Finally, September is upon us, and things have returned to normal in Valencia. Life in this city during the month of August is ridiculous. Everything shuts down, from the bakeries to the kiosks, to the shops. The free daily newspapers disappear from street corners, and half the restaurants are closed. The municipal pool is closed the entire month. All of the city pools are closed during the year’s hottest month. Makes sense!

And then, September arrives and everything instantly returns to normal, like a light being turned on. Yesterday, on the first, the streets and shops were full of people going about their day-to-day lives. It was refreshing, but also disconcerting. Businessmen hustled by me on their way to work, and I even got my daily free paper from the ADN guy at Plaza de la Reina… the same dude who’s been there the whole year and, on August 1st, suddenly disappeared with half the city. But now, he was back, passing out his papers as though nothing had happened.

It’s like waking up from a dream. All I know is that next year, I’m going on vacation in August.

For most of humanity, public holidays are a breathlessly awaited godsend. But when you work independently, and are living in a new country, they can be an unexpected nuisance.

Like today, for instance. I woke up early, intending to get a paper and sit at my favorite café for breakfast. Oh, the plans I had for the day! A haircut, shopping, registering for social security… yes, I’ll need a hearty breakfast for power!

On stepping out, it took me awhile to notice how silent the city was. No cars, no businessmen, even the ever-present hippie drug dealer at the corner was absent. And of course, everything was closed. Assumption Day!

Assumption Day is a national holiday?! My plans were destroyed, my life sent into utter turmoil, all because Mary had to ascend into heaven.

January 1st - New Year’s Day
January 22nd - San Vicente Martir
March 19th - San José - Also: End of Fallas
March 20th - Holy Thursday
March 21st - Good Friday
March 24th - Easter Monday
March 31st - San Vicente Ferrer - Falls on the Monday after Easter
May 1st - Labor Day
August 15th - Assumption Day - Lame!
October 9th - Day of the Valencian Community
November 1st - All Saints Day
December 6th - Day of the Constitution
December 8th - Immaculate Conception
December 25th - Christmas

Just an observation, and probably something most Christians wonder about at some point in their upbringing: if the Immaculate Conception was December 8th, doesn’t that make Jesus the ultimate preemie?

Get ready for yet more open-air, original version cinema in Valencia, courtesy of l’IVAC-La Filmoteca and l’Aula de Cinema de la Universtat de Valencia. This time, the films are being shown at the Jardines del Palau de la Música (location)…

And the program is great! It’s like a master class in Cinema Classics… Godard, Lubitsch, Fellini, Wilder, Tarantino, Bergman. Every genre is covered, from animation (Ratatouille) to art house (Seventh Seal). In our day jobs, we run a popular film website and can verify that every movie in this program is worth seeing.

It runs from July 28th to September 7th. The films start at 11pm and entry is €3 (or you can get 10 entrances for €20).

Here’s the full lineup. I’ve listed the English names of the films, but keep in mind that everything is being shown in OV, with Spanish subtitles. Feel free to bookmark this page, for easy reference!

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Jul 28	Jul 29	Jul 30	Jul 31	Aug 1	Aug 2	Aug 3
Amarcord France, 1973		Ninotchka USA, 1939		American Gangster USA, 2007
Aug 4	Aug 5	Aug 6	Aug 7	Aug 8	Aug 9	Aug 10
Breathless France, 1959		Sullivan’s Travels USA, 1941		The 400 Blows France, 1959
Aug 11	Aug 12	Aug 13	Aug 14	Aug 15	Aug 16	Aug 17
The Seventh Seal Sweden, 1956		La Soledad Spain, 2007		Be Kind, Rewind USA, 2008
Aug 18	Aug 19	Aug 20	Aug 21	Aug 22	Aug 23	Aug 24
XXY Argentina, 2007		Planet Terror USA, 2007		Death Proof USA, 2007
Aug 25	Aug 26	Aug 27	Aug 28	Aug 29	Aug 30	Aug 31
Querelle Germany, 1982		Arsenic and Old Lace USA, 1944		Ratatouille USA, 2007
Sep 1	Sep 2	Sep 3	Sep 4	Sep 5	Sep 6	Sep 7
La Notte Italy, 1961		Some Like It Hot USA, 1959		There Will Be Blood USA, 2007

Watching these videos will help us pay for our server. Thank you all!

Agua de Valencia is an extremely popular drink here, taking advantage of one Valencia’s prime exports — oranges.

I ordered it at an outdoor bar recently and instantly fell in love. “I’m going to find out how to make this as soon as I get home!”

Agua de Valencia
1 cup (18cl) freshly squeezed orange juice
1 bottle (70cl) sparkling, semi-dry wine
1/2 cup vodka + gin (10cl)
Sugar to taste
Refrigerate for a couple hours (or ice)

If you’re like me, you’re looking at that recipe thinking … wine, vodka and gin?! That’s expensive… and, squeezing oranges is messy without some kind of fancy press. Screw it.

Allow us to suggest our favorite summer drink. We’ll call it…

Agua de Hola Valencia:
Mix vodka & cranberry juice, with ice.
Drink quickly, and make another.

Variety Magazine recently ran an article about the MUAA Museum of Audio Visual Arts, which is scheduled to open a year from now, in Alzira (location), just 25 miles south of Valencia city.

There is precious little on-line about this museum (here’s an article in Spanish), but it sounds as though it will be pretty cool. It will be the only such museum in Europe, and is privately funded. There will be a 3D theater and even viewing booths for blind people, which will emit heat or cold, as well as aromas that compliment the films (note to blind people: don’t go see Alive at this theater, unless you want to experience frostbite with the smell of human flesh).

Entrance will cost €18, which continues Valencia’s unfortunate trend of overpriced museums. Does anyone have more information about the MUAA?

If you’re interested in movies, don’t forget to check out our film recommendation website, Criticker.

Today, we’re presenting two new features to our Valencia Blog.

1. Valencia TV

This is an extra page on the blog dedicated to high-quality videos we’ve uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo also supports videos in HD quality, though we’re not at that level yet. Let’s see how well things go this year… we might shoot HD videos of the Fallas 2009!

2. Forum RSS Feed

The Valencia Forum is getting more and more popular. There already some interesting discussions going. A couple of people have asked how to get notified when something new is posted. It’s fairly simple. You can either decide to get an email notification when you answer or start a thread (the option for that is right under the forum editor) or you can subscribe to the new Valencia Forum RSS Feed. You can find the button on the upper right side, under the header.

And if you haven’t done so yet, check out the forum and don’t forget to say hello. If you’ve got a moment, share your favorite restaurants, bars or things to do in or around Valencia.

Street View is one of the more incredible of Google’s many free map-based applications. And now, it’s coming to Valencia.

Starting Monday, Google’s fleet of camera-equipped cars will be cruising our streets, taking pictures for their Street View of Valencia. Keep your eyes peeled.

If you’re not familiar with this application, basically: it’s awesome. Street View provides a navigable street-level view of many large cities. Check out, for example, my old house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can scroll down the city streets, almost as if you’re walking or driving.

So if you see a Google car in the next few weeks, make sure and do something memorable (like, say, holding up a huge poster advertising HolaValencia.net). Photographing an entire city is sure to turn up a few nuggets of gold. Here’s a list of the Top 15 Street View Sightings.

It might still takes months before the Valencia-version of the application is ready, but I can hardly wait. Ours is one of just 4 cities in Spain chosen for the initial European rollout of Street View (along with Madrid, Barcelona and Sevilla).

Fallas seems as though it were just yesterday, but there can apparently be no rest in this city.

On the second Sunday of May, the festivals celebrating Our Lady of the Forsaken (La Virgen de los Desamparados) begin. Actually, the festivities truly begin the day before.

Mostly for ourselves, we’ve compiled a list of events ordered by day. Planning begins now! Use this as your cheat sheet to the party. And don’t forget that we’re “Virgen de los Desamparados”-virgins, so let us know if we’ve got any information mixed up or have forgotten something important.

Saturday, May 10th

• Orchestral Concert in the Plaza de la Virgen
• Fireworks near the Torres de Serrano (location) at midnight, following the concert
• Danzà, in which more than 200 pairs dance in honor of the Virgen
• The beginning of pilgrimages from many outlying towns into Valencia

Their will be crowds accumulating from 8pm onward, but the true action won’t begin until around 11pm.

Sunday, May 11th

• Church services at 5am (!!!) and 8am
• The Traslado: the move of the Virgin from the basilica to the nearby cathedral at 10:30am. Hordes of believers will be doing their best to touch Her Holiness during the move.
• At 18:30 is the Official Procession, during which thousands of Valencians in traditional garb will be parading down the streets, while onlookers shower them with rose petals thrown from balconies.

Monday, May 12th

• Traditional Market in the Plaza de la Reina (location), lasting all day.
• At 20:30, two hours of choral music & regional dancing in the Plaza de la Virgen

Thursday, May 15th

• Festival of the Florists, during which the temple will be completely adorned with flowers.

Wednesday, May 21st

• Besamanos Público which marks the end of the festival. Unbelievable queues of people wishing to kiss the hand of the Virgin will form, beginning at 7am.

Of course, there are daily events during the course of festival, but most are entirely religious and boring not for us. Those listed above seem to be the highlights.

Most of this information comes from ValenciaValencia.com, Wikipedia (in Spanish), and the basilica’s webpage which contains an exhaustive list of events.

From April 17th to May 11th, the University of Valencia’s La Nau (location) will be the location of Digital Media 1.0. Here’s a short description of the festival, which I’ve translated from their awesome website:

More than an exposition, Digital Media 1.0 is a meeting point and forum of debate for artists, experts and public, representing a large number of countries. It will take place in different nuclei or nodes: the intervention of spaces in the old seat of University of Valencia, electro-acoustic music concerts, multimedia performances, video cycles, sound laboratories, debates, and the website www.digitalmediavalencia.com created specifically for the event and which bears the intention of being a portal of international reference for art and new technology.

The list of events is huge, and excitingly eclectic. Particularly interesting to me is the 3rd Annual One Second Film Fest. Perfect for my attention sp… Ah, and look what else! Multimedia performances with intriguing titles such as “fighting orange” and “electric guitar on vibrating table”. Confused? Yes! Want see? Very!

This being a “digital media” festival, the organizers are putting a lot of effort into their website, which also features a blog. So make to keep your eye on it for upcoming events. I think the website will be updated quite frequently, especially as the festival gets underway.

One of the forums which will be held on the 18th is titled “Blogging, Podcasting & Vlogging” — should HolaValencia.net be invited as special guest experts?

Website: http://www.digitalmediavalencia.com/
Location on our Valencia Map

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Whether it is flights to london we are talking about or flights to boston, both of them are frightfully expensive. The new york flights are much cheaper in comparison. However of all the flights, people are most concerned about the las vegas flights since that affects them more.