Little birches a la russe
The next day my throat hurt even more, I was feeling under the weather. In the morning I stayed home, but in the evening I took a walk around the center just to keep from going completely sour.
First I sat in a nice cafe (I check on TripAdvisor, it usually doesn't let me down), drank a latte as per usual, and checked what else I could do tomorrow. Doing this from a phone isn't ideal, but at least it's always with you.
Got hungry. Popped into the nearest restaurant which had reviews saying it was nice and quiet. Atmosphère turned out to be French. The kitchen was closed, unfortunately. I didn't feel like continuing the search, so I agreed to the offer to eat some "A la russe" salad (meaning Russian?). The salad was something like Olivier, but in the shape of a little layered tower, like a fur coat salad. I'm no salad expert, but I had the smarts to google the lady who made it for me. She turned out to be the restaurateur herself (or restaurateuse?), meaning the owner and manager rolled into one). So it was an indie joint, and the star herself got creative for me. Nice, although for that price I could've stuffed my face with a delicious and filling falafel in a tortilla, instead of a little tower of mayo salad. I have no complaints about the salad, it was quite tasty, I'm just not a fan of mayo, even artisanal mayo 😹
After the meal, I dropped by the botanical garden, which is incredibly beautiful. Its area is quite large, and the variety of plants is mind-blowing. From huge patriarch trees to nondescript medicinal herbs.
The botanical garden has cacti and succulents of all kinds — they even have their own pavilion. It was so cool in there that I couldn't resist and took a pic of every second cactus.
Cacti of the Valencia botanical garden
There are even little birches in the garden! There is a well-known saying, how can you live in a foreign land when there are no birches there? Well, there are birches in Spain. Usually a couple or three, but there are places where there are whole groves. Not many, but they exist. So at least that problem is solved here. All that's left is to find where to house a million people who will arrive due to the current crisis over the next few years, and everything will be hunky-dory. Right now there are already 130k Ukrainians alone, with 30k of them in Valencia.
Valencia botanical garden
The botanical garden set me back 3 euros, and I was there for about an hour, but it's worth it. I'd go again if I remembered how cool it is there — thankfully it's located nearby.
The simple and familiar smell
I left the botanical garden around 🕡, when it was getting dark. The garden, by the way, is very old — founded in 1567 to study the properties of medicinal plants at the University of Valencia. True, it's like the ⛵️ of Theseus — it moved several times. As a result, it's unclear whether it can be considered the same garden from 1567 or not. Be that as it may, it settled down in 1802, which allowed it to accumulate a whopping 4.5k species of 🌱 on its grounds.
The garden allowed me that day to make peace with the fact that I'm on vacation, but I'm sick and not riding a 🚲. In principle, I know that if you want to make the Spaghetti Monster laugh, tell him your plans. A bit more laughter in life won't hurt anyone. Especially not a monster. So I ended up blabbing too much to him.
Fortunately, in Valencia, just walking around the city is pretty nice too. Besides the architecture, it's filled with detailed graffiti. I'm not even sure they can be called that — they look more like paintings on walls. I read that this is called a mural. It comes from the Spanish word "muro" — "wall". These very paintings on the walls, of course, bring a lot of joy, and make the city much more alive. They aren't just drawn randomly — often they're commissioned by businesses or the government. It's super cool when a hair salon has all sorts of ladies with hairdos, a 🎆 store has traditional cartoon bombs and 🚀, and an auto repair shop has 🚗 🏎 🏍.
Also, in the botanical garden, I tried to shoot some 🐟 from underwater. The 📱 allows it, but the screen protector, as it turned out, does not — ugly streaks appeared. Good thing at least that while I'm in Spain, I can order from Amazon to an automated locker at the bus station. Close and convenient. Interestingly, unlike our parcel lockers, this one is without a screen, and you can only open it from a smartphone via Bluetooth, from the Amazon app.
By the way, the screen protector (or rather, tempered glass) for the screen is from the RIIMUHIR brand. The name is a bit weird, yeah. I actually read recently that the Chinese generate brands en masse, they have programs to create somewhat decent-sounding names. For example, my portable monitor is an AZROPA, and the vacuum cleaner is an ORFELD. It's not completely clear why the Chinese do this (there are hundreds of such brands). My hypothesis is that they're diversifying risks. If their account gets banned, they'll quickly start selling the exact same thing under a different brand. There's a second perk too. You don't have to sweat so much about warranties and loans. Worst case scenario — just bankrupt the company.
While walking home, near the wall of the botanical garden I spotted an elderly bearded gentleman in a hippie getup. The dude was listening to some trippy, yet familiar music from a mini-speaker, accompanied by a simple and familiar smell. He was nodding his head to the beat, and showing his friend that right now, right now the absolute 🔥 is coming! Having racked the remnants of my 🧠, I finally figured it out. It was the cult progressive rock band King Crimson , which I love and respect. I didn't recall the track right off the bat, but after re-listening, I think it was either "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" or "Elephant Talk".
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