Paella Thanksgiving

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For the second consecutive Thanksgiving, I have found myself outside the boudaries of the United State of America. Given that I have done this before it did not seem as strange as it did the first time to be celebrating a holiday in a place where most people didn't even realize it was a holiday. So, like the Goulash I had in Budapest last Thanksgiving, I celebrated this Thanksgiving with another distinctive dish, this time paella in Valencia.

We arrived in Valencia by train from Madrid and the first thing I thought was that Valencia is more like the Spain I was expecting than was Madrid where I had just left. The sign by the train station said it was 22 degrees when we arrived. I think this translates to about 70 or so degrees farenheit, and the sun was shining. In my mind this is what Spain is supposed to be.

We were picked up at the train station by an Italian guy who owned an apartment we were renting. He drove us through the old part of the city to our accomodation near the relatively new, and ultra modern Calatrava museums. It was interesting to see these museums and it was not at all surprising that they looked almost identical to the Milwaukee Art Museum, also designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The living conditions in our apartment, styled a bed and breakfast, were a little different than we had been expecting. We walked in the door and were met by an elderly couple walking around, cleaning, and cooking. It is now that our host informed us that these people were in fact his parents and that they would be staying in the apartment with us. This seemed like quite a Griswald moment to me, but it really didn't matter much as we didn't plan on spending much time in our apartment anyway.

So for the next few days we made our way around Valencia, we bought clementines in the market, walked around the Calatrava museums, visited the beach, saw the America's Cup harbor and docks, and ate authentic paella. More than anything we really just enjoyed the weather in Valencia and were happy to see the sun, and for me happy to be away from the snow and ice of Milwaukee.

By virtue of the fact that I had fully gotten over my jetlag by now, and the fact that we had been in Spain for a few days, the really late dinners were really starting to grow on me. On one night in particular here, we found our way to a small out of the way restaurant that was only open from 9:00 pm until 11:00 pm daily. So, we opened the door and walked into the restaurant at about 8:50 hoping to get a table straight away. It was then that the family running the restaurant asked that we leave, informing us that they did not open until 9:00. So, we killed time for about 15 minutes or so, and found our way back to the same restaurant. When we walked in we found that the recently empty space was now full and bustling with activity.

I don't understand how a place like this can be a successful business, only being open for two hours a day, but they seemed to be doing alright the day we were there. So we enjoyed ourselves for an hour and a half and stumbled out, tired and content, and made our way straight to bed. Now I understand why Spaniards take siestas.

So, after a few days in Valencia we made our way back to the train station and left for Barcelona, where my friend Brandon would be flying in from London on Ryanair to meet us and spend a few days seeing the sights.

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