INSTALLMENT 19 - VALENCIA
Aurelia
Shirley and Michael Webb-Speight
Fri 10 Nov 2006 21:48
Looking back on the last month the time has really flown by. Sending time on land has been a novelty, time with friends a luxury and so many things we seem to have done, seen and experienced have been fantastic.
The Fleury's live outside Valencia township in a lovely house with a pool bubbling away at the back door. It has the added interest of the power going out at least once a day, and the basement flooding during heavy rain.
Mike went to the Alinghi base most days to work on the boat and have everything checked for our impending voyage across the Atlantic in December. Things that Mike had serviced or checked (for anyone interested in boats!) include the sails, the life raft, the VHF, electrical systems, engine etc. He has also visited most chandleries in the area, and picked the brains of any Alinghi team member who called to say hi. The team have been wonderful to him...such a welcoming friendly bunch of people who made us feel very special guests.
Meantime back at the house I had given the modern appliances a really hard work out, especially the lovely washing machine! We visited Analise doing horseback riding, John was joined by Oliver for soccer practices, and we became happy diners at the local Indian restaurant that the Fleury's frequent.
The kids and I visited the Old town a few times and have had the opportunity to catch up with Susan and Hartwell Jordan and their three delightful children. Some may remember they were in NZ during 2001 for the America's Cup, and Susan and I paid a visit to National Womans for the birth of Sullivan, their eldest, when Hart was stuck in Perth! So I enjoyed catching up with my surrogate 5 year old daughter! She is as beautiful and bouncy as ever; gorgeous curly blond locks, big blue eyes and a wonderful smile. Sullivan is going to the local Spanish school and her Spanish is excellent, in fact she prefers Spanish to English apparently. Her two brothers are olive skinned, dark eyed and just delicious.
When we arrived in Valencia it was still quite warm and we needed the window open at night. In the space of a month the weather has cooled, and we all reached for the quilts at night and the umbrellas during the day!
We have managed to have haircuts, thanks to Lynne. One of the America's Cup partners is a hair cutter, originally from Temuka! So now Oliver's cool surfer dude cut allows us to see his beautiful eyes, Chris has had a good tidy up, Mike has returned from the shipwrecked look, and Jamie is sporting a very trendy bob haircut and looks much too grown up!
While in Valencia John and Oliver had their birthdays. Oliver wanted sushi (not something that is really around in Turkey, Greece, or Italy) and Lynne tracked some down in a Chinese restaurant for him which he was very excited about. One of his presents was a DVD, Crocodile Dundee. Oliver hadn't heard of it before but now Crocodile Dundilly (as he calls it) is a favourite! John's birthday is the day after Halloween and it is quite a fun time to party. We went trick and treating around a nice part of Valencia (predictably near the American school) and where quite a number of Am Cup sailors live. We now have enough lollies to get us through to the Caribbean!
Towards the end of our visit Lynne and Warwick entrusted their children to us while they had a weekend in London. Something to do with a rugby match involving hakas apparently! We had a fabulous time with 5 kids. The first day we went to the old town and visited the Central Market. It was a huge collection of food places and we went to Susan's favourite, the Greek man and collected a large amount of kalamata olives and feta cheese. Oliver didn't really enjoy the market with all those wonderful Mediterranean displaces of chickens with their feet and head on, suckling pigs etc. His career as a vegetarian is looking excellent. The market was very similar to one we visited in Toulouse with Matthias' father.
On the second day we visited the Science museum which is housed in the most amazing modern building. The whole thing was really fantastic. We had thought it would take 2 -3 hours, but we could have all happily spent the entire day there. Lynne and Warwick came home late Monday night so we got the kids off to school, and ours did a big catch up on their school work too.
Oliver had the opportunity to go to school with Analise and he really enjoyed that. He was particularly impressed with earning a merit point for eating the school lunch, an activity that the Fleury children probably think needs more than a merit point to get through!
Fleury's had hired a Voyager for our visit so that Lynne and I could get around with the kids. Mike often borrowed her car to go to the boat. It was just fantastic to have the freedom to get around. We hired the car for another week in order to get to France.
BARCELONA
During the visit we all went up to Barcelona together for a long weekend. Warwick had the Friday off and they organized an apartment in the Muslim part of the old town (it turned out) which was really interesting. We were within reasonably easy walking distance to most things. We enjoyed a return visit to Gaudi's unfinished cathedral, although it has been progressed enormously in the last 20 years. Some of us didn't enjoy the trip to the top of one of the towers and the little bridge that spans 2 towers!
We had some lovely walks around the streets where Gaudi's buildings are and also a trip to the Gaudi park which we had missed the first time in Barcelona. Fleury's took us to their favourite restaurant there, a fabulous Thai place, and on the second night we had Gyros from a local Turkish place!
On the Saturday we did an excursion to Figueras which is an hour or two north of Barcelona to visit the Dali museum. A stunning number of tourists there, and I read in the tourist book that it is now the second most visited museum in Spain after the Prado in Madrid. We had been so impressed with this museum when we visited 20 years ago (when it wasn't well known or overly frequented) and at the time Dali was still alive and living at the top of the museum. It was fun to take the kids there, such a neat place for them to spend some time.
The highlight of being in Valencia for us though was an opportunity to spend time with good friends, and for the kids to play with close mates that they have been missing a lot. They weren't happy to say good bye at all, particularly Oliver who was a bit of a basket case the morning we left.
FRANCE
25 Oct - 30 Oct
During our time in Valencia we had 6 days in France. We set out to go to Toulouse, about 800km away to visit Matthias, our AFS student from France, and to meet his family. There is a 6 lane highway the whole way so it wasn't a huge stretch like it is at home. The disadvantage with the highways is that you don't really get a feel for the country but with 7 hours of driving, detours weren't really an option! We had a late start as we realized that we had left our passports on the boat (an hour from the Fleury's house in traffic). Mike questioned the necessity of having passports although I think this was more wishful thinking than a complete lapse of judgement! So it was 11am when we departed Valencia. Thank goodness for computers that play DVDs! The only debate of course is which one to play and following a long debate Charlotte's Web was selected on one occasion. Mike and I were so relieved to hear the end of it we started singing the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah, until the youngest pointed out "that's not the song from Charlottes Web, it's Chin up, chin up." Well it is pretty much the same feeling we thought!
As we went over the border Shirley collected her extra 10 kilos around the waist line and we proceeded. Bloody French cooking, it really is much too yummy!
We found the road leading to Matthias' family's farm and texted them and they met us outside an old church in a small village and lead us to the house. The farm is set in a peaceful, relaxing environment and the mood is reflected in their home and environment. No wonder Matthias is such a relaxed easy going guy! The farm house is a couple of hundred years old and just lovely. Xavier, Matthias' father is a crop farmer and at the time the fields had just been ploughed waiting for their winter crops. Nadine, Matthias' mother, is a librarian in Toulouse. Matthias' eldest brother (a student) visited, but lives in town with his girlfriend. Boris, his younger brother is still at home and training to be a cabinet maker. Boris is quite an artist too.
While in NZ Matthias was very quiet about the fact that he really preferred French cooking and after 2 days at his home in France I can quite understand why! Nadine cooked duck with wild rice, strawberry sauce and salad for dinner. Delicious. The wine was made by Xavier's cousin, and was called "Aurelia"! They gave us some to take home with us, what a special treat! That night there was a huge storm coming over from the Atlantic. The storm was wreaking havoc with the solo around the world boats that were all busily pulling back into Spain as fast as they could.
The next day we went to Toulouse, and ate in a restaurant over the local market. Xavier came to town, and Nadine met us during her lunch break, and Matthias had finished morning university (where all the lecturers had gone on strike anyway!). We had a lovely walk around the old town with Matthias, visited the large square, the narrow alleyways, and the river with a mini hydro scheme running over it.
Nadine made a lovely dinner with salad, boiled potatoes and a hot cheese that was in a round wooden box. We you scooped out the cheese and poured it over the potatoes. The kids were dropping in their seats with exhaustion eating around 10pm, but perked up enormously when Boris presented Oliver with a chocolate cake that he had cooked for Oliver's birthday!
We sadly departed the next morning, but know that it won't be too long before we see them in NZ, and perhaps even the Caribbean before then.
As we were driving straight past Carcassonne we pulled in for a walk around the old walled city. Such a stunning old medieval town complete with everything, just like something out of a fairy tale. The boys found two knights swords (plastic) and dueled on the bridge over the moat when we left. We found a little café for coffee and a seat in the square to just enjoy being back after 20 years. Both Mike and I remembered trying to find bread in Carcassonne the morning we had visited it the first time by walking in the opposite direction to the stream of French people with baguettes under their arm!
We carried on and around mid afternoon told the kids it was time for a walk. We walked along a river and around a corner to find a rather enormous aqueduct in front of them. Le Pont Du Gard. They really were quite surprised! According to our guide book this is the tallest structure that the Romans produced and is just over 2000 years old. Not a lot of tourists there at this time of the year, so quite enjoyable to have a look around.
FEILLENS, FRANCE
It was a total of 650km from Toulouse to Macon and we arrived around 8.30pm. We found Feillen, Martine's town which is on the opposite side of the river from Macon. As you enter Feillen you go past her brothers Renault garage, and on this occasion they were having a party to celebrate 50 years in business. Martine's father had started the business. We had a glass of wine there and then went home with Martine. Not long after that Didier and Chris arrived (also having stopped for the party on entry into Feillen!). It was 10 years since we had all visited Martine's house, and another 10 years before that since Mike and I had originally visited Martine and Patrick just after they had had Lila. While we are doing maths it is 27 years since Didier, Martine and I were on AFS in America. And we still feel just the same!
One of the many highlights was an 8km walk that Martine had planned. It was an annual event, where we signed on for 4 euros each and then trekked around the French countryside. We wandered through beautiful farm lands with vineyards in autumn mode, talked to the odd horse leaning over the gate, and admired the old stone farm houses along the way. Parts of the walk were along country lanes, over undulating hills covered in trees and ploughed fields. Along the walk there was a market with snails, cheese, and wine for sale. Of course since we were in France, there was also a major stop for lunch with wine, bread roll and fruit all thrown in for our 4 euros. We finished the walk with a stop off at a vineyard for some cheese and wine samples, and went back to the car laden down with bottles of local wine! The French certainly know how to do a country walk with style!
We visited another vineyard in a small town Pueie Fuisee (sp??), on the return journey where there was a kiwi chap married to a local wine maker's daughter. After some translation issues with Martine we realized that "Benjamin Ni Dame" was in fact Benjamin Needham from Pauanui! We had an enjoyable time touring the winemaking facilities and sampling yet again more wine. Somewhat lighter in the pocket, we returned back to Martine's home!
We went out for dinner one night at a local French restaurant where I refreshed my memory on snails, and Martine managed to talk Jamie into trying one! Think she stunned herself by enjoying it. We had a fabulous evening with everyone around a large table in the middle of the restaurant. There was an old fashioned music machine that periodically burst into life at one end of the building, which kept the kids entertained.
Martine and Patrick had rearranged their family and sleeping arrangements to fit all of us and Didier and Chris in. We found ourselves in M&P's bed and I never did quite find out where they slept but I know we got the cushy deal! The kids were on futon beds in the same room.
Didier and Chris were keen to visit another of Martine's brother's who had renovated a 400 year old house in Feillen, and we stopped in there to admire their hard work. They had photos of the house before they had started and it had basically been derelict and almost at a stage that it could have been condemned! They had made an amazing job of modernizing it without destroying the character of the house. While there other members of Martine's extended family arrived and we found the back yard full of family and friends. Before long we were all drinking champagne, and nibbling on some local cheese, while the kids played happily together in separate languages. As mentioned before, the French certainly have a few things in life sorted out exceptionally well!
The weekend went in a flash and all too soon we were all saying a sad goodbye again! This seems to come hand in hand with AFS. However it is always more than worth it even with the goodbyes.
We had 1300 km to get to Valencia, and so made an early start around 8.30am. We had a brief detour at Avignon to show the kids Le Pont D'Avignon. Nice town, confusing ring roads to get in and out, large walled old centre, riverboats, trees, and falling down old bridge! Tick.
We arrived home at 10pm, the kids having watched several movies on the computer. They all looked up obediently when instructed to look at landmarks, interesting towns, lovely views etc, and made noises that they hoped their parents would find satisfying, ie, WOW! They would even take turns to say WOW so we didn't think it was too contrived. We have come to the conclusion that different things turn kids on and that has to be OK! At least when they come around a corner and unexpectedly see something like Pont Du Gard they ARE suitably amazed! And they do appreciate opportunities to enjoy local hospitality and getting to know our friends. What more could we hope for?