The last week of 2023 was mainly about our trip to Morocco during the Christmas days. That will be the subject of a separate gallery. But before and after the short trip, I engaged in my usual activities of cycling, walking around the city, and enjoying the time off (our office is closed between Christmas and New Year).
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We came back from Marrakesh late on Boxing Day. This year, instead of exchanging Christmas presents and all that, we decided to give each other time, and spent a wonderful 3 days in Morocco. But the day after we came back, our daughter still found something under the tree:
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It was some sort of super hair dryer, in her words, the Porsche of hair dryers. And of course she has the hair that needs it, while my hair (such as it is) is fine with air drying:
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Later in the morning, I cycled to Verdegás and checked on my feline friends:
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On Friday morning, I walked down to the beach before going to the bakery for the morning baguette. The pre-dawn sky was gorgeous, and there were people on the beach waiting for the sunrise:
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Then I went on my bike ride to Busot, stopping to enjoy the view of the town from the road above:
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A view of the highest point in the village, with the Moorish castle ruin, and the cemetery, also on a hill:
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A closer view of the cemetery:
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On Friday afternoon, I went to the centre of Alicante to visit our local modern art museum and take in some of the pre-NYE spirit. MACA, as the museum is called (it stands for Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante), is a nice exhibition space, very centrally located:
The art at MACA is somewhat disorganised, and there is a lot of empty wall space. But I did look at some engaging pieces, and in the following images I reproduce the captions as written by the gallery.
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Kurt Schwitters, Plastische merzzeichnung, 1931. Schwitters was a German artist whose work was deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis after their takeover in 1933, and he fled to England where he lived until his death in 1948:
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Alberto Sánchez (1895-1962), Mujer con bandera (“Woman with flag”), 1976:
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Rafael Canogar (1935-), El Arresto II, 1972. I find this piece very engaging, probably the best artwork in the MACA collection:
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Juana Francés (1924-1990), Jefe Contable, 1966:
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Victor Vasarely (Hungarian, 1908-1997), Kroa B, 1971:
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Equipo Crónica (partnership of Rafael Solbes, 1940-1981 and Manolo Valdés, 1942-), Vamp, 1972:
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Victoria Civera (1955-), Mal de Hem, 2004:
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Ferrán García Sevilla (1949-), RUC 21, 1997:
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Invited work by Greek sculptor Panayoitis Vassilakis (Takis), (1925-2019). He often used magnets as key elements in his sculptures, here to hold suspended needles in place:
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After my visit to MACA, I walked to the nearby Plaza del Ayuntamiento to have a look at the crowds milling around there:
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The main reason the people come to the square is to look at the giant nativity scene:
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I then sat down for a beer at the Irish bar on the Esplanada:
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I wanted to finish the year with some solid cycling, so on Saturday morning, I did an 82 km ride down to Elche and Santa Pola. On the way, I passed the beach at Urbanova, just south of Alicante. At that early hour there were not many people, but I saw a couple sitting in the sand with Alicante in the morning haze as the background:
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In Santa Pola, all the fishing boats were in the harbour, and the nets were laid out to dry on the promenade:
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The only fishing taking place was of the recreational variety:
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The crew of one of the boats, relaxing:
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And a cat was looking around for discarded fish:
And this concludes my last weekly blog of 2023, the 23rd year of doing Photos of the Week.