Walking Tour of El Carme, Refugio Restaurant

Wed. Feb. 6

We have a nice breakfast at home of scrambled eggs with ham and parsley. Delicious start.

One of the neighborhoods that I’ve looked forward to seeing is “El Carme.” The tourist office here had a walking tour that I’d downloaded, so we set off following their recommended route with Kitty navigating.

I am trying hard to help with managing the phone and directions. I get the phone all turned around but with practice I am getting better. At one point the phone was running out of juice and I saved the day with a paper map. Ha!

The city gates—we saw two today on this tour—are really impressive and well-maintained. We started at the Torres de Serranos, one of the city’s restored gates.

Torres de Serranos

There are some school groups we track along our tour, but for the most part there are few tourists. This area’s known for its graffiti and the street art is great fun. We go into an artist’s house that is now a museum, Casa Museu Benlliure. The artist’s wife bequeathed the home to the city. Seeing the garden for us is the best part of the visit. It’s lush and full of fruit trees and tiles throughout.

Casa Museu Benlliure

Lorena has marked a restaurant called El Refugio on her google maps and we choose it for lunch. The directions take us down into a dynamic and beautiful neighborhood, lots of good street art and colors. Tons of interesting looking restaurants and cafés.

We didn’t know what to expect with El Refugio. The façade was quite non-assuming, and I don’t think it would have ever caught my eye if we didn’t have it as a destination. When we reviewed the history we found it’s named “Refugio” as it served adjacent to a shelter, or “refugio,” during the Civil War. There was a map painted on their wall of the Old Town with all the different shelters represented. They had a lot of shelters: Valencia was a Republican stronghold during the war and took quite a bit of damage from air raids.

At Refugio Restaurant

The waiter/owner was fun and we choose from the menu of the day. Lorena started with a quinoa and sausage pastry while I had mussels in a braised celery soup with almonds. It was incredible. The main courses included a fennel chicken wrapped in pastry and a black rice paella with seafood. And the desserts! A chocolate panna cotta. I have returned to the land of chocolate after getting skin tested for allergens. Turns out after all these years I have not been allergic to chocolate and it was another condition I can now control with medicine. It embarrasses me when I think of all the fuss I’ve caused but it is so much fun to enjoy chocolate again.