Valencia
Just watched Murray win in Valencia.
It was our last holiday. It rained and rained until the Monday, when we had to take the flight back to Stansted.
I wrote this soon after she died about Valencia.
We had not intended to go on holiday again in 2007, especially as we had already booked a fly-drive holiday in Thailand for February 2008. But my wife suffered the worst professional nightmare a barrister can! A case settled unexpectedly and she had a hole in her diary. So she felt that a weekend away before winter set in would not be a bad idea.
So why did we go to Valencia?
I searched easyJet and Ryanair for what was available at a sensible price from Stansted in three or four days time.
Valencia was either first or second for value and convenience and there appeared to be a good five star hotel called Las Arenas on the beach. The value for that was good too.
So we booked and flew out at lunchtime on Friday. The hotel was stunning, friendly, extremely comfortable and very much worth the hundred and fifty pounds a night we were paying.
But you couldn’t say that for the weather! It rained cats, dogs and hippopotami until the Monday morning, which was the first day my wife was able to have one of her beloved swims.
Valencia is an architectural gem, with buildings ranging from the classical and religious to the ultra modern.
Valencia is unusual in that after catastrophic floods in the 1950s, they diverted the River Turia around the city and created a linear park that runs from the city centre to the coast.
It would be interesting to know what fuss would be created if a city these days decided to divert a river as big as the Turia.
We ate very well in Valencia.
The most amazing and perhaps one of the best restaurants we ever visited was Ca Sento, which according to the guides is one of the best in Spain, let along Valencia. I can’t remember what I ate, but it was a spectacular gluten-free meal without any compromise to taste.
But we also ate in a tiny tapas bar behind the cathedral, where we sheltered from the rain. Superb red wine was a couple of euro a glass, food was tasty and wholesome, and the atmosphere was best described as Spanish and local. They knew about gluten too!
And then there was the incident in another fine seafood restaurant in the city centre. My wife was wearing the red tee-shirt dress with the stars, she’d bought in Nice. When we had finished, she needed to pay a visit and climbed a spiral staircase at the side of the dining room to the toilets upstairs. As she came down, I walked over to meet her and I heard a fat English lady at my side say something like, “Who does she think she is in a dress like that? She must be nearly fifty!”
Not a bad compliment for someone of fifty-nine.
I shall always remember Valencia. But I may never go back!
Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t.
Hamleys Forget to Renew Domain Name
It can happen to anybody, but it happened to Hamleys.
Perhaps they should use a domain name company, like Low Cost Names, who are very persistent, when you don’t register a name. I’ve dropped a few in my time and know how they behave. It may be annoying, but you do what you need to.
St. James’s Park
Newcastle United play at St. James’s Park in Newcastle. Or they did? But now they play at sportsdirect.com@St. James’s Park, as the stadium has been rebranded.
My first thought when I heard this was a very practical one. In the days of fast sports news on a Saturday afternoon, when the call is something like, “Over to Alan at Old Trafford!”, would they really say “Over to Alan at sportsdirect.com@St. James’s Park”? No! They’d either use St. James’s Park or just Newcastle.
So Mike Ashley won’t be getting many bangs for his bug.
But he has spawned a lot of humour in the press. Here’s the piece from The Times.
It puzzles me how a man, who obviously has talent to produce a multi-billion pound business, can make such a simple mistake.
The Anonymous Widower 