teaching what are called self-working effects and that is an excellent idea.  Pepe asked if I had any ideas for what to call this section of Magic Agora and I suggested “Automagic Card Effects”.  We shall see if it flies.  Around midnight Gurrea dropped me off at the house and after puttering around for thirty minutes or so I went to bed.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Susan took a look at another “piso” yesterday and with one rather large exception it had just about everything we were looking for.  The exception was the fact that the master bedroom was on a second level and there were eighteen winding steps that led up to it.  Although it would be manageable at the moment, in terms of the future it would be a risky proposition having to climb up and down those stairs several times a day.

We looked at another apartment this morning.  It overlooks the Botanical Gardens and has a large patio.  That was the good news.  It has been unoccupied for two years and needs some major renovation and has no air conditioning.  The owner is asking 1,000 Euros a month and the renters will be responsible for all repairs.  We would also have to supply all appliances.  Truth be told, in renovated condition, the apartment would probably go for 850 a month.  The search will continue.

Yesterday we had lunch at Carosel.  Rather than order the menu of the day we opted to start with a huge dish of clóchinas, which were plump and juicy and cooked to perfection.  Next came a salad with a mixture of lettuces, mushrooms, artichokes and Serrano ham.  Lastly there was a plate of shrimp from Denia, a small beach town in Alicante.  They are reputed to be among the best in the world and we will bear witness.  They were small in size, but incredibly sweet.  We passed on dessert and had coffee instead.

We spent the evening at home and we watched the recent PBS documentary called “Here’s Johnny!” – a very thorough look at the private and public life of the King of Late Night.  The documentary talked about the importance of magic in his life from a very young age and that resonated with me because my good friend, Dean Dill, was Johnny’s magic teacher and it was a Johnny’s insistence that Dean made an appearance on the show a month before Carson retired.  After the documentary we watched an episode of The Mentalist and by then it was midnight and time for bed.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

There is never a dull moment in Spain.  It is fascinating reading the newspapers because El País is the more liberal of the Spanish newspapers and El Mundo tends to be the more conservative.  That means that sometimes they lead with the same stories and sometimes they report or fail to report significant happenings in the political sphere. Take the case of Carlos Dívar, the President of the General Council of Judicial Power and Supreme Tribunal.  It seems that he has been traveling to Marbella and Puerto Banus and staying at the most elegant hotels and dining at the most exclusive restaurants and staying for four or five days while attending to the people’s business.  It seems that is many instances either there was no business to attend to or that business lasted for all of an hour.  Most of the cost of these forays to Andalusia was at public expense.  Interestingly enough whenever he did travel he did so in the company of his bodyguards of which he has twenty-one.  It appears that there are three different shifts comprised of seven men each.

Dívar has appeared before the press to declare that he has done nothing untoward and that all his travel was related to the position he holds.  He would not and did not entertain any questions at his appearance in front of the media.  The socialists want to call him before a congressional committee to explain his actions, but the Partido Popular has blocked that request.  The blocking effort is a familiar PP tactic and they have used it to prevent regional officials from appearing before a governing body, in spite of the fact that they have been accused of malfeasance, accepting bribes and using public funds for private purposes.  The PP has also not permitted the banker most responsible for the present bank crisis here to appear before a committee to answer questions.  Of course, the constant refrain from the PP, is that all these problems are the direct result of the socialists having been in power for the previous eight years.  This coming from the current Prime Minister who criticized every action of the previous PM.

On a more mundane level, Monday was a rather ordinary day.  Susan had her morning Pilates class while I read, wrote and worked on my magic.  We went to El Cuento for lunch where we both started with a salad and Susan had a brochette for her main course and I had an arroz mariner.  We had fresh fruit for dessert and, of course, we finished our meal with a cup of coffee.  Later that evening I made my way to the CIVAC meeting for a meeting devoted to self-working effects.

I had suggested the topic and I was pleased to see that ten people had something to present.  The choices were very interesting and very instructive.  It was fun to see the variety of ways in which we present effects. After the meeting we ended up at The London Café for something to eat.  That proved to be a mistake.  They still don’t seem to understand that when there is a large party seated at a table they need to figure out a way for all the orders to be delivered at the same time.  It seemed like we were eating on Noah’s Ark because the sandwiches came out two by two.  I was the last to be served and that was a good twenty minutes after Pepe and Jaime had received the first two sandwiches.

The conversation around the table was rather animated as we talked about the essence and essential of clowning and then entered into the inevitable discussion of whether a magician is actor playing the role of a magician.  This is a statement that was first pronounced by the French magician, Robert Houdin in the 1800’s.  As far as I am concerned the reality is that a good magician makes use of all the same resources that an actor does paying attention to lighting, sound, entrances and exits, diction and delivery.  I should hasten to say that a good magician does that.

Yesterday we had lunch at Rojas Clemente because Susan was hankering for gazpacho and when she passed by the restaurant on the way back from having her nails done, she noticed that it was on the menu.  We both had the gazpacho and I ordered the filet and Susan the meatballs.  We each had half of each dish.  I had coffee for dessert and Susan had a café granizado topped with leche merengada.

I had to run a few errands, but I got back in time for a 7:00 PM meet-up with a real estate agent who was going to show us an apartment.  We ended up seeing three different one and each was more disappointing than the other.  They all were dark and most probably had had nothing done in the last ten years to spruce them up. We are looking at another apartment this evening and yet another on Thursday.  Our house in Alhambra has been listed and the first Open House took place last Sunday.  Twelve families toured through the house and there is a second Open House scheduled for this coming Sunday.  By the time we got back home it was a little after 8:00 and we stayed in for the rest of the evening.

Monday, June 4, 2012

The weekend turned out to be quite busy and that´s not necessarily a bad thing.  We took things easy during the day on Saturday.  We lazed around in the morning and Susan prepared a lovely lunch for us.  She grilled up some thin slices of veal, cooked up some mushrooms in red wine, prepared some green beans in a lemon butter sauce and, if that were not enough, made a salad.  Lunch was delicious.

At 8:00 we headed out to the bus stop to catch the bus that would drop us off close to the Palau de Música.  We arrived in plenty of time for the 9:00 o’clock concert so we stopped off at the bar and had some liquid refreshment.  We then made our way to the auditorium and took our seats that were smack dab in the middle of row 13 and had cost us the grand sum of 20 Euros.  At 9:10 the Presuntos Implicados took the stage and would command it for the next two hours and fifteen minutes without a break.

Los Presuntos Implicados is a Spanish pop group that made its debut some thirty years ago.  There have been several changes in personnel in the intervening years and the lead singer, Solé Giménez, left the group some five years ago to launch her career as a solo.  Her replacement is a young woman named Lydia Rodríguez.  The group was in town to launch their new album here in Valencia.  The album is entitled Banda Sonora and it features songs that were featured in a number of films.  The group was also paying a return to the visit to the site where they recorded their most successful album, La Noche.  It was recorded live and in addition to featuring the group there was a guest appearance by Ana Torroja who had just left Mecano, Spain’s most successful pop group.  To be historically accurate she did not leave the group, but rather the group disbanded.

The audience was made up primarily of Spaniards in their late 40’s or early 50’s who, I assume, were long time fans of the group.  With the exception of a few rocking numbers they kept their seats for the concert and it was a welcome change from the Juanes concert we had seen at the Nokia Theater in LA a few years ago.  We had paid $175 for each of our seats and the audience stayed on their feet for the entire concert.  The group played all the songs from their new album, as well as a healthy selection of their past successes.  The only sour note of the evening (pun intended) was the sour note that tends to plague all pop concerts these days.  The volume was pumped up and when you do that you get distortion and the blend ends up mushy rather than crisp. Here is a link to one of the songs sung Saturday night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZBtfrpPBYI&feature=related

After the concert we headed for Salatën for a night snack, but when we walked in we were told that the kitchen was closed.  We made our way over to La Fórcola and Susan and I shared a dish of pulpo con patatas and a linguine allo scoglio, a pasta served with a variety of shellfish.  Even though it was a single portion the two of us could not finish it.  It was close to 1:00 when we left the restaurant and headed home.

We had a rather light breakfast yesterday because Susan wanted to have brunch at The Ginger Loft.  We got there a little after 2:00 as we made our way through the intermittent raindrops that accompanied us on our journey.  Santi started Susan off with a Wasabi Martini made with vodka, lime and wasabi paste.  She pronounced it delicious and refreshing.  I had my usual beer.  We started brunch with a serving of ceviche, which had the right degree of hot to it.  Susan then had her Eggs Benedict diving her order between one on a bed of spinach and the other on a bed of smoked salmon.  I had the Chinese noodle salad made with a variety of vegetables with the addition of chicken and shrimp served in a fish sauce dressing to which Mike had added some chilies to amp up the heat a bit.  It was perfect.  After brunch we made our way home and rested up a bit.

At 6:15 we were on the road again heading to the Cines Babel to see a French film entitled El arte de amar.  It is a series of vignettes that are interconnected that deal with love’s problems and complications.  It was a good movie, but not a great one.  On our way back we decided to stop off at Salatën and have a little snack.  Not only was the kitchen closed, so was the whole restaurant.  We headed back home and snacked on leftovers.  We spent the remainder of the evening catching up on past episodes of Glee.  We went to bed a little after midnight.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Susan went out to lunch with Roz on Thursday and I foraged here at home.  I have been rather occupied with magic.  I have been writing up a few effects to share with friends and I have been experimenting with some new ideas.  In the evening I made my way to Jerito’s house and while we waited for the other to arrive, he filled me in on how and when our group was formed.  He also shared with me the fact that the organization has a pin and I will be getting one on Monday.  We did magic until 9:45 and then we went in search of dinner.

We ended up at Los Malagueños again and it was as disappointing as my first visit.  Most of the bar food, if not all of it, is pre-prepared and then warmed up when ordered.  It either spends a few moments in the microwave or it is dumped into the fryer to warm up.  The good news is that all of us were disappointed in the quality of the meal and I imagine that it will be removed from our list of places to eat.

Yesterday we had lunch at La Fórcola again.  We both started with a Mediterranean salad made with a variety of lettuces, cheese, black olives and several other ingredients.  Susan had the pasta Gorgonzola as her main dish and I chose the pizza caprichosa.  We opted for ice cream to finish our meal.  La Fórcola’s ice cream is homemade and we chose their mascarpone and strawberry flavors.  After our coffee we headed back home to read and rest up for our evening excursion.

Brian and Ofelia came by at 8:30 and we headed out to La Rambleta to see a group called Plecs, a troupe that is based in Barcelona.  This time we would be in the large auditorium instead of the café-teatro where we saw Karim a month or so ago.  Once we settled into our seats I could not help but notice that the space between the rows was rather insufficient for anyone over six feet tall.  My knees were an inch away from the back of the seat in front of me.  My other complaint is that the lighting on the stairs that lead up to and down from the auditorium are poorly lit and, of course, I missed the last step on the way down and jammed my left foot and knee.  However, I managed to survive the “oops” moment quite well.

Plecs is a group of four young men and the show is billed as an exhibition of paper, music and acrobatics.  All the sets and most of the props are made of paper or cardboard and for the ninety minutes that the performance lasts we get to see them do some astounding acrobatics and hear them play their instruments.  There are moments when both skills are combined.  The show is filled with comic moments and the show itself is very enjoyable.  Here is a link to their promo video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th8H2-FrJc0 . I thought the show could use some sort of a running narrative to unify the various pieces that were presented, but, still and all, it was an enjoyable experience.

After the performance we headed back to Brian and Ofelia’s neighborhood in search of a place to have a late night bite.  It was Friday night and it was a little after 10:30 and all the terraces were filled with diners.  We ended up at the terrace of a small bar and it was not one of our better dining experiences.  The bottle of wine we ordered was too warm and that should have been a tip off.  We ordered a variety of tapas and my bet is they were all frozen and were of the same quality one would find at the supermarket.  The only positive thing that I could say was that the edge was taken off our appetite.  Brian drove us home and when we walked through our front door it was 1:00 AM.  We read for a while to let our meal digest and we turned off the lights at 1:30.