{"id":4207,"date":"2024-01-12T21:20:24","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T20:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4207"},"modified":"2024-01-12T21:35:18","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T20:35:18","slug":"week-01-welcoming-2024","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4207","title":{"rendered":"Week 01: welcoming 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first week of the year was very much about welcoming the new year in the company of friends. First New Year’s Eve of course, which we celebrated at the house of a friend just 4 km from our place, making it logistically easy. The following day my wife went off to visit her family in Puerto Rico, while I went back to the office on January 3rd, a nice, quiet three days to ease myself back into work. On Saturday, we got together with our usual group of friends again, to celebrate Three Kings’ Day, a major holiday in Spain (especially for children since this is the day on which they traditionally get their presents). All our children are now adults and were doing their own thing, so this aspect was not relevant for us. But we had a nice, long lunch, which included some traditional foods such as cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/em>, a Catalan specialty, and Rosc\u00c3\u00b3n de Reyes<\/em>, a pastry always eaten on this day. Besides all this eating and making merry, I of course also did a lot of cycling, taking advantage of the good weather.<\/p>\n

1_1<\/strong>
\nI started the last day of 2023 in the usual manner, on my bike, cycling north to Villajoyosa, a medium-length ride of 52 km. The sunrise over the Mediterranean was particularly beautiful that morning, and a couple was sitting in the sand, waiting for the sun to appear over the horizon:
\n\"DSF3546\"<\/p>\n

1_2<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3549\"<\/p>\n

1_3<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3552\"<\/p>\n

1_4<\/strong>
\nAs always, I turned around to take in the colours of the small sheds on the beach, illuminated by the rising sun:
\n\"DSF3556\"<\/p>\n

1_5<\/strong>
\nIn Villajoyosa, my first stop was Playa Bol Nou, a secluded beach just south of the town. While the weather was sunny, it was still cold at this early hour, so the beach was almost deserted:
\n\"1030840\"<\/p>\n

1_6<\/strong>
\nAnd the morning haze was still there, almost completely obscuring Alicante in the distance:
\n\"1030838\"<\/p>\n

1_7<\/strong>
\nOn the main promenade of Villajoyosa is the town’s Christmas tree. As in most other places in Spain, the tree is not a real tree, just a large installation:
\n\"1030842\"<\/p>\n

1_8<\/strong>
\nAs I usually do, I lingered for a few minutes on the promenade, eating a snack and drinking a Coke while watching the human and canine traffic passing by:
\n\"1030848\"<\/p>\n

1_9<\/strong>
\nThis beautiful girl was quite interested in the snack I was eating:
\n\"1030845\"<\/p>\n

1_10<\/strong>
\nI cycled over to Villajoyosa’s fishing harbour, one of the biggest in this area. All the boats were in the harbour–you don’t go fishing on New Year’s Eve:
\n\"1030856\"<\/p>\n

1_11<\/strong>
\n\"1030851\"<\/p>\n

1_12<\/strong>
\nOn the other side of the harbour are the pleasure boats, with the mountains a few km inland serving as a nice backdrop:
\n\"1030854\"<\/p>\n

1_13<\/strong>
\nThe coloured houses for which Villajoyosa is famous, with large hotels and apartment buildings in the second line. It looks denser than it is because of the long lens I used, but the arrangement works well and almost everyone has a sea view. Villajoyosa is a very pleasant place to live. With 36,000 inhabitants it is small enough to not have the usual urban problems but big enough to have all the usual services (it is also the headquarters of Spain’s largest chocolate producer, Valor):
\n\"1030855\"<\/p>\n

1_14<\/strong>
\nThen New Year’s Eve arrived. We celebrated with about 10 other couples in the house of our friends Cani and Nereyda. I had taken my Ricoh GRIII pocket camera, something I now use for most parties, obviating the need for a camera bag. It works fine in such situations. Here is my wife with Eliot and Mariluz:
\n\"R000106\"<\/p>\n

1_15<\/strong>
\nWe had all chipped in money to buy the champagne and other drinks, the uvas de suerte<\/em> (in Spain you eat a grape on the strike of the clock at midnight, so 12 grapes altogether; I have no idea of how many choking incidents occur every New Year’s Eve), cheese and other goodies. In addition we all brought various dishes. The two dishes in the foreground are my wife’s work:
\n\"R000100\"<\/p>\n

1_16<\/strong>
\nThe centerpiece was this big bowl of steak tartare<\/em>, something I have always loved. Raw meat brings out the Viking in me:
\n\"R000101\"<\/p>\n

1_17<\/strong>
\nLooking at something nice:
\n\"R000104\"<\/p>\n

1_18<\/strong>
\nShooting gallery. The women wanted a photo of all us men together:
\n\"R000113\"<\/p>\n

1_19<\/strong>
\nA platter of French cheese is always the perfect ending to a meal:
\n\"R000114\"<\/p>\n

1_20<\/strong>
\nThen midnight arrived, the grapes were devoured, and toasting and kissing to wish each other a happy new year ensued:
\n\"R000124\"<\/p>\n

1_21<\/strong>
\nDalal, relaxing a bit, and probably calling her family, just as I called my sister in Poland shortly after midnight:
\n\"R000127\"<\/p>\n

1_22<\/strong>
\nOn January 3rd I went back to work after the 2-week holiday break. On my way home, I stopped at Plaza Seneca to buy some Polish goodies at the Eastern European grocery store, only to find it closed for the holidays until the following week. Instead, I popped into the old bus station, now an exhibition space, where there was an exhibition with the Nutcracker story as the theme. There was a couple with a small child also visiting the exhibition:
\n\"DSF3584\"<\/p>\n

1_23<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3585\"<\/p>\n

1_24<\/strong>
\nSaturday was Three Kings Day, and as always, we were getting together with friends (more or less the same gang as on New Year’s Eve) for a long lunch. I decided to bring some artisanal goat cheese from Lili, the Swiss Cheese Pusher in Tibi, whose shop I have been visiting for many years. On Friday morning I drove to Tibi before going to work. As I approached Tibi, I stopped to photograph the village, including the steep ascending road to get to the centre, a road I have done on bicycle on several occasions. It is one of the hardest climbs around here:
\n\"DSF3587\"<\/p>\n

1_25<\/strong>
\nLili’s small shop. She is originally from the German-speaking part of Switzerland but has lived in Spain for many years. Her husband is Spanish; he looks after the goats, and she makes and sells the cheese:
\n\"DSF3591\"<\/p>\n

1_26<\/strong>
\nLili had just returned from her Christmas break the day before, so she had a limited selection. But I did get some of the soft cheeses, and a nice chat with Lili:
\n\"DSF3590\"<\/p>\n

1_27<\/strong>
\nI drove to my office, and in the afternoon I stopped for a beer at Malatesta, making this self-portrait in the process:
\n\"DSF3594\"<\/p>\n

1_28<\/strong>
\nSaturday morning I did my usual bike ride, although cut short to 30 km by two punctures–just bad luck. So the time I spent on fixing the flats on the side of the road forced me to shorten the ride so as to be on time at our friends’ house in La Nuc\u00c3\u00ada, a suburb of Benidorm where Roberto and Mariluz were hosting the party. It was a cold day by our standards but it was sunny, so we still set up outside. The cheeses I brought had good company on the table:
\n\"DSF3600\"<\/p>\n

1_29<\/strong>
\nRoberto got the grill going and made cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/a><\/em>–a traditional Catalan specialty which I had never tried despite many visits to Barcelona. They are basically a cross between green onions and leeks, and are prepared by blackening them on the grill:
\n\"DSF3603\"<\/p>\n

1_30<\/strong>
\nThis is no fancy BBQ, and the fuel is just wood and pine cones:
\n\"DSF3610\"<\/p>\n

1_31<\/strong>
\nThe cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/em>, properly blackened now:
\n\"DSF3595\"<\/p>\n

1_32<\/strong>
\nMariluz and Roberto’s cat, monitoring the proceedings:
\n\"DSF3602\"<\/p>\n

1_33<\/strong>
\nRoberto demonstrated how to eat the cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/em>:
\n\"DSF3605\"<\/p>\n

1_34<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3607\"<\/p>\n

1_35<\/strong>
\nEating cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/em> can be a messy activity, especially since one is also supposed to dip them in a special sauce. But it is well worth the effort:
\n\"DSF3608\"<\/p>\n

1_36<\/strong>
\nHaving consumed the cal\u00c3\u00a7ots<\/em>, we just hung around, talking and drinking:
\n\"DSF3613\"<\/p>\n

1_37<\/strong>
\nRoberto’s house is on a hill, so there are nice views of the sea:
\n\"DSF3619\"<\/p>\n

1_38<\/strong>
\nAnd looking the other way, of the mountains:
\n\"DSF3620\"<\/p>\n

1_39<\/strong>
\nThen it was time to put the meat on the grill, and of course Eliot the Argentine was in charge of that:
\n\"DSF3618\"<\/p>\n

1_40<\/strong>
\nThe sun set, and we went inside, since it gets cold quickly after dark. Mariluz served the traditional Three Kings dessert, the rosc\u00c3\u00b3n de reyes<\/em>:
\n\"DSF3625\"<\/p>\n

1_41<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3626\"<\/p>\n

1_42<\/strong>
\nChampagne and silly headgear:
\n\"DSF3629\"<\/p>\n

1_43<\/strong>
\nMati and Aurora thought that we needed more dessert besides the rosc\u00c3\u00b3n<\/em>:
\n\"DSF3631\"<\/p>\n

1_44<\/strong>
\n\"DSF3633\"<\/p>\n

Thus ended the first week of 2024, my 24th year of weekly photo blogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first week of the year was very much about welcoming the new year in the company of friends. First New Year’s Eve of course, which we celebrated at the house of a friend just 4 km from our place, making it logistically easy. The following day my wife went off to visit her family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4205,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4207"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4207"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4214,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4207\/revisions\/4214"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}