To Valencia, and BEYOND!: Some Enchanted Evening

So in class Thursday we talked about how literature has changed in the digital world, which was interesting enough, but I’m sure no one is surprised to know that I preferred Don Quijote. Dad always makes fun of me for being so analog. But I like analog. It’s calming.

Then I went to English class, except that Dr. Pennock wasn’t there, so there was another teacher. It was… an interesting experience. It wasn’t bad, it was just different. The woman was a non-native speaker, an EXCELLENT non-native speaker, but she was just very… by the book. Quite literally, she did a lot of grammar exercises and stuff out of the book. I did wind up having a really interesting discussion with some Spanish girls about the time in Kindergarten one of my classmate’s fathers (who happened to be a pulmonologist or cardiologist or something) brought a real human heart and lungs into our class to teach us how bad smoking was. They were all pretty horrified that he had done that when we were that young. Strangely, I think at the time I just thought it was cool. But, yeah, I am glad I went, it was a good experience. But I like Dr. Pennock’s class better. Much funnier, and much more conversation.

So then after class I went home and ate lunch and showered and did my hair and put on a skirt and blouse and headed off towards the City of Arts and Sciences. Because I was going to an opera.

So, a while ago, I decided that while I was in Europe I wanted to see Opera. There isn’t a lot in the US, and I had never seen a live, professional opera (I had seen a video of a professional opera, and a live opera at UGA, but never a live, professional opera.) and I wanted to do that. So I decided to go to the big theatre in Madrid and I booked my tickets, and then I remembered that there was an opera in Valencia. They hadn’t seemed to have anything good on, and Wagner was in Madrid, but I checked again, and discovered that Plácido Domingo (for those of you who don’t know, one of the best tenors in the last century) was singing Verdi literally down the street from where I live. So I bought the cheap tickets and decided to make a night of it.

I walked through the park down to the Opera House and waited out in the wind with a lot of people much older than me. Going to opera always makes me feel young. And then they let us in, and I ran around the theater for a bit and explored this very modern Opera House, and I went and I found my nosebleed ticket (on the 5^th floor) that according to the website had “no view” of the stage. Fortunately, that was a gross exaggeration. If I leaned over I could see all but a ¼ of the stage. And really, you don’t go to watch, you go to listen.

So anyway, it was just really cool. The theatre was very modern and funky, and there was blue tile everywhere and the sides of the seats lit up when the lights went down. There were special screens in front of each seat where you could select your own language for the subtitles (since the opera was in Italian. Also, since opera is generally unintelligible no matter what language you speak.). And my seat was cool. I was all by myself on the side of the auditorium in this little mini-box thing.

But the real highlight was the opera. It was Simon Boccanegra by Verdi, and… I honestly don’t even know how to go about describing it. I am aware that people don’t like opera, and I know that a lot of them just haven’t seen it, but I just don’t understand how you could dislike something that beautiful. I mean, I went in with such high expectations, and it blew them all away. Plácido Domingo was, of course, phenomenal, but the other singers were wonderful too, and… it was very emotional. Like, obviously, it’s an opera, high emotion, lots of drama, but then you get the music going and these people with these absolutely unbelievable voices, and every emotion is just so much more intense, and it’s old and powerful and absolutely entrancing. It was a magical experience. I am so lucky to have gotten to go and gotten to hear such an amazing singer, and see such a wonderful work in such a beautiful place.

So afterwards I walked home down the street by the río, and it was beautiful and warm and quiet, but still just alive enough to be safe, and the streets were all lit up. I love walking around Valencia at night, it’s lovely. So then I went home and went to bed.

Then Saturday was a bit more chill. I spent the morning planning and working and getting things done, then I went with Jess and a friend of her who is studying in Paris who came down to visit her to the Science Museum down in the City of Arts and Sciences. And we had a lot of fun. We stopped by Gulliver on the way down, and had a nice stroll through the río, and it was fun. The museum was really cool too. We did a lot of silly things. We drew pictures and did dumb poses and smelled things and Jess and I had a rowing competition (it was a tie, because I did more, but I was also too short to go all the way back) and drew in the sand and touched ice, and it was crazy.

After the museum, we caught a bus back to the town center, and stopped for lunch at a sandwich shop, which was great, because I was very hungry. I did some more planning and such, and then went back to that Indian restaurant and had a lovely dinner by myself. I read and chilled and had the kind of food I wanted. I also had some interesting conversation with the man who I suspect is the proprietor. And those random conversations are sometimes the best.

So I went back to the dorm and I got some more stuff done, and then headed to bed, because we had an excursion on Saturday.

And now some photos: