Holiday Town. What a great name for a place that tourists visit or stay in, but mostly only during the appropriate season. I have been to holiday towns in my home state, my wife’s home state, and in other states at other times; and even in other countries. But I know for certain as far as North America is concerned that I have never heard these locations called Holiday Towns. Resorts, beaches, getaways, yes; more specific titles ("the Cape," "down the shore," "the Island"), absolutely. I don’t believe that the other places I have visited, elsewhere around the world, are known as Holiday Towns. And maybe the one I am about to describe is not either, but it sure seems like it could be.

El Perellonet is a long, thin strip of land starting about 20 kilometers south of the central part of the city of Valencia, Spain. To the west is La Albufera, a natural lagoon and nature preserve that plays host to a large variety of flora and fauna. La Albufera is the largest body of water of its kind in all of Spain and because of its proximity to Valencia it is a tourist attraction in itself. La Albufera is also a major rice growing area. Fishing has been an activity there since the thirteenth century at least. It is an important stop for migratory birds and is part of the Parque Natural de la Albufera.

To the east of El Perellonet is the Mediterranean Sea. To the south is what could be variously called a river or an estuary or perhaps something else, but the first word that came to me was "inlet." Once I knew that El Perellonet was where we would be staying, I was able to "see" it before ever leaving our house, courtesy of detailed maps, high resolution satellite images and even street views which are at once incredibly informative and somewhat disturbingly intimate. I could not quite understand why, while the streets of the very southern part of El Perellonet the streets appeared to be spaced at about the distance I expected, the streets south of the inlet appeared to be far too close together to be able to fit anything in between. But more importantly, the word association to "inlet" was immediate. The layout of El Perellonet and El Perreló, its neighbor across the water, instantly called to my mind the similar geographic arrangement of Manasquan and Point Pleasant Beach on the New Jersey shore.

Manasquan’s beach is lined with small residential cottages and a few small businesses, while south across the Manasquan Inlet, Point Pleasant Beach is a more commercial beachfront community with amusements, arcades, and nightlife—in other words, much more bustling than its neighbor to the north. I’ve always assumed that both Manasquan and Point Pleasant Beach like it that way. Studying the satellite photos of El Perellonet and El Perreló, I wondered in anticipation how valid the comparison would be to the places "down the shore" that I already knew.

The non-stop flight over to Valencia from Kennedy Airport began in the light of a New York City afternoon and arrived not long after sunrise in Valencia. As usual, I got very little sleep on the plane. It was a "red-eye" trip in nickname only, as much of the flight was in daylight, given that it was just a few days after the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. I was a bit nervous about my ability to make it out of the airport and safely to where we would be staying. Oh, and driving an unfamiliar rental car, in Continental Europe no less, where I had never set foot. I have been to England, but that’s not Continental Europe. Not the least of my concerns would be whether I could sufficiently interpret the road signs to know where I was going.

Things didn’t begin particularly well. To start off, I had forgotten to adjust for the fact that we would be arriving the calendar day after we left, due to the six hour time difference between the East Coast of the United States and the East Coast of Spain. Therefore I was marked as a "no show" and my rental car had been given to someone else. Fortunately, that was rectified with an upgrade to a more expensive but somewhat larger and more luxurious vehicle. There was just enough room for the family and the luggage so perhaps this was a positive development.

Until I quickly discovered I could not figure out how to start this car! There was no place for a key, just a key fob which was inserted below an on/off button. The car itself was trying to "tell" me something via a message posted below the speed display... but in Spanish, and with abbreviations that I couldn’t even come close to understanding. A look through the manual was no help at all. Apparently it was simply assumed that anyone who needed to drive the car would understand how to get it started. For the record, the brake pedal had to be depressed before pressing the on/off switch. We were able to determine this with the help of Rosemary’s sister, who with her family were our hosts for this visit. I was already feeling like the Ugly American, and wished I’d taken more time to brush up on my thirty year old learning of El Español.

The Valencia Airport is not at all large or particularly intimidating, even for a norteamericano, and so I didn’t have any trouble following my sister-in-law out of the facility. Again thanks to modern technology, I was able to map out the approximate route we would be taking to El Perellonet well before our departure. The incident of not being able to figure out how to start the car provided a boost to my nervous system, and if that wasn’t enough to get the adrenaline going, along came the first roundabout.

Ah, roundabouts, or as we New Jersey natives incorrectly refer to them, Traffic Circles. (There are technical differences between the two.) My home state has, over the last twenty years or so, done its level best to eliminate as many traffic circles as it can. In other areas of the United States—with respect to less heavily traveled intersections, I hasten to add—roundabouts are making somewhat of a comeback. (There is one particularly absurd example of this not far north of Albany, New York, where there are five nearly consecutive roundabouts along a less than one mile stretch of road.) In Europe, though, they’ve consistently been part of the motoring landscape. The first one I drove after leaving the airport grounds required—well, I’m not sure exactly what it required, a complete U-turn, I think, but I’m still not completely sure, even though I was following behind someone who knew what she was doing.

It got far easier from there. We presently entered the V-30 motorway and headed east along the rerouted Turia River toward our destination. The Turia is a story in itself; having severely flooded Valencia one too many times, in 1957 it was ordered out of town by Francisco Franco and was directed to a channel that skirted the city. I didn’t give myself a chance to inspect this, as I was far too occupied with paying attention to the road in front of me.

I felt much more at ease once I understood the most unfamiliar feature of the highway signs. The black numbers in red circles were the speed limits, and they were in kilometers per hour, which was also the unit of measure on the car’s speedometer. The substitute rental car, a diesel powered station wagon, handled well. It only took a few minutes before I felt much more comfortable with this idea of driving in a foreign country that wasn’t Canada. And yes, one does drive on the right hand side of the road in Spain.

From the V-30, we turned south onto CV-500 which was an motorway for a few kilometers, and then narrowed into a two lane road. The next roundabout, one of three that would have to be negotiated before reaching El Perellonet, was a lot less nerve-wracking than the one near the airport. Good thing, because I’d be driving around them quite a lot in the next fifteen days. At peak travel periods, the local authorities modified the usual protocol of yielding to traffic already in the roundabout, by posting stop signs temporarily against the main flow of traffic, covering the Yield signs at the selected entrance, and posting large easily seen boards reading: "Atención: Usted tiene la prioridad." No particular English translation needed. Several times, a portion of the roundabout was blocked completely. I made an educated guess that this was to prevent drivers from taking a shortcut around a part of the route on which traffic frequently backed up.

After the first roundabout, we were within the boundaries of the Parque Natural de la Albufera, and CV-500 was legally restricted to a fairly narrow two lane road, probably not much wider than the suburban dead end street on which we live. We shared the road with a large number of bicyclists. Being a sometime bicyclist myself, I took special care to give them plenty of leeway; although I had been told that some particularly aggressive two-wheelers liked to ride in side by side groups which backed up motor vehicles behind them, I didn’t personally experience this. At times there would also be one or more hikers, and sometimes there would be groups of them.

I was far too focused on the actual drive to observe my surroundings at first, but as I became more used to CV-500, I was able to see that it was a very scenic path. At times La Albufera was almost right alongside the roadway, and at other times the Mediterranean itself could be seen in fleeting glances out the left side window. Several of what we would call "vista points" were available for motorists and bicyclists to pause and observe the natural beauty of the area. I was pleased that the government had decided not to expand the motorway into the preserve, even if it meant a longer and probably less safe drive through.

Following the third roundabout we entered the north end of El Perellonet and there was one final driving surprise. A series of traffic lights blinked amber except when we approached, at which point they usually turned to solid amber and then red. After we stopped, the lights went back to blinking amber. Apparently these were meant to enforce the speed limit of 50 kilometers per hour. But they often turned red even when I was the only car on the road and was driving at under 50 kilometers per hour. I never did figure out what the secret was to avoid being consistently stopped at these lights. I guess that was the idea.

About a half hour after leaving the airport we arrived at the neighborhood where we would be staying. Within a few minutes the car was unpacked and among our family, my sister-in-law and her two children, we were able to get everything over to the apartment building in one trip.

Although the residence where we would be staying was referred to within our family as "the beach house," it was actually a full-sized apartment in a five story contemporary building complex. We needed to go to the fourth floor, reachable by stairs, or by what the kids quickly dubbed the world’s smallest elevator. Being used to the large and larger lifts in the hotels in which we normally stayed, it was quite the culture shock for Kieran and Thalia to see one that was only about the size of a small walk in closet and was rated to hold just five people or 350 kilograms. I hadn’t seen an elevator this small for years, if not decades. There was no way that we could fit everything and everyone inside—in fact, I think that would have been a challenge in an elevator of the size that we were used to—so we made multiple trips up as well as taking the stairs.

Once inside the apartment we were given a quick tour. Our kids talked at length with my sister-in-law’s children, who are the same age and gender as our son and daughter. That was the main purpose of our trip, to bring the families together after a considerable time apart. One of the first topics of conversation was exactly how long it had been. With a little help from photos I had posted online, I determined that it had been four years.

Despite my lack of sleep on the plane, the wonder and curiosity of being in an unfamiliar place took over, and I found an as yet untapped resource of energy. I wanted to explore, so I asked if we could walk over to the supermarket that I had been told about. Considering that we live in an area that is the home base of one of the premier supermarket chains in the United States, I have a certain preoccupation with visiting other grocery stores. I call it "informal benchmarking" although the only person who ever processes the results of these visits is me.

And so Rosemary, her sister and I ventured out, leaving the four children safely in the apartment. At last I would be able to see in person what I had viewed at a distance via the satellite photos and the maps available online. Despite the preview—which would have been impossible mere years before—I really wasn’t sure what to expect. That was not a bad thing.

We walked from the apartment building along a narrow street. Rosemary’s sister pointed out a small grocery store as we passed it and noted that we could get fruits and vegetables there if we didn’t feel like walking all the way to the supermarket. Diagonally across the street was a "Euro Store," the rough equivalent to the "Dollar Store" I supposed, but it was more like a variety store with a bias towards items needed for a stay at the beach.

Presently we came to an attractive cable stay bridge that spanned the inlet. I could see that my comparison to Manasquan and Point Pleasant was not a perfect one, and that was to our advantage. To cross between those two New Jersey towns one had to travel a couple of miles inland first to reach the first bridge over the Manasquan River. Unless a boat was involved. To travel between El Perellonet and El Perreló was a matter of this bridge just a few hundred meters in from the shoreline of the Mediterranean.

When I had first looked at the online map of El Perreló I wondered how the streets could be so close together. Actually, they were. Small buildings in this area had streets on both sides, front and back. I didn’t recall ever seeing this before. The streets were very narrow, just like they were in El Perellonet. I don’t think they were much wider than our two-car driveway. Rosemary and her sister talked while I lagged behind. All along these streets, people were talking as well. Many front doors were open, although most of these had a screen of sorts constructed of vertical strings of beads or vertical blinds to provide a bit of privacy. Inside, families watched television or ate, and talked. A few garages had been converted into dining rooms although it was the wrong hour for them to be in use for that purpose.

A block away from the inlet was a main business street; I made a note to come back and visit later in our trip. After that was another block which was part of a second set of tightly packed streets, followed by a passage between buildings and one more street. This brought us to our destination.

I readily confess that I am spoiled by my local supermarket back home. But I also know that not every populated area can support or really needs something as expansive and opulent as where we usually shop. The market in El Perreló was a lot more typical of what would be found in small towns. It was maybe ten aisles yet still had plenty of available choices. Nearly all of which I couldn’t read. Fortunately, bread pretty much looks like bread regardless of what it’s called; for the record, that’s pan in Spain. In other cases, I could tell that I was certainly going to be grateful for pictures on boxes.

We picked up a few things and I had my first opportunity to pay for a purchase in Euros. It went a lot more smoothly than my first opportunity to start a rental car in Spain. I simply read the amount directly off of the cash register, remembering that the commas and the periods are switched in most of Europe. One small difference that has not yet caught on to any major degree in America: having to purchase plastic bags in which to carry groceries back. I also noted to myself that just like back in Jersey City, New Jersey a generation ago, we were going to be careful to not buy more than could be comfortably hauled back via walking trip to the apartment. I observed residents who owned carts for that purpose, and some looked exactly like the one that my mother took with her for our visits to the A&P or the Finast.

The three of us headed back to the apartment. I tried to keep up with the conversation between the two sisters but I could feel both a desire to see more of the village and a need to get some rest. The last block of the walk was tough. Upon returning to the apartment, I promptly fell asleep in the bedroom that Rosemary and I were to use during our stay. Overcome by the combination of jet lag and general lack of rest, I slept for most of the rest of the day and night. It was an admittedly slow start to our stay in the Holiday Town, but not unexpectedly so.

The next morning Rosemary and I both woke up before 5:30 AM local time, a bit surprising since that was 11:30 PM the previous night back home. "Let’s go for a walk," she invited. The kids were still fast asleep and were certainly old enough to be left that way, so no worries there. We headed out of the apartment and toward the beach just a block away.

We were early enough to catch both a stiff breeze off the water and the sunrise. Whether it was spectacular or not, it would be memorable as our first dawn over the Mediterranean. It did not disappoint; the mix of clouds and clear sky was in just the right proportion to enable a range of blues and violets for the dawn. We admired the view for a few moments and then set out to see what we could see.

Directly behind us was a paved path and behind that were several connected relatively high-rise apartment buildings which hosted either ground floor residences or small businesses. We walked along the path toward the inlet and noted that there were restaurants; but I also quickly noted that the limited Spanish I retained was of practically no help in reading the menus. I didn’t recognize a single word. "This might be a problem," I admitted. Rosemary reminded me that we did have her family available to translate.

"Not at the moment," I half-complained. "I would probably be more adventurous if I could remember the word for tomato." To which I am allergic, not in a life-threatening way, but in a manner that would be quite inconvenient, which was the main reason why I hadn’t bothered to find out if I was still allergic to them. I had no sooner finished that thought than the Spanish word for tomato—not far away at "tomate"—popped into my head. Okay, that was an easy one, I remarked to myself, especially after remembering, of all things, a song featured in the animated children’s series Veggietales, titled "Dance of the Cucumber." It was written in genuine Spanish and translated into English as part of the skit. I related all of this to Rosemary as we continued our walk.

"It figures that I would use a song our kids liked to help me remember my Spanish."

"You liked it too." I couldn’t deny that truth.

"Wait, that means that I also remember that the word for cucumber is pepino." I recalled more of the song. "Miren el tomate, no es triste? No puedo bailar, pobre tomate." Or, "look at the tomato, isn’t it sad? He can’t dance, poor tomato." If I came across any sad tomatoes, I mused, I suppose that would come in handy, but somehow that didn’t seem very likely.

The pathway turned when it met the inlet and became a sidewalk which led to the bridge. We crossed it and returned to the shoreline, passing a marina on our left and on our right a small shop with a vending machine outside that dispensed bait. This was not only a Holiday Town, but a fishing village of sorts, continuing the tradition begun centuries ago. Out on the breakwater on this side of the inlet there were dozens of people with fishing poles, mostly grown men but a few women and children as well. The pace looked casual, as it should at a vacation destination.

Turning to parallel the shoreline once again, we encountered several shops followed by a long row of restaurants, interrupted by streets that ended at the walkway. Nothing was open yet; no breakfast at the beach was possible. Then again, it was only six in the morning. And my inability to read anything on the menus continued. I suppose I was more concerned about this than I should have been. On our left was the sea, and its calming sights and sounds, and the sun rising up above the clouds. Besides the fishers, only a few other people were out, jogging or walking dogs. It was peaceful, no time to have worries about menus. Or anything else.

Rosemary took my hand. "Hey, we’re here," she declared.

We certainly were.

Presently we reached the end of the string of restaurants. The walkway continued into a residential area but we elected to double back to the intersection with the main commercial street we’d seen the previous afternoon. There were more restaurants, at least one ice cream parlor, and stores of numerous types. I was reminded just a little bit of my time in Rio de Janiero; on my last day there with nothing to do but wait for my ride to the airport and my evening flight, I had wandered out to the business district. I had felt as if I were back in Jersey City, except that I couldn’t read any of the signs.

A few blocks in from the beach, we came upon a very pleasant aroma. Fresh bread. This reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for hours, and it was getting to seven in the morning here in El Perreló. Never mind breakfast, my confused body felt that it was already past my lunchtime.

There were not one, not two, but three bakeries from which to choose. One looked more open than the others and so we chose it. It was called "Del Sol" (literal translation: "from the sun") and it was set back from the street behind a newsstand and fruit and vegetable market. We walked in. From nearly end to end of the bakery there were glass windowed metal cases, and baked goods of many different types. To one side there were shelves with more bakery products. There was certainly plenty to choose from. But I quickly noticed a significant lack of labels for just about everything, in any language whatsoever. That would not have been an issue for me in the United States; I knew what things were called, or I could have simply asked, "What is this?" A sudden wave of anxiety washed over me. I felt as though I was about to look like a complete idiot. Perhaps there was still time to escape?

No. One of the employees, a somewhat older woman, made eye contact with me, and that was it.

"Uh, soy norteamericano, y hablo un poco español."

The sales clerk looked a bit taken aback. This may have been a Holiday Town, but clearly it wasn’t frequented by many norteamericanos.

"Uh, quiero, uh, uh..."

There was absolutely no way I was going to come up for the word for what I was looking at... what I would have called a small hard roll. I doubted that I had ever learned it to begin with.

Well, there is the universal way of indicating what you want, as inelegant as it is.

"Ese," I said, pointing.

"¿Grande o pequeno?" the employee asked. Great, a question back.

Somehow I managed to dredge a translation out of my brain. Large or small?

"Uh, dos de pequeno, por favor."

While two small hard rolls were retrieved for us, I nervously looked around. Way over to the right hand side of the counter were what looked like filled croissants. But what were they filled with?

"¿Otra mas?"

"Si..." I walked over to the end of the counter. "Este," I pointed to the croissants, "¿es con que?" That was probably a laughable attempt at asking "what are these with?"

She replied with something I didn’t catch, and the word "tomate."

"Uh, no!" I quickly recoiled. I wasn’t going to try to explain that I would break out in a serious rash if I ate that. I pointed at another one.

"Es jambon y queso."

Think, quickly, come on, translate... wait, that’s ham and cheese. I think it’s ham and cheese. At least, it’s something and cheese.

"Ah, un, por favor." I think by this time I was actually sweating through this encounter.

"Do you want anything?" I asked my wife.

"Something to drink?"

"Uh, sure," I replied, and how do I do that? I quickly looked around and spotted a self-service refrigerated case behind me. Hurray, I could figure this part out. I took in the contents of the case. Water bottles. That would work.

"Uh, estes tambien," I said.

"¿Otra mas?"

"No, gracias."

The clerk went over to a small cash register and figured the total, less than two euros. Just to be sure, I handed her a five euro note and received the beginning of what would become a rather large accumulation of coins in change.

As I collected it, I tried out the one statement I had rehearsed in advance. "Estudie el español en la universidad, pero no recuerdo mucho." That is, "I studied Spanish in college but I don’t remember much." Thanks to my sister in law’s husband, I would modify that by my second week in Valencia to "Estudie el español hace treinta anos, y no recuerdo mucho." In English that is "I studied Spanish thirty years ago and I don’t remember much," which, given the inclusion of the time metric, I thought would elicit more sympathy.

"Gracias," I concluded, "Hasta luego."

"Hasta," the clerk replied, probably glad that this transaction was over. Rosemary and I walked out of the bakery.

"Well, that was terrible," I evaluated.

"What do you mean? You were great!"

"Are you kidding? I should have my passport revoked for that," I complained.

"You’re being much too hard on yourself," Rosemary advised. Maybe she was right. At least I had the courage to walk into the place and try to buy something.

And that something—a ham and cheese croissant it was, in fact—turned out to be quite good. I knew this wouldn’t be my last trip to the Del Sol Bakery. In fact, I would visit it nearly every morning of our stay in the Holiday Town, although as we got more used to the six hour forward time shift, I would usually arrive later in the morning. That turned out alright, though. While there were more patrons at that hour, and thus an opportunity to embarrass myself in front of a larger audience with my lack of command of the local language, it also gave me a chance to scout out what I wanted. I even found a few things that were actually labeled. I also discovered that later in the morning, there was more help behind the counter. This larger staff included a young, and rather pretty, clerk who seemed to me to be much less intimidating than the first person who waited on us. Any time that there were metropolitans con jambon y queso, I bought them. I found out that they were called metropolitans from the younger clerk, whom, I think, might have been at least a bit fascinated to meet someone who lived so far away from her home. There seemed to be something familiar about the place.

About a week into the trip, it hit me. Schoenings. That was the name of the bakery that was open for many years in my father’s native Hoboken, New Jersey, right on the main street near the railroad station. Before we visited my grandfather, we would usually stop at Schoenings to pick up rolls, a crumb cake, and my absolute favorite baked good as a child, their incomparable butter cake. I probably don’t want to know what was in a butter cake, or how much shorter my life will be as a result of eating close to the sum total of my weight worth of them during our trips to Hoboken. Looking around in Del Sol, I was brought back to Schoenings. I knew there was a reason I liked it.

There was a great deal to like about the Holiday Town. Each day before or after trips into Valencia proper, there would be time to walk around, and I would find a little more.

Sometimes I would get lost in the supermarket just browsing, and sometimes I would go on a mission to find things for the apartment. I learned that if you want cereal in Spain, you’d better like chocolate; and that eggs aren’t refrigerated as they are in the United States; and that there is sold something called ensalada americana, which is basically a form of potato salad that I don’t remember ever seeing here. (Now I know how the French feel about French Fries.)

And sometimes, especially in the heat of the day-- which was, at 30 degrees Celsius or 85 degrees Fahrenheit, hardly unbearable but the with intense Mediterranean sun felt much hotter to me—it would turn out to be too daunting to venture all the way to the supermarket. So instead I’d visit the small market down the block. My lack of Spanish was not so much of a barrier there, as the husband and wife who ran the market understood a little bit of English. Between us, we managed, and of course with respect to produce it was easy to point. (By the way, Spanish for "banana" is plátano.)

One day the four kids flew kites on the beach and the four adults alternately helped and watched. A much younger child of another family, wishing to emulate what he was seeing, tied a string to a plastic bag and tried to fly it as well.

As is typical for my idiosyncratic ways, it was a number of days before I actually ventured into the Mediterranean. It was warm, and shallow for many meters out, just as I had been told. The waves were not usually very threatening, though there were a couple of days when yellow flags flew, indicating that there was some caution needed due to higher surf.

The Sunday after we arrived was the unofficial start of the season when people who are normally somewhere else come to live in the Holiday Town for the summer. The supermarket, usually shuttered on Sundays, was open, and it was as crowded as any one I’d seen in the United States. El Perreló was bustling and even the small shops in El Perellonet were doing a brisk business. The line at the Del Sol Bakery was out the door and then some. I was happy for them; the economy in Spain was not in particularly good shape. They needed days like this.

That night we all went out for ice cream, although no one was brave enough to try the pepino flavor. Yes, that’s right, cucumber ice cream. The streets were busy and festive. The apartments and small houses were full, with residents and their friends and relatives, talking and laughing, eating and drinking. Children played outside, ran along the beach, played on the equipment that was installed for them. Dinners, served late in the Spanish tradition, were being taken in restaurants all up and down the main street.

A day or so later—as our time in the Holiday Town progressed, I lost track of what day it actually was—the four adults left the four children in the apartment and ventured out for dinner. I was audibly relieved to not need to worry about translating the menu, with which I still had no success, but I was reminded once again by both Rosemary and our hosts that I was actually doing quite well with what I called my muy malo Español. I still wasn’t thrilled with my abilities, I lamented to our party as we sat outside enjoying dinner.

Then, when I saw what looked like a very bright flashbulb out on the water several different times, I was even less thrilled. Lightning. Could it be? It was beautifully warm and slightly breezy from the land toward the sea, and whatever I was seeing would have been downwind. When it got closer, I wondered nervously whether we shouldn’t move inside. Not five minutes later, the thunderstorm was over us and the sky opened up with not rain but hail at first, followed by a torrential downpour. Thirty minutes later it was all over, and Rosemary indulged my desire to run back as quickly as possible to the apartment after dinner lest another wave of weather follow the first one. Nothing did until a less severe version of the same blew through the following week for even fewer minutes. In fifteen days those were the only two times that it rained.

The second Sunday there was more typical in terms of the mainstream businesses being closed, but there was something else: what we would call a flea market of sorts consisting of a long row of vendor tents that began at the cable bridge in El Perreló, went down and even onto the breakwater, and also curved along the beach walk as well. There were all kinds of clothes and shoes and accessories for sale, as well as jewelry and household items. I was particularly taken with some larger artworks that would in no way shape or form would fit under the seat or in the overhead compartment. I could admire without actually owning. I wasn’t surprised that the vendors were particularly interested in our business, but I was fairly surprised that several sellers spoke not only Spanish but French and sometimes Italian. One woman tried several languages on me before apologizing, as I did for not knowing any of the languages that she did. What was for sale was generally fashionable and was largely in the styles that we saw more than a few of the residents and visitors wearing. The merchandise certainly seemed to be better than what I was used to viewing in American flea markets, which is why I don’t spend much time in American flea markets.

As our time in El Perellonet grew short, I made a final trip to the Del Sol Bakery. I had carefully rehearsed a few sentences which I slowly repeated to the staff on hand, including the pretty young lady who seemed to be interested in knowing, however slightly, a norteamericano. I explained that we were from New York, but not New York City, that we actually lived in Rochester, which was near Niagara Falls. I thought they would have heard of Niagara Falls, but they didn’t; however, to be fair, I hadn’t heard of La Albufera before arriving in Spain either. I said that we were here to visit "la hermana de mi esposa y su familia" (my wife’s sister and her family). I was asked if we would be back next year, and I said somewhat bittersweetly, "No sé" (I don’t know) even though I knew that was very unlikely to happen, not for a year, not for probably much longer. I wished them all well as best I could and thanked them for putting up with my poor Spanish.

The final full day in the Holiday Town was mostly consumed with packing, but in what seemed to be a parting gift to us, brought the most spectacular weather of the entire trip. The skies were crystal clear and azure blue, and I could see all the way to the City of Valencia from the shoreline. It was almost inviting us to stay longer, but of course we could not. I had my usual desire to do everything all over again, as I did every time I enjoyed myself on holiday.

We got one more memory in, at five-thirty on the morning of our departure day, the same time of day on which Rosemary and I awoke that first morning in El Perellonet. The car had been intricately loaded with all of our belongings, and I took everyone out to the beach one last time to view a sunrise that was full of color. The last picture I took in Spain was of Thalia with the rising sun backlighting her, and then we were off to the airport and on our way back home.

After our return home, I came to know another song that—sorry, Mr. de Burgh—fit well the feelings that had grown in me about our stay in the Holiday Town. It is by the group Duran Duran, and the chorus goes like this:

We believe in the cold grey light we dream
There's a place for us
Mediterranea
Yes we believe where the white sands touch the sea
There's a space for us
Mediterranea**

Hearing that, especially once "the winter’s on the ground" here, as Duran Duran also sings in this song, called "Mediterranea" as you might have guessed, I would certainly be fondly thinking of our time in the Holiday Town, and how it was both a new experience and a warm and pleasant echo of times gone by.