Pants pants pants pants ....

We're obsessed with our kid. The stats prove it. We've been taking a few photos and it's fair to say that Edie appears in upwards of 95% of them. Edie; Edie Pants; the Pants; Pantalons ... I don't know where "Pants" comes from. No, actually I do. Viv's sister Beth is responsible for it, but what I meant to say is I don't know how Beth came up with it. I was only happy that when I mentioned the photo that hangs on the wall of the Carringbush Hotel in Abbotsford of Darren "Pants" Millane in full flight (or "between drinks" as I might have put it) I was happy that Beth seemed unaware of the moniker of the late Collingwood "star" and was far from recommending him as any kind of role model.

But the "Pants" has stuck. She even recognises it as her name now. Call out "Edie" and you get nothing. And did I say we are crazy about her. I don't know why. She has no sense whatsoever.

El Parc del Turia

We're in Bilbao, having crossed Spain via Cuenca and Arando de Duero. Pants has gone and got herself sick for the first time in her life and Viv and I have got a bit of it too. I suppose we can expect this to become the norm soon enough, so I'm told, but for now it makes us a little anxious. Edie is still cheerful enough, and she sleeps well in the car - which is a blessing in itself - so we've made the trip north quickly.

Time has changed its quality again, from the day to day of life in Valencia where one day blurred with the next, to travel time, where each day stands on its own, and thinking back to last week is like remembering the distant past. But before the news of new places, one last tribute to Valencia - our home of the last 5 weeks - and in particular to the Parc del Turia.

To the north of the old city, the dry riverbed of the Turia winds its way from the Bioparc in the west, to the City of Arts and Sciences in the east, and not so far from the port. The river was diverted after the floods of 1957 to run south of the city, and the old riverbed was gradually transformed into an elongated park about nine kilometres long and up to half a kilometre wide. The Parc del Turia is, to my mind, one of the great urban parks of the world. Dotted with playing fields, fountains and with running tracks snaking its length, it is the Aorta of Valencia, and one of the great tributes to the pre-eminence of public life in Spain.
We spent some time on the Turia every day. Our place was only a couple of minutes walk to its centre. I even took up running four to five kilometres along it every day, marking my progress against the 100 metre signs that measure its length. We took a soccer ball down and Edie sat in the pram, watching the ball move between us like she was watching a tennis match. And then there were the visits to the sights of the Bioparc and Arts and Science buildings, and of course the regular walks to the Carrefour supermarket at the Western end. I cannot rave enough about the park. Along with the wide white beaches and the city itself, I have to now acknowledge Valencia as my favourite Spanish city and my first destination for a home away from Australia. Beth and John are very fortunate to be here for three years, and we were also fortunate for their hospitality in showing us around and introducing us to the best of this wonderful city.

Fallas

We arrived in Valencia twice. First during the early stages of the Fallas festival (when we experienced a mascletà and the street lights radiating from the multitudes of falla monuments being erected around the city) and finally on the day following the festival’s grand pyrotechnic finale when the various Fallas committees burnt their creations to the ground. We visited the beautiful city of Granada in between and there decided - after much deliberation - to delay our return to Valencia till after the festivities had ended. What was this? Getting old? That new parent: "is this the right thing to do, thing"? Fear of crowds? We had our reasons, most of them were to do with Edie and the prospect of sleepless and sober nights for all while tag-team baby-sitting: with all the crowded confusion, with all the firecrackers booming (and I mean booming, these are more about sound than sight). We instead took an extra day driving up the coast before descending on Viv’s sister Beth and husband John, post the event.The thing you have to understand is that Fallas is all about firecrackers.

These firecrackers are available to anyone (they even sold some to John) and are set off all around, all the time, by young and old. As soon as kids can walk in this place they’re throwing firecrackers to the ground, terrifying the thousands of unsuspecting tourists (most of the locals who aren't involved leave town). And some of these mini-bombs are designed to go off a few minutes after they’re discarded, so often you can find yourself standing right on top of one, with no one else around, and BOOM!
These Valencians have no regard for public safety at all. While we quibble about bicycle helmet laws, they hand out fireworks to toddlers and virtually set fire to their city every year. They're completely insane. I love them and wish I didn't have to leave!
It makes you wonder. We wondered at times whether we'd packed enough underpants; that if Valencia were an American city, how long it would take to evacuate for fear of terror, or terror of fear (can't remember which way around it is); or how if you ever wanted to shoot someone and get away with it, this would be the ideal time and place.
But a whole two weeks of round the clock explosions (so says Beth) can be pretty nerve-wracking, and especially for a little person.

So in our defence (for being such big new parent pikers) you have to experience the noise of Fallas (which we had, during the build-up) to really appreciate why we fled town; why so many of Valencia’s residents flee town during the festival, while those that don't flee wind up wearing hearing aids; why the city’s dogs are so much more skittish than regular dogs and why (as with Spain’s many other festivals including the bullrunning and the great Bunyol tomato fight) there’s just no doing things by halves.

We did have more brave intentions. We even got some special headphones for Edie but in the end we couldn't have people point and laugh at her the whole time, I mean look at her! Ridiculous.
Did we make the right call? Were we frightened parents or just scared tourists frightened off by crowds and explosions? Do I have to answer these questions now that I have a baby as an excuse to either do a thing or not do a thing?!

We think we made the right call in the end, but maybe I'm only saying that for future reference, being that for Edie this blog may exist as a reference for her about her first overseas trip that I can bring out later on when she says we never make any sacrifices for her ...

So take a look Pants! Check it out! Look what you made us miss out on you evil little manipulating beast!

 

If you want to know more about Fallas go to www.fallasfromvalencia.com

The relative price of wine

I’m sitting at the dinner table (sometimes referred to as the breakfast table depending on the time of day) and am enjoying a glass of Gran Feudo Reserva 2005 (6 euros a bottle here, or $8.50AU [even cheaper if purchased before the earthquakes in Japan]) of which later, lesser vintages are available from a well known Melbourne restaurant (at $40+ mind you) which will remain nameless only because I know there are other things at work here such as the protection of the Australian wine industry; the relative labour costs (though I suspect most Australian grape pickers are illegals too – in fact middleclass European backpackers working without a visa for travel money) and the fact that they (Movida … oops) have such delicious food; and then that cultural curb that has wine lumped in with the alco-pops “prevent youth violence on our streets tax” (which is destroying Melbourne’s music scene, by the way) or else as a luxury item that “foodies” (like me) are willing to spend a fortune on, for that “culinary experience”, whereas here good food and wine seem readily available and viewed upon as nothing more than simply a part of life … and I am thinking what a complex bouquet it has …

Trains, planes and automobiles …

Six flights; three days of driving and eight consecutive hours on a train. Then there’s a couple of suburban bus trips and a few of those mini-trams up and down the hillsides of Lisbon; a weird half tram, half ski-lift type thing up the bank of the Douro; taxis to and from airports, and of course the many miles just walking about. That’s the long and the short of it. Fair to say we’re now very much looking forward to stopping in Valencia for five and a half weeks and maybe (no definitely) investing in a pusher.

What a terrible blogger I am turning into. Here I am summarising; generalising, clearly to make up for my general tardiness. My mum has already been on my case about the duration between entries, and now that pesky Reservoir Dad has linked in, applying more pressure to the whole travelling Dad angle … just when I thought I was becoming too obsessed with the little one … too much the kind of reformed human being people expect new parents to be … or am I really channelling my own expectations now that I’m a new parent. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I guess that’s the kind of thing I should write down on these virtual pages. I don’t know. If I think about it too much I won’t get anywhere.
To hell with it; back to summarising, for the time being at least until I catch up … maybe I’ll make it really easy for myself and write a list.
Yes, a list. Here goes:

Five good things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They (babies) are reasonably light and portable and of course, self-cleaning*

2.       Priority boarding (cue jumping) on all planes except Ryan Air (where you get precisely what you pay for, and there are no favours for the small fry)

3.       Extra legroom that comes with the bulkhead (basinet) seats

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily and sometimes even entertain the child when she’s had enough of the folks. A mother and daughter from Granada virtually adopted her on the train ride here. We’d been trying to get her to settle lying down on a seat when really she only needed a couple of strangers cooing over her and she was perfectly happy.

5.       Banding together and sharing the load. This is the unexpected upside of a few things on the negatives list, but as much as I frown upon high fives anywhere off the volleyball court (where Top Gun really made them mandatory), the end of a long and well executed journey can often be experienced as a deep and profound sense of shared accomplishment worthy of a bit of hand slapping … 

* I know babies aren't really self-cleaning. I just put that in to make our baby sound really advanced

Bad things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They quickly become heavy and unwieldy, especially when carrying them up a long incline.

2.       Confinement: generally the trepidation of travelling with child is due to being in a confined space. It’s not the tantrums that you fear, but just not being able to escape to a private place.

3.       Difficulty in doing regular baby maintenance on the move: It seems like nappy changes are more frequent and explosive (necessitating full clothing changes, I mean it's not like babies can clean themselves) and they're particularly difficult in plane toilets, even with the fold down change tables.

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily

5.       Embarrassment when you find yourselves doing silly things you would never have done before, like wearing child carriers around like they’re a fashion item, or like high fiving in baggage claim halls in front of your fellow passengers.

So on the whole maybe the good and the bad balance out. In terms of changes to travel arrangements it’s all about planning, timing and flexibility: same three things that seem to be most important at home now the Pants wears the pants at our place. But it’s a lot better travelling because … well it’s just a lot better travelling. You’re all in it together. You’ve got time and space to enjoy it all. We get to a place, put the baby on the bed; she smiles up at us and starts sucking her toes. We talk about what we’re going to do for dinner, where we talk about what we’re going to do tomorrow. We pass the baby across the table and pass the time.

"Change of scene?"

... With these words an increasingly restless Pants is passed across the dinner table.  The phase is repeated a number of times throughout the meal, and this to and fro buys us valuable time, effectively resetting the clock on the potential meltdown which may or may not occur (and for the most part doesn’t). Good parent, bad parent is how it goes, and “The parent is always greener on the other side” if you understand my meaning. 

In this way we are enjoying eating out, albeit sometimes with a greater sense of urgency and by incorporating some other interesting behavioural changes such as: cutting up each other’s food into bite size pieces; eating one handed; eating in shifts; eating without napkins so that (naturally) Pants can eat our napkins, or at least transform them into little papier-mâché clumps which you could say resembled people, or maybe animals. We’re going to collect them (her sculptures) and sell them to people who find this kind of thing amazing and cute, just to bolster the travel budget. We won’t tell them that they are mostly saliva.

Hola los pantalones

So we made it to Madrid. Actually through Madrid, as we are about to leave for Portugal tomorrow. Edie surpassed all expectations on the 14 hour flight from Bangkok. We were prepared to give her a free pass to let loose on even the biggest of tantrums once on the plane as - just by her mere presence in our entourage - many a rope barrier unhooked for us at the airport saving us from soul destroying queues at check in. But she pulled out another twig performance and woke towards the end of the flight refreshed and ready to make friends with anyone who would throw her a smile.
Madrid has been wonderful. We were met here by Beth and John (Edie's Aunt and Uncle living in Valencia - for readers not familiar with the extended family layout) and thankfully they were happy (John in particular) to fit into a baby travel routine (at least when recovering from jetlag) of, to be honest, a whole lot of sitting around an apartment, watching what seemed to be Spanish TVs equivalent of "Deal or No Deal" trying to work out just what the host intends to do with the rubber chicken he is wielding. I suppose in Australia the host of that show is enough of a rubber chicken that they decided to dispense with the prop.
Oh and we also go out  for tapa/ cerveza/ cafe con leche during the day (see photo proof below).

Edie has begun demonstrating a talent for falling asleep on bar and restaurant bench seats which cannot be relied upon but when it happens is a serious bonus. The, ah, not so gentle hum of spanish life seems to be perfect for at first a frenzy of stimulating sounds/ sights giving way to exhaustion and finally snooze-town.

Anyway, as you can see from this post, we have bought the camera and are not afraid to use it. So hopefully for those of you who (like me) prefer to read books with pretty pictures, this blog may now offer you something more to come back for. Hasta Luego amigos!