The place next door

We've moved on to a quieter small town, Xativa, now for a few more restful days than the hectic but very enjoyable pace of Valencia, staying in a beautiful B&B in a narrow street with a roof terrace where you can look across to the floodlit cathedral and castle at night. This is the house next door (and it's for sale!) - it reminded me of the eighteenth-century Welsh artist Thomas Jones's paintings of Naples that I saw in Cardiff a few years ago. I took some photos of the night skyline from the roof top when we came back from having tapas in the market square but really I prefer houses that people live in (or sadly don't in the case of this one).

Things I'm learning on this trip (apart from being reminded again, if that was needed, of how much fun we always have when the family is all together): that I find habitations more interesting than churches; that there are more different tapas than I thought possible and how much I like them all; that the commonly accepted frontiers in this part of the Mediterranean are not definite but indistinct gradations of a culture and its languages that change gradually all the way along the coast from the Camargue southwards; that 'Spain' doesn't really exist as a single entity but is made up of different communities and their different languages. Here in Xativa I feel I'm in the place next door to home in the Languedoc - different enough to be fun and interesting, but also with a lot I recognise - and I'm loving it!