DAY 136

Thanksgiving Thursday 24 November 2011

A real early start for once (after threatening it so many times and never delivering), up at 6:10 and outta Montpellier, France by 6:30, hitting the road to try to make the rest of the trip to Valencia, Spain in time to find Uncle Enrique and get the keys and into Pilar's mother's house in time to fix SOMEthing for Thanksgiving dinner, and computer-call or Skype the family in Arizona, to lessen the pain of our rare absence, maybe even to have Charles offer the grace as had been the tradition for many years. From halfway around the world - that would be cool.

Explaining how the meat is sliced off the leg

An ambitious but seemingly doable goal, but as our friend Don Snowden, ex-pat music journalist we knew in LA 14 years ago before he took up residence on this Mediterranean coast of Spain, later repeated to us as the mantra of explanation (of everything) there: Oh well.... it is, after all, Spain.

Don had been giving us very useful European/Spanish/Valencian advice by email for months and we were in touch with him by phone/text on the way in, but.... no Uncle Enrique. We hit town, parked the van on a major thoroughfare near Pilar's mother's place, and kept trying. Don came over to meet us, on his way to a Thanksgiving dinner with friends from Austin; he tried without luck to speak to a neighbor of Pilar's mother, and also in Uncle Enrique's building, so then he took us over to his friends' place to try their Internet connection to reach him, and send more messages (unanswered) to Pilar in LA, and kept phoning. Nada.

So we trooped off to check on our van and find someplace to eat, and boy did we. We took care of some pressing business, to get duplicate keys made for our new transport, and the key maker gave us a lead on a good restaurant, Torre de Utiel, that turned out to be very good, and not that expensive. It was a Thanksgiving dinner to remember, because the menu and setting were so untraditional. We asked the waiter for recommendations, as we usually do, but it seemed there that gave them a license to take over and make all the choices. So we not only missed out on pondering the extensive, exotic menu, but we weren't sure we'd be getting things we liked. We finally surrendered to the experience - after all, they had walls lined with newspaper and magazines articles about them - and ordered a round of Carlsbergs.

What a meal! First came something common there but new to our eyes: jamon, paper-thin slices of ham carved with a very long knife straight from the boar's roasted leg, held upside down by clamps on a large wooden platter, hoof and all. Served with cheese slices, it was melt in your mouth, almost sweet. Then came a large plate of small snails - escargot, mind you, in an insanely good juice so thick you'd almost call it gravy. We used toothpicks to pluck out the delicacies, and our bread to soak up the gravy. Next was something we were all questioning, despite our waiter's vigorous assertion we would love it: fried salted codfish. Uh huh. But it was neither salty nor even fried-tasting, just tender and surprisingly flavorful. We were sated but there was no stopping the last course, tournedos of beef tenderloin on a layer of scalloped potatoes, done to perfection. When finally we finished off the last piece, they brought us a treat on the house, glasses of sparkling fruit juice.

But the real treat came just as we were getting ready to leave, and that was that Uncle Enrique finally answered his phone, and said he'd be right over (he lived on the next block). Hooray! We didn't have to sleep in the van on Thanksgiving! Turns out he had just gotten back from 10 days in the Canary Islands, and didn't know exactly when we were coming. Oh well.... it is, after all, Spain.

Uncle Enrique and Charles