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Published: August 4th 2022
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Tonight we’ll be flying to Rome, where we’ll be staying overnight in the airport, so that we can catch an early morning flight tomorrow to Trieste, en route to Slovenia. We’ve both decided that we really don’t like the chaotic places that airports seem to have become post COVID, so we’re looking forward to this like a hole in the head. … and as has always been the case during our travels, if you have to experience one airport, you then generally need to experience another one too, after the plane lands; I don’t suppose we should complain about this too much, it’s probably better than the alternative which would presumably involve the plane not landing, or “landing” somewhere that wasn’t an airport.
We’re both feeling very sad to be leaving Valencia and Spain in general. Issy admitted over dinner last night that Spain was her favourite country after Australia, and Valencia was now her second favourite Spanish city after San Sebastián.
Issy’s decided on a morning of shopping. She says she only bought half as many clothes on this trip as on previous ones, but now she’s getting bored with them. She adds that I don’t seem to
suffer from clothing boredom personally, but that she is perhaps getting just slightly sick of me seemingly wearing the same thing every day for weeks at a time. She has a quick look in my suitcase just to check that I did indeed bring more than one set of clothes with me. Very harsh; I’m sure I at least wore a different pair of shorts when we were in Toronto a couple of weeks ago.
We take a quick look inside the massive Central Market, which Issy hasn’t been to before. There can’t be too much you can’t buy here and it’s a hive of frenetic activity. Angry fish man who wouldn’t let me take a picture of some of his prize catch when I came here before is here again. So too is the only “no picture” sign in the whole massive complex, on a tile on the wall next to his stall, and only his stall. There’s clearly something fishy going on here (I really hope no one’s reading this, particularly any of our offspring).
I’m not a particularly big fan of shopping, I think I’d almost prefer to go to an airport, so I leave
Issy browsing through dress racks while I head off for a wander. I manage to take some happy snaps of some attractive places we haven’t been to before - the fountain on the Plaça del Col-Legi del Patriarca, and the facade of the Ceramics Museum - ceramics has apparently been a big industry in Valencia over the centuries.
As we walk along the air bridge onto the plane it’s a bit hard not to notice a man outside trying to spin the blades of the jet engine around with his hands. Do they normally do that? I suppose it’s nice to know they aren’t stuck, but I would have thought it might be easier to find that out just by turning them on. I think, as usual, I might be missing something here. I happen to mention all this to Issy, who's a slightly more nervous flier than me. I somehow don’t think I’ve improved her day.
It seems to be even hotter in Rome when we land at midnight than it was when we left what we thought was a cauldron in Valencia. Our hotel is indeed in what feels like the bowels of the airport. Our
tiny cell-like room is on the ground floor and has an outstanding view of what looks like the intake to the airport’s airconditioning plant. It’s called Hellosky (the hotel that is, not the intake). I think this might be someone’s attempt at irony given that the sky’s a bit hard to see past the aircon plant, two large overhead ramps, an industrial grade staircase, a steel fence, and someone’s motorbike. We’re not entirely sure this is the sort of place we’d want to come to for our holidays; I wonder if anyone’s ever stayed here for more than one night.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I see you snuck a picture of the fish...
Bravo!