There are three main themes this week: I took a nice walk in the city, something I don’t do often enough; I cycled to Tibi to visit Lili and buy some goat cheese from her; and at the office we hosted a large, in-person meeting for the first time since early March 2020.
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I start with a walk in the city. The purpose was to see some large-scale photos that are currently displayed on the walls of some buildings in the centre. I started at a neighbourhood near the Basilica Santa María, a quiet area with narrow and hilly streets:
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The basilica, one of Alicante’s two cathedrals. This one is the starting point for the traditional Santa Faz pilgrimage in the spring, which now has been cancelled two years in a row:
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On the wall of a municipal building on Plaza Santísima Faz, there was an exhibition of photos by and of disabled people:
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I sauntered around the neighbourhood a bit, stopping to photograph various little details as I like to do:
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A curious piece of graffiti, “I love”, in Russian:
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Fresh paint and urban fauna:
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Calle Mayor, looking almost as before the pandemic, except for the occasional mask (they are still mandatory in all indoor spaces but not outside):
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Plaza Portal de Elche, a lovely wooded square next to a busy street, with a small bar in the centre:
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Another square with impressive trees, lined by bars and restaurants. Is official name is Plaza Gabriel Miró but everyone calls it Plaza de Correos because Alicante’s main post office is there:
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A busker has tried to get some money from the restaurant guests, but has now given up and is walking away to look for a more profitable spot:
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Detail, Calle Italia:
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Finally, I arrived at Malatesta, my favourite watering hole in Alicante. It is my favourite watering hole because it has Tripel Karmeliet on tap, a truly glorious achievement of European culinary culture:
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A random snap from my neighbourhood in a suburb of Alicante. A cat, seemingly waiting for the bus:
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We marked the departure of Justyna to another EU job in Brussels last week. Now it was actually her last day in our office, and we did a brief photo session on our terrace:
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On Tuesday evening I was back in the city, having dinner with a couple of people at my (currently) favourite restaurant in the centre. A lot of other people had similar ideas:
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Afterwards, on my way to the tram home, I saw this amusing scene; it is as if the cat is checking out the woman on the bench down the street:
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On Wednesday, we hosted a meeting of our stakeholders from around Europe, the first large-scale meeting in 1 1/2 years. It was a hybrid meeting, with about half of the participants on site and the rest online. This is how all our meetings will be going forward–there will always be an option to participate online. Still, it was great to be with those people again. You can do many things on Zoom but spontaneous side conversations like this one are much easier when people are physically there. Here, Carolina is chatting with Enrico from the Federation of European Publishers, one of our stakeholder organisations:
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I made some portraits of my colleagues, here Blanca:
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Despina:
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Marius is a German IP lawyer based in Mauritius. The African influence is evident:
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The meeting was a 2-day affair, and as usual, we offered the participants a dinner at a local restaurant. This is one aspect of the event that the online participants could not enjoy:
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Difficult light, but still nice:
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The offspring of my mother’s cactus continued to give us pleasure:
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I finished the week with a bike ride to Tibi, a village in the mountains about 40 km from my house. At the outset, the mountains were hazy:
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On one of the many climbs on the way to Tibi, I photographed the road markings left over from the Vuelta a España race a few weeks earlier; it says “Tibi with sport” in the local dialect Valenciano:
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The final climb to Tibi. Pretty but hard:
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Finally, I reached my goal, Lili’s goat cheese shop:
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There was a customer in the shop, which made me happy since I had been worried about the impact of the Covid pandemic on Lili’s business:
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Lili wrapping my purchase.She told me that she was doing OK; her restaurant sales had gone down but there was lots of traffic in her shop:
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The thing about Tibi is that there are hard climbs to get into the village, and also a 2.5 km climb at 8-9% to get out of the village. This pass also featured in this year’s Vuelta. For a 60-year old guy with no help from the pharmaceutical industry, this is quite a challenge:
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In the afternoon, I got my reward for the hard cycling. We went for lunch at Hostal Maruja:
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Nice to see such scenes from one’s table in early October:
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And on our table, chipirones and patatas bravas:
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Followed by calamares and boquerones fritos:
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And my favourite, pulpo a la plancha:
