Gary Kirkpatrick

Artist and travel blogger.

¡Mediterrano! Flamenco fusion dance troupe

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I wasn’t sure what to expect from our visit to Teatre (Valencian for Teatro) Talia en the Carmen district of Valencia.   I showed up ready for some mighty fine Flamenco dancing.   That wasn’t quite what I got.  What I got was better:  a dance and musical Flamenco fusion.   The troupe has about 20, more women than men by a wide margin, plus 5 or 6 musicians:  guitars, violin, accordion, a kind of drum.   At first the dance was very modern.  Long poses, seemingly random motions and postures, very jazzy music with a Flamenco flair.  As the evening progressed towards its conclusion, the dance became more traditional.  But the innovations happened up front, from the modern with flamenco flair to the flamenco with modern flair.  The latter means among other things a troupe performing precision dance maneuvers to increasingly flamencoish  tonalities and rhythms sans the quivering male voice that dominate Flamenco singing.    When I say precision, I mean it with emphasis.  I could not detect an eyelash that didn’t blink when it was supposed to.  As the Flamenco asserted itself, not even castanets were a hair’s breadth out of sync.

Finally the Spanish clapping made an appearance, but it was mostly after the final number and during the repeated curtain calls.  Only the Spanish can do it like this.  And can anyone in the world figure out the rhythms?

Their website:

http://danzamediterraneo.com/

Dance video:

http://youtu.be/-mQZSD2Jmuw

Garybob says check it out!

Us in Brittany (a short video)

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We spent four days in Brittany walking around Dinan, Lohan, Saint Malo and Dinard in July, 2011. Most of the images are from Dinan.  The weather was sunny but chilly, better than rainy and cold.  Dinan is a friendly feeling place, not entirely a tourist town, and we lodged here.  The Tudor architecture is a major attraction, although far from exclusive to the town or region.  Crepes (sweet) and galettes (also thin pancakes but whole wheat and savory) are a mainstay, as are moules frites (mussels with fries).  Our favorite restaurant was Licorne (means Unicorn), recommended by Rick Steves and you’ll see photos of our meal there.  They drink much more cider than wine.  We stayed in the center of the old town, surprisingly comfortable for an old place despite the steep, windy stairs, and quite enough except on the night before Bastille day.  Fireworks kept us awake a bit!

The countryside in the area is lushly green.  The river Rance runs through it and along we walked to Lohan.  You can see the abbey in the video slide show, made with “Imagination”.

Us in Dinan, Brittany, Celtic country in France

To Sancerre and Dijon

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June 2011

We had to vacate our temporary apartment in the 6th, which we renovated several years ago and which is owned by two of our friends.  They had some paying guests coming and then their daughters were to stay for a weekend.  We took a week to visit friends in the south.  Sally lives near Sancerre. Peter and Caroline have a 13 meter canal cruising boat.  We are to meet them in Dijon for a week on the canals.

on the canal

Sally was married to Paul when we met her.  After we sold our boat in France in 2002 they bought a house in a very small town, just five houses.  After a while he left her for Rosalind, the  French woman next door.  This woman in turn left her husband and moved in with Paul in a house that is about ten minutes away. Somehow Rosalind’s now ex-husband (I assume they were married and are now divorced) blames Sally for what happened but won’t talk to Sally so Sally has no clue as to why.  When all this happened Sally’s daughter from a previous marriage told her that Paul had molested her.  It took Sally quite a while to get over all that, I imagine, (I am not sure that I am!) but but she has dealt successfully with all that stress.  Paul received a suspended sentence as a result of a plea bargain.  In general these are difficult cases to prove, so the fact that there is a conviction is significant.

While with Sally we went out with her to La Recreation Gourmande, the restaurant she used to work in, to celebrate Peg’s birthday.   The restaurant is quite good, and received a listing in the Guide Routard, our favorite restaurant guide which lists high quality places that offer good value for money.   Peg’s dinner included a rabbit aspic, which she quite enjoyed, although for me it is Thumper in Jello.  The cheese course was fabulous as was the dessert.  We both had a pork chop for a main dish, which was very good but not outstanding (and made for too much food, so we took our pork chops home)

After lunch we met the chef and his wife.  He works nearly 100 hours a week, she splits time between the restaurant and the children. She lamented the temporary loss of a worker due to depression, I think it was.  She said under French law she had to wait a month to replace her, which made life difficult for them in the meantime.

The next night we had dinner with Bruno and Babette, who were Sally’s neighbors until 18 months ago.  I once called her Brunette, but she didn’t think it was very funny.  They bought an old farmhouse to renovate but still can not get the permits!  So they bought a mobile home and use a bucket since they are not connected to a sewer.  He grilled large amounts of meat, way too much, and we drank rose wine.

Bruno wants to meet their electrical needs using a 12 volt system.  Having lived on a boat, I can tell you this can be difficult at times unless you get a gas-powered refrigerator and of course you can forget electric heat or even ordinary fans.  It is possible of course to stay off the grid, although given how hot the summers can be I’d like to have enough grid current to run a few fans at least.  In the meantime they are running an extension chord from the house next door to meet their modest needs, assuming a 48″ flat screen tv is modest.  It will take quite a few batteries to run that thing!.

Sally’s new neighbors – her house is semi-detached meaning one neighbor’s house is glued to hers- are quite picky about where she walks,  apparently.  She owns the land right out their back door, strangely enough, which is the only way she could conveniently reach the nearby pasture.  Apparently that was important to a previous owner.  The new neighbor wants to buy that patch, but Sally declined the offer.

R, who was married to G (both Brits, like Sally, as well as Peter and Caroline), is still single despite being rather attractive and still fairly young.  Another couple we met are selling the house they had just completed in 2002 when we met them.   A French women, in her 70’s, had a hip replacement and as she was standing for the first time after the surgery, her leg fractured.    She seems to be getting better although she misses her dog, who died recently.   These are all people Sally introduced us to on previous visits.

Afterward Sally took us to the train station.  We got off in Dijon.  Peter and Caroline were there to meet us.  We spent the next week on the Canal de Bourgoune with them.   This is their 19th boat.  They have stopped using it during the summer.  It is just too hot in the south of France.  They recently sold their house near Toulouse having bought a flat in the UK near Brighton.   This puts Caroline much nearer her friends and their three daughters and Peter decided that his model airplane hobby is best served in the UK, where they do a much better job of making it a safe activity.  Apparently the French don’t think about planes running into people from time to time, especially the young boys who come with their fathers who run around oblivious to the danger.

It was fun riding the boat through the canals, and very pretty.  However Peg and I both decided independtly we do not need to own another boat to do this.   It is not so much fun that we’d want to do it all the time.  And it is cheaper to rent one- do it with a group, it’s more fun, since you do not have to take care of it.

We are back in Paris staying with Anne and John.  Tomorrow we move back into the apartment in the 6th, and stay until July 11.  On the 11th our friends have paying guests again (the apartment rents just short term).  To make our travels less expensive we got senior passes- yes we are over 60!-  so we get 50% off rail travel.  Next we are going to Normandy, a little town called Dinan near the coast for just a few days.  I’ll eat lots of snails which like to grow there for some reason. And they are easy to catch.  In the meantime we’ll cruise around Paris on our trusty bikes, the ones John found and assembled from parts he found on bicycles people had abandoned on the street.

Paris Connections

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Paris has become familiar.  The first time you come to any city there is so much to absorb and you are rather lost, your nose planted in the skimpy map in the guide book when your eyes are not taking in the sites.  But we’ve been here before and we’re back because it is a beautiful city, with a long history and a refined culture, a great place to be especially when you have time to absorb the vast offerings.

Paris is a city of art as much as it is a town that searches for the egalitarian ideal.  Of the former more in later posts, I am sure.  These days the latter is expressed in the services provided to the hungry- there are meals every day of the week- and lodging, in the tents that line the Seine downtown, a kind of nose- thumbing gesture, so I’ve heard, at the failure of government to provide enough low cost housing, and the velib, the bikes you can use free for 30 minutes with a monthly transit pass.

This time there are more beggars than last, sadly, with an unemployment rate about the same is in the US (around 9%) victims of the job loss that came from those phony investment schemes originating on Wall Street, a scheme to defraud investors disguised by a multiple layers of complexity.   But here they are now, sitting on sidewalks, not just Romas and drunkards but a few otherwise promising young people, men and women alike.  But this is a sadness I can not resolve.  Enough then.  And besides there are fewer here than in my own country.

We shall be living in the 6th for a bit.  We have friends developed from our travels here.  This came about from our time here in 2000.  We rented from Prisca, who had rented to Gaston and Gloria, whom we met through Paul and Vicky, whom in turn we met through a book he wrote in the mid 1980’s and her keeping up with correspondence: she responded to an email from Peg 12 years ago when we were living in Madrid.   From Paul and Vicky we somehow got to Anne and John, whom we got to know well, and then to their friends Chris and Rosemary, whose apartment we will now stay in for a month or two.  From Anne and John I got to know Emoke at the French/English/Spanish conversation exchange at the American Church, where I met Ketty, from whom we will rent for a year beginning in August, her husband having been transferred to Le Havre.   I suppose it all sounds rather complicated, and perhaps it is, but it did not seem so as all this unfolded.

As lovely as Paris is, and as rich is the art, we both think Valencia competes.  The latter has a long parade of “quehaceres,” like free concerts, exhibits, shows and festivals- hardly a day goes by without one.  You can strike up a conversation and become a friend in a moment.  This is a bit harder to accomplish here, but as you can see, not impossible, it’s just that the Spanish are much quicker to smile.  The people you see every day here in the stores are often a bit more dour, as if work were a very unpleasant burden.

The land of jamon

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Hispania is the Latin name for the Iberian peninsula.  It means ‘rabbit.”  There were a lot of rabbits when the Romans arrived.  We should change the name to whatever the Latin is for pig (I looked it up- one site said it’s porcus, so can you imagine saying “The Porcus Peninsual?”).  There is a lot of it here- hams I mean.  Don’t take my word for it.  See for yourself.

Museo del jamon, a chain of ham shops

There are huge displays, bigger than this one, in the larger grocery stores in Spain.  There are similar displays of chorizo, but let’s wait to talk about that.

It’s consumed mostly on bocadillo, which are sandwiches made with a baguette (called ‘barras’).   I prefer it alone or with a little bit of bread and a glass of red.  Wow!

There are other ways of using this ham, though I have never tried any of these dishes:  http://www.lopezortega.com/files/recipes.php

Jamon serrano, jamon iberico, Italian pruscuitto  it’s all made in the same basic manner: salted, rinsed and then aged.  Aside from aging hams in this manner, the Spanish also do a foreleg.  Jamon iberico is more expensive.  The pigs are free range and eat acorns both in the fields and during their last few weeks.

The Italians and the French also produce similar products, but nowhere else is a populace so enthused nor the product so popular.  They range in price from about 14-80 euros per kilo ($12 a poung and up).

Breakfast in Valencia

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Breakfast is not celebrated in Spain.  It’s a time for a quick espresso and a croissant glazed with a thin sugar coat.  Perhaps cafe con leche (ok any time in Spain but only breakfast in Italy), or a cortado (an espresso and an equal amount of coffee).  Coffee or thick thick hot chocolate and churos I’ve seen in Madrid but not here, at least not much.  Plenty of people order toast (you can buy it in packages in the grocery stores which I think they serve cold) and coffee.  In the bars or at home you can spread a little tomato on the bread and drizzle a little olive oil to boot (it’s a tapa, really, but if they have a tomato they’d do it for you no matter when- they’re very accommodating).  Toast and coffee, toast and croissant, about 2 euros (close to $3 at the moment), add maybe another euro and you can have some orange juice too.

Tostada con tomate, and those awful, waxy napkins

I’ve not seen anybody eating fruit for breakfast.  It’s more of a desert thing after big meals.  If they wanted to, there would be plenty to choose from.  The figs just came in (it’s June 2011).  They are large and soft, very good if not perfect.  Of course the oranges, now selling for as little as 1 euro for 3 kilos (6.5 pounds).  At this price some of them might be a bit dry but mostly they are sweet and juicy.  We’ve had very few we would consider bad, although the locals might have much higher standards.

The grocery stores all sell cereal in boxes, so apparently people eat it, I assume for breakfast, but I’ve never actually seen it done.  There is one high fiber cereal around.  No hot cereals, unsurprisingly.

Breakfasts here get you going, but they don’t last long.  You’ll need a tensy.  That’s what the Spanish do!  You might have churros, perhaps an apple tart or any number of sweets, or a bocadillo (a bit of baguette with a slice of jamon serrano or some manchego), smeared with tomato if you wish, or a bit of “ensalada” as they call lettuce and what not even when applied to bocadillos.  The choice are seemingly endless, including the famous tortilla española .  It’s a thick omlette with potatoes is the most traditional, but there are variations and variations upon the variations, such as with shrimp.  You can have a plain omlette too in some places.  It would not be unheard of for lunch or dinner, here, in France or Italy where it’s called a fritatta.

Churros

They may not celebrate breakfast here, but nonetheless there’s a richness to it, and something for everyone.

Ready to eat! Morelian Every Day Cuisine

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Just one minute from our front door is a ‘Cocina Economica’ (literally ‘Economical Kitchen). Similar places are called ‘Cocina Casera’ and ‘Comida Corrida.’ At this one, for 30 pesos (a bit over $2.00) you get soup, main course with rice and beans, and a beverage (a watery but tasty juice). The main course, called ‘el guisado,’ can be chile rellenos, either red or green. I’ve had both and they’ve wonderful!. They are dipped in batter and deep fried. ‘Relleno’ means they are stuffed, in this case with a slice of cheese. They also serve chicken, beef or pork in various formulations, and sometimes leafy greens. All these dishes are out for you to inspect, so even if your Spanish is limited, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you are getting. The beef is served ‘encellobado’ meaning with onions, or in a ‘caldo,’ a broth (beef in this case). Pollo (chicken) and cerdo (pork) are also served in a broth or stew of some sort.

Most ‘guisados’ are served with rice and beans. The rice at our local place has a few chopped vegetables and is cooked in broth. It is better here than in most such places. As for the beans here and most places, I find them too soupy.

The soup is chicken based, entirely free of fat, with some vegetables and pasta if you want it. It’s always good.

There are many Cocinas Economicas in town, and most of them charge 40 pesos or so. I had a fabulous chicken mole at some granny’s hole in the wall for 40, plus 20 for a beer, so it was twice the cost of our local spot. Mole sauces are very common and there are many variations on the theme. Mole only comes with chicken as far as I know.

What else, in no particular order:

Tacos are everywhere and universally wonderful. I’ve only had them two or three times when Peg bought 8 of them at 5 pesos each. This was from a spot just down the street. The beef is shredded ( never ground) with lots of cumino and I don’t know what else in it. I’ve seen them selling real small ones for 2.

In some places they cook the meat on a vertical spit like the Greeks and Turks. They slice it as it cooks and wrap it in two tortillas. Always 2. Peg has has lengua tacos. Tongue. I don’t kiss her lips for a long time afterwards. Tongue tacos should be included in Leviticus where whatever you don’t like can be condemned.

Tacos dorados, golden tacos, are tightly wound with bits of beef or whatever, and deep fried.

I seldom see burritos.

Tortas, everywhere. Tortas are sandwhiches. Always on fresh, locally made bread. I had one called una Torta Espanola. Ham and other meats, various cheeses, sauce. Tortas are always moist and filling. They start around 15, up to 28 pesos.

Milanese Breaded fillet of beef, pork or chicken in the style of Milan. No different from what you’d get just about anywhere but always good and inexpensive! Very thin. Might be served as a torta.

Gazpacho. There are little shops selling it everywhere. I was curious because gazpacho is a soup and why would people walk around eating soup? In Spain it’s a soup, but here it’s finely chopped fruit served with slightly spicy chile powder and grated cheese. Fabuloso!

Breakfast: Eggs al gusto (as you like them) and pancakes, just like the pancakes we know in the US. Most people eat tacos, enchiladas and other everyday items, often at sidewalk stands with a few bar stools attached to the cooking/serving unit. They start as early as 8 a.m.

Savory Crepes: There are savory crepes with ham, cheese, vegetables, and sweet crepes, hold overs from the days the country was run by the French. Maximillian lived here.

Fish and shrimp. Lots of it. Peg had a decent sized shrimp cocktail for lunch today for 25. I had a fish soup with a sizable piece of fish in it for 30. Very mild flavor. The fish looked like it dove in there. No points for presentation.

Hot sauces are served with most everything. They are mostly home made, both green and red. Commercial sauces might have an emulsifier in them so they don’t look the same. Some sauces are hot and some are very hot. If you get soup you will get finely chopped chilies and onions. The chilis are spicy and crunchy

Chicharrones (fried pig skins) are on every street corner. Sometimes they are huge, maybe 3′ x 3.’ Of course you buy bits and they put a red sauce on it.

Fresh potato chips join the list of the ubiquitous. A small bag costs 10. They are good but not much better than what you can get in a bag for less. Served with a red sauce. There are also long thin sticks right next to the potato chips, also served with a red sauce.

Tortilla chips Nary a one.

There are many local specialties but what I’ve mentioned are what you can get anywhere any day of the week.

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