continuing...

yesterday Mary Beth and i got to meet Lila, Josh and Molly's brand-new baby (as well as seeing Maria, who i hadn't seen in a long time...) today at work i finished reading Three Major Plays by Lope de Vega...i was reading it in spain too...i even made a point to briefly read some of it in Plaza Lope de Vega (Place Lope de Vega in Valencian, i think...) plaza is a bit of a grand term for it though...any place where more than two streets converge in the old city (which is often, given the erratic schematic thereabouts) and a slightly wider area is made gets called a "plaza"...in this particular one there was nothing other than pavement, not even benches or a fountain or anything...it was pretty tiny...but i did it, however briefly, due to lack of anywhere to really sit (a restaurant had tables outside as most do, but i wasn't eating there...i read a few lines standing up against one of the brick cavern walls...well, maybe it wasn't brick...whatever material the building was made from...) oh and as for the book, okay...do i have more tidbits from our vaccation? oh yeah, walking on the pier in the first section of our stay, we happened to pass by a dude fishing right as he caught an octopus...we ate a lot, had paella four different times...the third time we had paella negra...it's cuttlefish paella and gets the name from being stained black with the cuttlefish ink (in spanish, cuttlefish is "sepia") it was delicious...the first paella was at La Pepica, the famous place...Hemmingway and Dali have eaten there...it was also the least good...the atmosphere was neat, with harried waiters rushing about, but food-wise it was a little mediocre and everywhere else was better...especially the place right next door adjacent to it...i forget the name...it starts with an m...both were in the next block from our hotel...the place with the black paella was the third we ate at, about a kilometer up the beach...it was called, oh had an unusual name, El Rioll (something like that...with two l's at the end...) we went to a few museums...not counting at the City of Arts and Sciences which i already mentioned...in the old city...first was IVAM...most of it was really good...though it had this one installation that was made by a bunch of people, including the dudes from Japanther...it was all wacky and took up a whole room and look like exploded cover art from that current zany fad of bands nowadays with their randomness and lots of colors and lots going on...i guess Japanther's part of that...never listened to 'em...their flyers were pasted all over the place...it probably served as better advertisement for them than as any art...there were lights hanging from the ceiling with hairdryers blowing attached...i kicked over two phones that were randomly placed in the middle of the floor (they were all over) there was lots of blown up hardcore porn on the walls and floor...annoying recordings speeding up and slowing down...it wasn't that good and may have detracted from my otherwise favorable impression of the museum...there was also Museo de Bellas Artes, as the name might sugges the fine arts museum...it was really well designed...mostly old religious stuff...but interesting...it got up to some impressionism that was quite nice towards the top...then MuVIM...a public modern art museum, much of which seemed not open...so there wasn't much to actually see...but there was one exhibit on design and advertisement that was neat...i guess i'll save more for later once again...