Life: Idiotropic

Valencia fashion is ruled by the calendar instead of the weather. 
Today as I stepped off the train and walked behind a mass of fellow passengers out of Valencia-Nord, I noticed that while I was wearing a darling lightweight short-sleaved summer dress, the rest of the passengers (all of them) were wearing long pants, jeans, or skirts with tights, sweaters, jackets, long sleeved tops, and... SCARVES around their necks!!!  It was not cold then.  By noon, it was sticky warm and humid.


The calendar also rules the beach usage. 
Seriously, from end of June through the end of August, you can barely step foot on the beach and it's not just tourists.  From September 1st onward, the beaches are nearly completely empty except for the random tourist who will still brave the Mediterranean in the wintertime while the locals stay bundled in thick coats and hats.

Smart graffiti:  "Dream your life.  Live your dream."

Valencia has the best graffiti.
It's smart, funny, quirky, and cool.  It is done by a handful of artists who have their own special style.  This one, for example always paints in this color scheme and uses these odd little black characters.  I see his artwork all over the city and have seen him repaint the same wall with another one of his "works."  I don't always understand them... soccer ball heads?  No clue.  But it's cool.





Back to Valencia Fashion... there is no such thing as too many ruffles.

This actually applies to most of Spain where ruffles are reminiscent of the traditional Andalucian flamenco dresses.  Ruffles work themselves into local fashion in a lot of ways both good and not quite so good.



It's in the details.
Valencian women dress well.  That is an understatement of grandiose proportion.  While men also dress very well, women here seem incapable of dressing casual.  I've seen stilletos climbing old cobblestone streets up the hills of mountain ruins and full length fur coats at crowded carnivals.  This is the norm.  Jewelry is big and abundant.  Hair is perfect.  Makeup cannot be forgotten.  Every accessory is there from shoes and stockings to hair clips and jewelry to scarves and handbags.  While I find success in remembering to put on earrings, the complete look is what Spanish women strive for and find without fail.  So, it should be no surprise that an upscale women's clothing shop would also have a bit of bling this time in the form of an uber-fancy door pull not on one side, but on both.

 
Simplicity is for snack time.
Almuerzo in the rest of Spain might be lunch, but here, in Valencia, it is that late morning snack that you grab at your local bar.  It's simple, yet delicious. Before living here I wouldn't even thought of putting calamari on a sandwich, but here, it's something I think about often and this little bar on the corner makes the best calamari sandwich in town.  Bread, calamari, and a thin layer of garlic tinged aioli:  it just doesn't get much better than that.

Coffee is for after dessert.
While a foreigner may get away with ordering a cafe con leche with a sandwich, a local will not.  The waiter will look at you like you've gone completely mad and then offer you a beer or a glass of wine.  That is, after all, what you drink with savory food even at 10am.  Coffee here is offered and consumed not with dessert, but after.  These are the moments I am grateful for my "accent," so that they will just smile at me and bring me the caffeine buzz that I desperately need.  The perfect cup of coffee?  Not quite.  But today, Cafe Mundo did come awfully close.