Charity

Charity:  In general, an attitude of kindness and understanding towards others, now especially suggesting generosity.  

To finish up my Transfer Rampage with a tip story . . . 

I was stewing in my own sour juices in the back of the van, spine rattling with every bump, knees tucked up into my chin, when I thought: "This dude is not getting a tip."  Fortunately, with the three hour trip still on-going, I had time to recalculate -  I realized it wasn't the driver's fault and I realized he was the least well compensated of all of the shuttle personnel that I was condemning to the fiery pits of hell in my mind.

When we got home I told him again that I wasn't angry with him and I pulled out a $20 bill.  

"If you've got a ten this is for you," I said.

He pulled out some change.  He had a five and some ones.

"That's OK," he said.  "Whatever you've got, a few bucks is OK."

I dug out the few smaller bills I had, passed them over, shook his hand, and we were home.  

"You know what?"  I told SuperK.  "There were three other couples in the van who got dropped off before us and this guy only had $7 on him."

Makes you think.

Trip Thoughts

Shallow:  Concerned mainly with superficial matters; significantly less deep than wide.

I think we're not that great in being nice to each other if by "we're" you mean "I'm."  I sent this note to my dear friend Barcelona K after our trip.  I realize that it kind of ruins the concept if you do something nice and then tell everyone about it - it makes me suspect an individual's motives - but I've established myself as someone with Shallow Motives.

Anyway, we had trouble getting our internet up and running, thus the short response.

My ears felt pretty unstuffed on Friday morning so I went No Medication - I'm so sensitive to drugs that most of the time the side effects are worse than the cure - for the flight.  No discomfort on take-off but I started getting some weird noises in my head - kind of a metally squinch, like pressure was equalizing but there wasn't much room for error - so I took a decongestant right away and had smooth sailing.  (Barcelona K had asked about my stuffed up head after we got home).

You might want to save this email because I'm going to attempt to say something nice.  :)  You'll find I'm not hard on people as a general rule but I don't pass out compliments like a salesman, either.

Both SuperK and I really enjoyed our time together.  I had this somewhat incomplete memory of you - all very pleasant but we didn't spend all that much time together before you left  - what was it, the jail and maybe Monday night?  I was thrilled to see that my failing memory was spot on - you've become a fine youngish man and we're so happy for your great wife, your great son (times two, now), and the life you've built in a great city.  You were a big part of out experience - the meetings, the dinner at Saga's and the market, the Maritime museum extravaganza, Vietnamese.

It was a legendary trip for us.  We enjoyed much of it, soldiered through some rough spots, and learned a couple of important things about the next one.  Number one: The Fellowship is REALLY important.  Number two: we have to make sure we get an extra room in our apartments.  SuperK and I got along fine but two months, right on top of each other, is too much to ask - she was great because I'm a big personality with some annoying, pedantic, control-freak tendencies. Number three: we need to move a little more often because we have the time to waste on relocation days.

I like the fact that you've stepped out into the big, bad world and are giving things a whirl.  It can be so comforting being in a nice little routine but it can be so boring, too.  So I say this: if it sounds interesting, do it.  We are always doing new things: we had never been to Europe for two months before so there was a learning curve.  How about you?  Ever had a wife and two kids before?  I didn't think so.

Hugs and kisses.

Seaweed and SuperK

The Transfer

Transfer:  To move or pass from one place, person or thing to another.

After experiencing the joys of travel for 2 months, today we experience the agony.  We have an early flight so naturally, keyed up about all the things that can go wrong with an early flight – alarm not going off, cab not showing up, fiery meteor storm from hell striking our building – we don’t sleep very well, awakening long before the alarm does indeed go off.  There’s a lot to be said for the comfort of the Home Alarm System – it’s tried, it’s true, it has stood the test of time.  As we finish our packing, I look outside and see our cab tucked into the alley across from the apartment, a good 20 minutes early. 

I step out onto the balcony – the driver looks up: “Cinco minutos,” I say, holding up 5 fingers.

“Tranquilo,” he replies.

That is such a great word.  Literally: tranquil.  Idiomatically: it’s cool; chill, dude; don’t sweat it, I’m good.

We have a nice ride to the airport, swapping a little Spanish and a little English.  I will say again: people appreciate the effort.  I give the guy a big tip even though in Europe taxi drivers don’t expect much extra.

He collects himself and then says in Spanish: “Until your next trip to Barcelona” or something like that.  Maybe it was: “C’mon back, y’all.”

We are at the airport the requisite 2 hours early for an international flight so we can maneuver through security and customs; the first leg of our trip is just under 4 hours; a 2 hour lay-over; then the big leg, 11 hours in coach.  Ah, can’t beat it.  In reality it was all OK – it’s unbelievable to be able to travel 6,000 miles with so little effort.

Things begin to go downhill at this point and it’s not like we’ve had an painless day already – we just want to get home, take a shower, and climb into bed.  The main airport serving Vacation City is one big airport and we’ve wisely timed our arrival for 5PM on a Friday night before a 3 day weekend.  We contact our shuttle service.  The time is 5PM and we have an hour ride home.  We have been awake for about 20 hours and we’re dealing with the discombobulation of a 9 hour time change when the shuttle shows up with 6 other passengers already on board.

Two hours later we drop off the last of our fellow passengers and I ask the driver how much longer we have.

“About an hour,” he says.

SuperK and I understand that there’s some give and take in travel.  We understand that the shuttle service makes more money if it has a full van.  We understand that farthest away means last off.  Traffic is very heavy which we understand given the day and time.  We also understand that if we would have had some WWII circa grenades with us that some shit would have been blown up. 

I tell the driver that I’m upset.  I use neutral words and I keep my voice at a reasonable level.  I tell him that I’m not upset with him but with his company.  I ask SuperK if I can call the company and she agrees readily.  I can’t stress how unusual this is – when I’m pissed off she almost never lets me open my mouth let alone call someone on the phone, and you can forget about the computer, too.

I don’t think they much cared, to be honest about it.  It was a big deal yesterday but today who cares, really?

F.F.A.

I have contracted a cold.  Some evil Spanish rhinovirus.

We had a thunderstorm last night and the rain fell hard.

Our TV default here - an Internet based service - was taken down by a computer virus.

I'm reading a book set in the future where the ravaging of the planet by man has progressed to a point that a lot of areas are no longer livable.  It's set in two places: an area not far from The New City and the actual area of Vacation Town.  It's been somewhat disconcerting having a writer describe, in apocalyptic terms, two areas with which I'm very familiar.  Weirdly, we got a call from our landlord or caretaker or manager or whatever you call the dude who's in charge of the rental of our land in the trailer park, asking us to call "as soon as possible."  Imagining awful things - our trailer sucked into the stratosphere by a tornado or swallowed by a sinkhole or burnt in a fire - we call, to be told that the weeds in our lot have become a problem.

Last night, in my feverish sleep, I got these two incidents mixed together, waking up with an indeterminate sense that something was wrong.  I have been besieged by a bout of Free Floating Anxiety, the state where worry about odd things becomes real.  It has been a disconcerting day.  I really hate FFA.

Do Not Put the Garbage in the Hallway

Our hosts get to review us as guests - it doesn't just work one way.  If a guest trashes an apartment or sets up a meth lab or something like that it gets passed around.  Fair enough and good for them.  In Nimes, site of the great industrial sanding incident, we gave our hostess Arelette a good review.  We didn't believe that it was her fault that industrial sanders were being used so vigorously and she worked hard to rectify the problem.  She posted the following note about us, translated humorously by Google.

Seaweed and SuperK are lovely hosts!  Communication prior to arrival helped organize welcoming them more comfortable.  Unfortunately work not provided for in the building forced them to shorten their stay.  They were perfectly nice and understanding, despite six days in noise and dust.  They reassured me instead of against me, and left the apartment in a clean state.  I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their kindness and understanding, and I hope to welcome them again in better conditions of course.  I highly recommend these travelers!

Now wasn't that nice?  Seems like we were doing something right.  That's the goal - doing something right, right?

Then, the totally unresponsive people from St. Remy gave us this commendation: 

Everything went well with Steve and his wife.

Doesn't exactly make your heart leap with joy, does it?  I wouldn't classify that as singing our praises.  Honestly, I really didn't care until I saw that they added this private note, for our eyes only:

Do not leave garbage in the hallway.

You might recall that we found these hosts to be on the crappier side.  They didn't respond to any of our questions without repeated follow-up and even then they often answered some other question than the one that was asked.  Ironically, one of the questions I asked more than once but never received an answer for was: "What do I do with the garbage?"  Because they ignored me I started to put the garbage out in the hall.  I didn't want the garbage in the apartment.  I figured if it was in a public space that it might trigger a response which it did, albeit a totally unhelpful response.

I want to know where to put the garbage, not where not to put it, dig?  And really, what are they doing?  Getting us schooled for when we come back to their apartment in a couple of weeks?  I assumed they were treating us with disdain because they figured they would never see us again.  It was like I got served a bad steak, so bad that I had to spit partially chewed gristle and tendon into a napkin which I left on my plate, and the restaurant complained about the detritus.  The problem isn't where I'm spitting the gristle - the problem IS the gristle.

I had been pondering a harsh review but decided against it.  This may change my mind.

Gargoyle Seaweed

I don't think I've ever heard a joke in French.  I don't think the French are a very funny people.  I don't think I laughed in France.  I don't mean to suggest I didn't enjoy myself - just that I didn't hear much laughing.

The British, however, are hilarious.  One night when our Internet was being balky we fired up some Monty Python clips.  Good stuff, even if this reference does age me.

I'm back out on my Gothic Quarter balcony, three flights up, watching people walk by.  I'm starting to recognize some of these individuals which is a very good thing or a very bad thing.  I've come down with a cold - not a good thing - but my bowels have been working like clockwork since I re-entered Spain - decidedly good.  I like this town.  I could come back to this town and I don't go back anywhere.

I was thinking back on the end of my drinking days.  I can clearly remember wondering if I would not be able to take care of myself at some point in the future.  I wasn't a gutter drunk but I sure was a you-can-see-the-gutter-from-here drunk.  I was moving toward the gutter faster than I was going the other way.  So here I sit, perched like a gargoyle on his narrow perch, my beloved wife hovering nearby, enough time and money that I can take a two month vacation half a world away.

This is some good stuff.  I'm proud that I've put in the effort and the work to get here and I'm acutely aware of my tremendous good fortune.

Pandora

Pandora's Box:  An artifact of Greek mythology . . . and actually a large jar which contained all the evils of the world.

That's some jar.  Some skeptics see a similarity between this story and the Bible's Adam and Eve tale, which occurred much later.  I'm just sayin.'

Grind: To move with much difficulty or friction.

Today we climb into our VW Polo and begin the descent from the heady spiritual heights of Montserrat and into the controlled implosion that is Barcelona.  The trip has awakened a whole Pandora's Box of nagging little worries: I need gasoline to avoid the hefty for returning the car un-full but I don't know where the gas stations are - they aren't located every 50 feet like the The States - and I don't want to get off in a bad neighborhood, which seems likely the closer I get to the inner city, while making sure I don't buy the gas too early and use up enough gas to put me in Fine Land, AND, I confess, I'd like to use as much gas as possible without the needle dropping below full which is . . . you know . . . pretty unethical.

Then there's the whole driving in Barcelona thing.  The roads in Europe are roughly the same size as a rain gutter in The States.  Driving rules are flexible and indeterminate.  I would be in a deep, dark dungeon in Vacation City were I to pull half the moves I pull on an average drive here and I may be the most law-abiding driver in Spain.  People really just go where they want to go - there doesn't seem to be much concern for where anyone else is.  If I'm kind and let one person merge then I open the door to a whole merge-a-thon, people merging right at my car.  If you blink you die.  Other drivers can smell your weakness and they come from miles around to merge in front of you.  They make outrageously illegal U-turns to come back and re-merge, laughing all the while.  When you start to recognize the people cutting you off it's time to pull over and take some deep breaths.

The gas thing went OK, $90 to fill the $%!! car notwithstanding, although I did get behind some slacker kids at the station trying to buy tobacco and cokes and snacks and shit.  The attendant rolled her eyes at me as if to say "fuckin' kids."  And I did successfully get the car into the general area of our apartment.  There are so many narrow, Medieval one-way roads in there that if I entered I would never get back out.  Fifty years from now I'd still be in there driving around.  I parked in a no-stopping-ever handicapped loading zone next to a fire hydrant in front of a nursing home while SuperK went for the keys.  I had to move the car several times, shushed out of the way by delivery guys and municipal workers with a "eh, what can you do" good cheer.  I had to move but no one seemed too mad about it.  

I had rivers of sweat pouring off me by the time SuperK returned with the keys - keys the owner didn't want to give her because she wasn't . . . you know . . . me.  The woman holding the keys was a new contact and spoke no English and kept trying to take my wife to the apartment. SuperK managed to finally pantomime: "If you don't give me the keys right now I'm going to kill you."  When she returned I put on my emergency blinkers and we hustled the luggage to our place.  I enjoyed using the blinkers - all the lights on the car go on and off, on and off.  There was no emergency, to the best of my knowledge, beyond the fact that I didn't want to move the car again.  We got the car back to Europcar, full of gas and none the worse for wear and despite a printed sheet warning that people will try to steal your luggage, they'll try to divert you by offering to help some non-existent problem, they'll impersonate a Europcar employee to steal the whole fucking car, for chrissake.  I was vaguely worried about this, too.

SuperK said: "I feel like I'm home."  That's a good feeling.  Everything went fine.  Niggling worries added up to nothing.  I didn't worry about them too much but I shouldn't have worried about them at all.  It was a day of little victories over little challenges and that, my friends, is a big part of what makes travel such a grind and such a joy.

Montserrat

Yesterday we took a hike on top of Montserrat.  The trail was on the back side of the mountain with long views over the valley.  There were only a few fellow hikers up there.  On the winding road that we took the day before to visit the monastery we could see huge bus after huge bus laboring around the corners and could only imagine the chaos at the tourist site itself.  Our trail wound through thick vegetation that ended where the rocky face of the mountain began to jut up sharply. formed millions of years ago by a receding ocean.  

At one point we took a small side trail that ended at the ruin of a 10th century church.  The mountain is dotted with these tiny structures that the monks built so that they could get even further away from the monastery itself - when someone is looking for more peace and quiet than a monastery can offer you know that's someone who is serious about meditating.  We began to feel the spiritual nature of the area that must have attracted the old guys long ago.  That's the thing about religious sites - there is often a sense of something bigger present. a sense of a special place.

On a decidedly non-spiritual note I paged by the message I sent to my sister asking her to give the money she owed me - and gleefully held as her own - to my niece for her charity event.  No acknowledgement from my sister that she actually gave my niece the money and no thank you note from my niece.  Did she give her the money or not?  I have no idea.  I'm simply happy  to be rid of the whole mess.

There was a painting in the museum we visited of St. Lorenzo - the first saint from Puerto Rico - being roasted alive on a metal grate, earning his martyrdom big time.  I looked him up - never happened.  He was suspended upside down until he suffocated to death.  Lovely.

The monastery is famous for having a black Madonna.  Really, when you think about it, why would a woman from the middle east be as white as the pure driven snow?  In all of the paintings and tapestries and sculptures she's holding what appears to be a Holy Hand Grenade.  I have been unable to determine what it is.  The little baby Jesus, as wizened looking as a octogenarian, is holding something of a similarly sinister nature.

Those kooky monks.

Reflections

Reflection:  Careful thought or consideration.

Some revelations after some reflection . . .

After a month without a meeting - a good month, a month with no desire to drink or drug, without any egregious actions - I can say that it would be difficult to plan a vacation with such a total lack of contact with my brothers and sisters in recovery.  I simply miss it too much.  I feel like a well-balanced yacht, one with a heavy, long keel, infested with an evil crew who, each day, has been slowly moving luggage from the center rooms to the very periphery of the vessel.   Each day the mast has tilted a touch more off center.  For the first few days no one notices the slight angle and then the slight angle becomes the norm so what's a few more inches?  Now my yacht is tilting crazily off to starboard.  I'm having trouble walking the deck - I know somethings's amiss - but I'm so used to it that it doesn't seem to be a big deal.  People on the shore are taking video of this yacht that is moving along at a 45 degree angle.

Les Baugh

Travel is the agony and the ecstasy.  It's a series of small defeats and great victories.  It is not particularly relaxing or especially easy.  A vacation can be easy.  Going to the beach and not doing anything for a week except reading a book (Ed. Note: I have NEVER seen anyone reading a book on a beach) might be relaxing but wading out into the unknown is unknowable.

LWSJ, describing a backpacking trip to Europe: "It was a grind."

I get that.  Unforgettable, not to be missed, but a grind.

We were wearing down as our time in France grew short and could see our patience ebbing away, fading away, dissipating like mist in the sun.  Our hosts, unresponsive to the simplest question without repeated proddings, then offering confusing answers, weren't helping at all. On our last day there we took a drive to a little town which was a little town that had absolutely nothing noteworthy to see, so we retraced our steps (Steps, steps, steps, I seem to vaguely remember something about steps . . . ) to Les Baux.  

We should never retrace our steps.  We wandered about disconsolately until we decided to have a rejuvenating coffee, stopping for a cup of take-away at an open window into what appeared to be a shop that offered take-away coffee.  At least there was a guy standing patiently by an espresso machine.  I ordered - in French, mind you - two coffees.  The woman womaning the window conferred with the man by the machine and waved us off.  No.  Sorry.

Who knows what the deal was.  Maybe the machine was broken or they were out of coffee or it was lunch time - not coffee time.  Both SuperK and I took this rejection personally and because we were a few days too long at one spot we temporarily allowed it to color our whole stay there.

This is why I try to be nice as much as I can - one can never tell when the simplest of actions can be misconstrued and affect someone else in an outsized fashion.  You want to merge in front of me?  Yessir, go right ahead.

It's the little actions that matter.  It really IS the little stuff.

Whomping, Taken Collectively

Whompage:  Whomping or whomping on; acts of whomping or whomping on, taken collectively.  
Here's a shocker - the coffee hasn't been anything special.  We've come a long way in the States coffee-wise.  It's expensive here and sparse and not all that strong.

I saw a little kid with a neck scarf on yesterday - a Pooh Bear neck scarf.  How big an ass-whomping would he get for wearing that to school in Compton, CA?

The French have gotten a little chubby.

The market was back today.  I went out very early and had a better time of it.  I stuck to the fruit and vegetable stands and I got samples before buying cheese - last week we bought some repellent stuff, semi-finished and odoriferous.  There are no orange cheeses here - everything is cream colored, a healthier variety I've heard as the orange is a sign of high milk-fat content.  They all look identical and they're richer and creamier and dearly priced.  No tapenades, designer prunes, or olive oils.  I did buy a roasted chicken for dinner - the guy was also selling gutted, dressed rabbits.  I couldn't see making that in the microwave.

One can see the difference between corporate farming and local farming in this culture.  Processed foods are very expensive here and fresh ones are not.  I can walk away with a huge bag of fresh fruit and vegetables with a wallet full of money.  At home the cheap goods come highly processed and frozen or canned.

I received a reply from my sister today with nary a comment about the $100 donation.  There was, however, a detailed accounting of all the work she has been doing for my parents.  You cannot screw with my family.  This is a hardball-playing family.  All I know is that she discharged her $100 debt to me, under duress.  So be it.

The Check is in the Mail

Devious:  Deviating; not straightforward or honest, not frank; not standard. 

I have a couple of nieces.  They're good kids and I love them, but we don't interact much, partly as a result of some extreme distance and partly because my sister and I are traveling in different directions in our lives.  I received a form email from one of the girls this week asking for a donation to support her efforts to raise money for American Cancer Society.  Good for her - this is a damn sight better than asking for money to fund a trip to Europe or for new band uniforms, but the email came with no personal salutation which annoyed me slightly.  The real stick-in-my-craw is that my sister still owes me $100 for a TV that we bought for our parents as a house-warming gift.  We agreed to split the cost of the TV if by "split" you mean "she said she'd pay for half of it but she's never sent the money."  In fact, a couple of times she's made jokey comments about not having sent me the money, if by "jokey" you mean "she thinks it's funny but I don't."

I don't really care that much.  I'm not losing any sleep over it.  It's not something that I would do but it's not like I'm all that wonderfully ethical and considerate myself.  I do try to make my word my bond.  If I have a debt or a commitment I try to honor it.  I would never say I was going to pay for something and not pay for it.

Now I'll say this - my sister is back in The Old Town doing a hell of a lot of work for my parents while I'm not doing that.  I don't begrudge her the money.  In fact, I've said she can have anything and everything she wants of my parent's possessions as a thank-you gift, when the time comes.

Initially, I was piqued and I buried the email request in an unknown folder.  As I reflected I saw this wasn't the way to play things out, especially because it isn't my niece's fault that her mom is stiffing her uncle.  In as much honesty as I can muster I will say I had completely forgotten about the money and held not a whit of a resentment about it.  My sister can get a little funny about money, in my opinion, one of those people who profess with the mouth that it isn't important but demonstrate with the actions that it is indeed so.

In a flash of brilliance the solution came to me in my Quiet Time this morning, proof positive that my Quiet Times need some serious, serious work.  I sent the following email to my sister: "How about you give her the TV money and that'll be SuperK and my contribution?  I don't have a check book over here and it would take me 100 years to figure out how to mail it back there if I did."

Devious is as Devious does.

All About Not Bitching

We found the apartments that we're renting through a service which finds apartments for people who want to rent apartments.  I'm sorry - I started that sentence and quickly realized I didn't have anything to say but was too lazy to stop and collect my thoughts plus I'm too lazy to erase what I've already written even though that would be a lot easier than continuing to write.

In Barcelona we had a decent place - we would have liked something with a separate bedroom to give SuperK a nice buffer zone, but we were acutely aware that our rental was much better than the hotel rooms we usually end up with.  The apartment rental service gave me an opportunity to review the place after we left - this information is posted on the web site so that future prospects can see what past guests have to say.  Most of the reviews are positive but some point out deficiencies - frankly, I find these more valuable: some honest feedback.  We liked the guy and found the place as advertised; moreover, some of the worries we had - noise, safety, location - were unfounded and I said so.  I can only hope this might be salve on the mind of the next anguished guy like me who's looking for someplace to stay.

Our landlord also had the opportunity to review us on the web site.  If a guest is a pain in the ass I would assume the general rental community wants to know - if someone trashes your place or makes a lot of noise you can put out the word to your fellow landlords.  He shot back a very positive set of comments.  This made me feel good - I consider myself an ambassador of my home country and I consider myself an ambassador of general do-gooding. 

Our second place was the much discussed scaffolding apartment in Nimes where a distressed and uber-honest woman refunded much of my money.  In the past I would have handled this differently - I would have assumed the worst and made an ass of myself.  My experience is that when I make an ass of myself that things don't work out very well.  If I assume an argument is in the offing then an argument is what I get.  I provided a lavish review for this landlord - there is no greater comfort than in a wrong made right.  Anybody can do it the right the first time - it's a superstar who can correct a mistake with dignity.

Now we're in place three.  It's a nice apartment with a spectacular view and we found it quickly and on the fly due to the scaffolding situation.  We've found it hard to communicate with our hosts - they almost never respond to an initial question and a lot of the answers are vague and incomplete.  The customer in me isn't thrilled that I'm being treated like this and I imagine - wait for it - the Worst!  My guess is that they aren't used to longer term renters like this and I think the language barrier has been stiff.  

My initial inclination has been to scorch the walls with a tough review.  I doubt I do this.  I don't think that their mishandling of minor details warrants it.  I keep my cool and I get treated well.  I bitch like the dick that I am and things get all bogged down.

Don't bitch is the advice.

Travelogue

THIS POST IS MORE OF A TRAVELOGUE THAN MY USUAL WITTY, INSIGHTFUL BRILLIANT INSIGHTS ON ALL THINGS SEAWEED.  HOWEVER, I DO HAVE A COUPLE OF FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO SEE WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP.  IF YOU'RE JUST LOOKING FOR WAYS TO RECOVER FROM ALCOHOLISM I SUGGEST YOU CLOSE UP YOUR COMPUTER AND GO FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS SOME IDEA WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE THIS IS CLEARLY NOT ME.

4/1/14: Barcelona
I didn't set my alarm today which is not like me but a direct result of having some time to get on the current time zone - with a 10 day vacation there's a lot of pressure to get up and get moving, all while feeling pretty much like shit.  I believe with all my heart and soul in the reality of jet lag, a chronobiological problem caused by a disruption to the body's circadian rhythm sleep patterns.  In the past by the time my body adapted to the new time zone I was on a plane headed home where I could suffer from jet lag all over again.

We did some dawdling - coffee in a sun-dappled square on a perfect morning; sandwiches on a long narrow park where a quite large replica of the Arc de Triomphe stands guard; a nap.  The evening's festivities were disrupted when we tried to take a slightly different route home and got lost in the maze of narrow, winding streets that make up the Medieval Quarter.   A series of slight angles can add up to one great big dislocation.  We knew we were in a bit of trouble when three guys at a shop didn't know where our street was, let alone our building.  

So we retrace our steps.  The walk to the park took a few minutes so we not unreasonably assumed the walk home would take about the same amount of time.  We walked for a half hour before asking for directions from the useless pustules at the shop and then walked a half hour back before completing the circuit home.  God was laughing - we were just a couple of streets over when we sought help - if we had turned right we would have been home lickity split.  We were circling the place like buzzards.  It was a little discombobulating to get lost before we were on the new time zone and still fully jet-lagged.  We weren't ready for a wander-blissfully-lost adventure just yet.

After a snack we hook up with Barcelona K and head to a meeting - a nice mix of Brits, Irish, Americans, and English-speaking Spaniards.  They do it just like we do back home.  We know that France is going to be a wasteland for The Fellowship so we're going to cherish these get-togethers.  

Barcelona is cooking.  There are so many people out and about and dinner time is much later than we're used to - restaurants are packed at 10PM and deserted at 7.  It's funny to be finishing a meal at 11PM with people still streaming in to eat.  Thankfully the portions are a little more reasonable so we don't feel like we're going to bed with a heifer in our gut.

4/2/14: Barcelona
Slept late which was necessary and felt good.  The 6,000 mile travel day with all of the time zone crossing means we were up for most of 24 hours and had a 9 hour time difference - some catch-up was in order.  Not that we feel great but we feel better. 

We do some standard tourist things: visit the Cathedral and head to La Rambla, a world-class mind-blow.  Barcelona has a reputation as a place to get your pocket picked if you're not careful - Barcelona K says if you lose your wallet you won't know until you get home - they're that good.  Most of the time it's the people with their heads up their butts that get taken advantage of, which is why I'm kind of worried.  La Rambla is one, big long stream of people, most of them tourists.  The strip - maybe a mile long - is full of little stands, restaurants overcharging people out the wazoo for pedestrian meals, and the infamous frozen mime-statue area where people dress elaborately, paint themselves completely, and hold themselves in different poses hoping to attract some tips.  One end of La Rambla is at the ocean; the other end is Placa Catalunya, a large square with a huge fountain.

It's all OK.  We did the tourist march and hung out with tourists.  We left our quiet little neighborhood with locals wandering around and were in the fray in 5 minutes.  Frankly, it wasn't all that interesting.  Tour buses and cruise ships de-gorging people for the exact same itinerary, the groups identified by badges or handbags or ridiculous little hats, the leader holding up an umbrella or a stick with a dead parakeet on it, something to say: "Over here, numbnuts."  Forgettable.

BarcelonaK had recommended a restaurant not far from our apartment that specialized in Catalan specialties.  We stumbled into the place by chance and had dinner - I got to practice my Spanish with a kid who spoke pretty decent English.  We got comped some dessert and olives - I think people really appreciate the effort.

4/3/14: Barcelona
The best olives in the world in this burg.  There's an Olive Guy at the market.  I've gone in and asked for selection, 5 euros worth.  They make your knees buckle.  I walk past a legumes shop where a little woman in a cap and frock sells nothing but legumes.  I think it's the most impressive shop I've seen here: cooked legumes, raw legumes, canned legumes.  She ladles the cooked variety into plastic bags for her customers.

Across the street from our apartment is a little store called Perfumeria Lider.  It sells only perfumes and perfumed soaps.  I have never seen anyone in the store let alone buying something.  I figured it's a money-laundering operation for a meth kingpin.  I look her up on the web for a giggle - 37 years in this location.  Next door we have the Cafes Laracas - a sliver of a shop run by a Catalan and his Vietnamese wife, opening at about 8AM, closing at about 8PM, 6 days a week, no lunch break taken.  The shops on my street - Carrer de Sant Pere Mes Baix are killing me dead.  Dozens of them, all shapes and sizes, snaking back into Medieval buildings.  Bread shops inside bread shops, convenience stores on top of convenience stores, cafes and restaurants, shoe stores, little clothing shops, and fruit and vegetable people by the dozen,right on the doorstep of the main market for the area.  I usually go to see grandma and grandpa and grandson.  I greet them, silently select items and hand them over to be weighed, and they tell me a price.  I pay, thank them, and leave.  I do not have the slightest feel for what the number will be although it's always reasonable.  There's a convenience store next to the apartment where I go to buy a bottle of fuzzy water each night.  It's all part of the commerce of Seaweed.

The main market is called Mercat Santa Maria.  It's a thing to behold.  There are vendors of fresh fruits and vegetables, butchers, fishmongers, a dried fruit guy, a legume lady, a titan of the olives, and an excellent bread shop.  I have been there many, many times - daily at least, often more than once a day.  I usually walk quickly through, sizing up the shops, avoiding eye contact, deciding how to say something close to what I want to say so that I'll get something close to what I want even though I'm not sure what I want most of the time.  I have not been disappointed.  I've been talked into a few expensive items but that seems a small price to pay. 

A lot of the older buildings don't have working gas lines so the residents actually use bottled gas to cook and heat water.  And the delivery guy doesn't come in a truck or a van and he doesn't have a schedule and you can't order the gas - rather he walks around the neighborhood with a half dozen canisters on a hand cart, banging one of them with a wrench.  Loudly.  If you want gas you gotta signal down to him.  If you're running low and he comes by when you're taking a crap you might have a cold shower.

People hustle here.  Occasionally we pass a man, obviously an immigrant, scavenging things.  These scavengers fall into two categories: dudes with shopping carts full of metal items and a few odds and ends they hope to be able to sell and dudes lugging large laundry bags full of cloth of some kind; huge bags slung over their shoulders, bent to the task.  (Blog 4/4).

The big highlight today was sitting in a tiny neighborhood restaurant full of locals jabbering at a high volume - unintelligibly to us, trying to order something off of the menu, eventually giving up and going to the food prep area and pointing at some stuff that looked good and still not getting what we pointed at anyway, in the midst of two vicious games of dominoes that were being punctuated by the dominoes being slammed on the table with the report of a Kalashnikov, accompanied by what I must assume was some venomous trash-talking.  

The big cathedral?  Eh.  Looked like your average big cathedral.  The big art museum?  100 people in line because it was a rainy day.  The small modern art museum?  Inexpensive and empty.  

4/7/14: Barcelona
We tried to visit a big tourist attraction today called the Sagrada Familia.  We had a nice walk through nice neighborhoods to get to this world renowned place.  It was actually kind of funny to see just how many other people were there, because a conservative estimate would be a million.  There were a million people in line.  The line started in front of the church, stretched the length of one long block, and curled around the back.  There were seriously a lot of people queued up.  We seriously didn't try to go in.  I did, however, walk back to the entrance, start my video camera, and follow the line as it snaked around the building - it felt like I was shooting pictures of a concentration camp based on the facial expressions and body language of those poor souls.  Those people are still standing there today.  There is no waythey got in to see that place and if they did, it must have sounded like a jet engine test center in there, with sounds bouncing all over the stone, high-ceilinged interior.

We sat outside for a while, musing over the fact that the cathedral has been under construction for a hundred years.  The guy who designed it died before he completed all of the plans so someone else drew some stuff up and they got to work, mashing the different visions together, in slow motion.  It was almost as if the construction was the attraction.

"I think they need to go into therapy with this church," SuperK said.  "They don't know how to stop."

"I've lost some respect for them," she added.

"How could they not finish this place in a hundred years?" she asked.

I stood back and listened respectfully for my wife was on a roll.

We took off for another world renowned attraction - a park with sculptures by the world renowned architect who designed the church.  On the way we stopped for coffee and had a great conversation with a nice man who gave us all kinds of tips and information.  It was a lot of fun.  The church was no fun.  We grabbed a taxi because the park is at the top of a steep hill - an extravagance for the chronically cheap - piloted by another nice guy.  It was a fun taxi ride up to the park where we found all of the people who couldn't get into the Sagrada Familia.  They were all there, shelling out another stiff entry fee - the "Gaudi Gouge," SuperK called it - to see attractions that seemed dubious at best.  It looked like the centerpiece was an empty bull ring with people sitting on stone benches.

We walked back down the hill, toward our neighborhood.  We peeled off on a little side street and had a nice pizza lunch, in the sun, at a 4 table local bar.  I trotted out my Spanish and befuddled a businessman eating there. It was fun.  We walked home, stopping to sit at a park and over a coffee at a small bar.

4/5/14: Barcelona
We're still sleeping in a bit - this has been a blessing as opposed to other trips where, because time is short, we've had to get up and go 'cause time's short.  We stroll the neighborhood and end up at Barcelona's Arc de Triomphe.  The arch presides over Passeig de Lluis Comapnys, a wide promenade leading to the Ciutadella Park - more on that later.  It's a good place for a sit and some people watching.

Then . . . we decide to strike out on our own, without a map - who needs a $#!! map, anyway? - to find the Placa de Catalanya, only the biggest $#!! square in Barcelona. The Medieval part of this city is very, very tricky.  Streets waver in and out, almost imperceptibly, dead end and then start up again at the slightest of different angles, pop into little squares with several outlets, begging for jet-lagged tourists to try to find their way.  Normally, I have a great internal compass - I'm good at feeling my way around a place - but here I'm beyond lost.  It has not been unusual to get so turned around that I'm going in the exact opposite direction of where I should be going.  This is one of those days.  We get way off track in a residential neighborhood with no restaurants or services and get good and lost.  By the time we get our bearings and find someplace to eat - a crappy, packed take-out place - we're both starved and jumpy and full of urine - normally not a big deal but one of the side effects of jet-lag is that we don't always remember to eat.  So it ends up being the middle of the afternoon and your stomach thinks it's 4 AM and you just forget to eat.

That was kind of it for the big adventures for the day.  We take a nap and I head to my little square for a sit and a meditate.  When I get moving too fast the best solution is often to stop and meditate, but it's one of the hardest things to remember to do.

I told Barcelona K about our experience at the Modern Art Museum.  He seemed perplexed.

"Huh," he said.  I'm not very confident when someone starts a conversation with "huh."  It's a very skeptical word.  He didn't make me feel like I was on the right page.  Little did he know that I can't even find the book.

"That's the Parliament Building," he said.  "I didn't know the art museum was ever there."

"It's on the map I just bought this week," I pointed out.

He shrugged his shoulders.

SuperK and I had a big fight.  We're not speaking to each other in Spanish.  We're fluent in not speaking to each other in different languages.

IIIn my experience the tourist areas are where you find the tourists and service providers who treat tourists like crap.  Not all of them do but a lot more than in the non-tourist areas.  I can't really fault them all that much - they're dealing with people in a big hurry to have a good time who aren't being all that polite or understanding.  I bet it's easy to say: "I'm never going to see that person ever again and he's kind of a jerk, anyhow."

We had a very nice experience with a taxi driver that I hailed in an obscure square far from the tourist area.  He estimated a price and that's what the price was.  Every few blocks he'd tell us how close we were getting - he wanted to reassure us that the price was going to be about what he said.  I gave him a nice tip.  We also hailed a taxi right in the middle of the tourist area and this guy was rude and unhelpful.  He charged us a lot more than the nice guy did to go a shorter distance.  I gave him roughly no tip.  I got out my tip calculator and multiplied 12 euros by 0.00% and gave him the full amount indicated.

We've mostly eaten on side streets and quiet squares.  The food has been good and reasonably priced.  Today we ate on the world-famous La Rambla.  It is quite the spectacle and we knew we would pay more to have a table with comfy chairs right in the middle of the chaos.  We ordered two meals and two drinks, declining the offer of bread.  The waiter brought the bread anyway, dropping one piece on the ground, and charged us $5 for some of the food we did not order.   He did not replace the fumbled toast.  Our two small bottles of water cost us about as much as a two bedroom apartment in downtown Berlin.

4/13/14:  Barcelona
Today Barcelona is the victor.  We are done - stick a fork in us. We have been behaving like good drunks - full speed ahead!  The idea of an extended vacation was to mix in some sightseeing with some hanging-out time but it's pretty hard to do - there's so much to see and we've come from so far away and we're goddam drunks goddammit and we don't know how to do anything halfway.  Our feet are sore, our backs ache, but on we trudge.

We head over to BarcelonaK's for a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.  It was a surreal experience watching the Reds vanquish the Tampa Bay Rays from an apartment in Barcelona.  We speculate that we're the only three people in a city of a million tuned in to the game.  I asked K if it was fun for him to be able to speak in English: "You don't know how great it is to watch this without having to explain every little thing that's going on."

It has been good to spend some time with him.  A unique bonding experience centered on some good Barcelona meetings which are a nice mix of Americans, Irish, English, and English speaking natives.

In Transit: 4/14/14
Car rental walk; drive to hotel; parking garage episode (that place was seriously small - didn't know that I had to pay before trying to exit the structure.  A nice employee gives me the heads up on how to do it.  I slap him a high-five and off we go).  The driving is fun and easy. The traffic isn't that bad for a big city, our directions were good, and we have a smooth trip, with a couple of stops for coffee and snacks on the way, including excellent coffee from a machine - gotta love France.  The temperature heats up - our car has no a/c.  We make a slight mis-turn on the way in and tour the outskirts of Nimes before finding the apartment - the friend of our host is waving from us from the window as we drive by.  Melt down because of a sheath of scaffolding covering our building and a strong solvent smell, so off to bed.  

Our last day in Barcelona was full of the little experiences that make travel such a joy and such a burden. The challenges that I don't want to face followed by the joy of transcending the challenge, of finding that the challenge wasn't so challenging and what exactly was I so wrought up about anyhow, goddammit?  There's easy - which is easy - and there's a challenge - which isn't but is so satisfying later on.

I like 'em both, for different reasons.  When I'm in the easy stuff I get bored but when I'm in the difficult stuff I start thinking: "What the hell am I putting myself through this difficult stuff when I could be doing something easy instead?"  It's never the right thing with me.

Anyway, we got up and walked down to the car rental place which went very well, ruining my attempts to make it very stressful.  We forgot to bring our passports but lovely Esther at Eurocar came up with a work-around.  I'm the driver and I piloted the car out into the Barcelona traffic.  I had worried about this, too - roads in Europe are approximately the size of an alley in the United States and roads in the Medieval quarter are approximately the size of my left foot in a tennis shoe.  It was a no-sweat experience as well and we found the parking garage pretty close to our apartment.  The garage was a beautiful example of managing to fit 2,000 cars into a space approximately the size of my foot in an over-sized tennis shoe.  We loaded up our stuff and hit the road to France, using the directions Barcelona K had given me.  Smooth sailing, no obstacles, no problems on a list of several things that I had queued up to worry about.

Vaguely, we know that it's all going to work out and we'll have a hell of a story to tell.  I videotape the whole mess, certain that the apartment owner, Arlette, is going to refuse to let us out of our commitment so we'll need all of the documentation we can get to make our case.  We make a nice preliminary swing past the arena, through the town, and climb the gardens up to the tower.  We sit in the sun downtown and have coffee, served by a French guy mumbling to himself.

When we get back we find that Arlette is horrified and has offered all kinds of very kind solutions to release us from our contract.  Moreover, the situation begins to sort itself out and we see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We find a nice place in a smaller town about 20 miles due east.  I shop for dinner at the Spar and spar with a nice kid who tries to speak some English. We watch Episode One, Season One of Downton Abbey and find it wildly entertaining.  

Nimes: 4/16/14
Spent an easy morning.  We walked back to the Jardines de la Fontaine, or Gardens of the Fountain.  There were indeed beautiful gardens with a couple of nice fountains, statues of vague figures - one wearing a bow tie so we'll assume he isn't from Roman times -  and Temple of Diana, a ruin from the 1st century BC.  We visited the Tour Magne, set up on a high hill overlooking the city - we climbed to the top and had a magnificent view over the old town and surrounding area.  The entire climb up to the tower was through a park area with lots of benches and people reading, chatting, eating.  We bumped into one lady who brought food and water for a large cadre of apparently stray cats - they looked to be in pretty good shape so good job cat lady.

At the top was a large group of French children - speaking French - who were sketching.  Tried to imagine that in the States.  On the way down we saw a small child-sized coat lying in the path.  SuperK, the trooper, took it up to the group.  When she returned she reported that none of the children had lost a coat.  That's when we noticed a man and two small children a few benches down.  Ah hah.  SuperK went over - luckily he spoke some English - and discovered it was indeed one of his children's coats. A nice encounter.

"He was SO good-looking," she reported to me.

Cup of coffee at the Kiosk Picasso where the coffee was OK - the waitress was mixing batter in a bowl.  Tried to imagine that happening in a park kiosk in the States, or having a kiosk named at all, let alone after Picasso.  We lunched at a cafe - chicken and fries and salad, with Orangina.

Last stop was at the Maison Carree, an small amazingly well-preserved Roman temple in the old city.  Our cultural ticket included a visit to the interior - to our surprise it was a small theater where they showed a movie about Nimes, in French, with a bunch of French actors really hamming it up.  We yukked at their expense until we did some reading about the city and found out that the movie did a pretty damn good job.  Still, they hammed it up.  Tried to imagine Romans and Gauls speaking Parisian French and hamming it up.  Failed in this effort.

Nimes:  4/17/14
Spent an easy morning.  Sipping coffee, eating muesli and fruit, doing some writing.  We've eaten most of our breakfast meals at home, alternating between oatmeal and muesli, with fruit and toast and jam.  The bread is transcendent.

We went to the Nimes amphitheater, a very well preserved Roman ruin, and learned a lot about gladiators who were real bad-asses.  They were trained to fight and the fights were with real weapons, sometimes to the death depending on the whim of the crowd and most importantly, the local ruler.  There are a bunch of different gladiator types, distinguished by a variety of shields, armor, helmets, weaponry, and fighting styles.  They developed over the years and there were specific pairings - one type of gladiator would only fight a couple of different opponents.

There were also less popular fights to the death between wild animals or condemned prisoners and bullfights began to make an appearance.  These types of contests seemed to presage a lessening of Roman life and vanished when Christianity became the official national religion.
Walked to the oldest and best preserved of the gates that were the entry points when the city was completely walled.  Not much left of it.

4/18/14: Nimes
Archaeological museum day - this was a pretty funny place.  It looked more like a museum for archaeological museums.  Seriously, they should dust every now and then and try to find something more impressive than a house cat and a beaver, both snarling, and how about turning on a few lights?  There are far more workers than visitors and they cheerfully babble on and on in French.  No matter that you say something in English and then say in French: "I don't speak French."  They aren't slowed by that a bit.  Cathedral. 

4/19/14: Nimes
One of those vaguely annoying travel days.  It was windy and chilly in the morning which kind of put the kibosh on sitting outside.  We had pretty much done everything to do in Nimes but were a day away from our departure date.  There was a lot of desultory step retracing, punctuated by a vertical nap in the park, in the sun, on a bench, like two old dowagers.  I think we were ready to go and I think we were glad we didn't have to go yet.  We sit and speculate on what people are saying.  We can't imagine the French getting mad or getting into a fight or committing a crime.  They don't seem angry enough.  I think I could beat up one or two of them and I couldn't beat up anybody.

4/20/14: In Transit
We packed up and left our industrial apartment.  It was just OK - a lot of space which the quirk Arlette had over-packed with a LOT of stuff.  We spent a lot of time banging into things and knocking things over and squeezing by things.  Arlette had a cooktop and a toaster oven but no microwave and coffee was made in a prehistoric looking percolator type device.  I'm very good with coffee making devices but this thing was positively Medieval and I never get the hang of it, except for the burning-my-hand part of the operation.  We're not sure if it's my technique, the percolator, or the coffee itself.  

Filled the car with gas - $60 in a Fiat seriously small - paying about twice what we pay in the States, then promptly got lost in the old part of Nimes.  We also got lost in transit for a while - in Tarascon - and drove through some really quite authentic Medieval lanes.  The rest of the drive was uneventful, traveling through a dampened French countryside full of grape arbors and olive trees until we made it to St. Remy de Provence.  Our host met us at a great little apartment overlooking the town square and the main church.  It's always a thrill to actually find one of these places in these twisted, confusing old towns.

A big 26 for SuperK - job well done.

4/21/14: St. Remy
A rainy day.  We dawdle and wander briefly through the town.  The shops are kind of uniform and touristy - white linens, very expensive garnish foods - olives, tapenades, etc. - clothes, and restaurants.  I don't know how anyone can afford to eat here - lunches appear to run $20 a person in every restaurant we see.  We've eaten a lot of panini and sandwiches and have been preparing meals - breakfast and dinner - at home.  The stroll was strangely exhausting and we crash down for a huge nap; afterwards walking briskly out to the sanitarium where Mr. Van Gogh stayed for a while.  There are a series of hiking trails through the local mountains that we stumble upon; we plan on a few hikes through the countryside during our stay.  We go past parks with men playing some kind of bocce ball game - shuffleboard with metal spheres - ending up at a VW van outfitted as a mobile pizza cart.  We watch as the nattily attired proprietor makes our pizza from scratch and give money to his lovely young daughter, laughing that these would be carnies back in the States.  The pizza was excellent.

4/22/14: St. Remy
An easy morning before driving off to Les Baux du Provence.  What we thought was going to be a sleepy little town turned out to be really quite a thrill.  It was the site of an ancient castle and fortification built right into the rock of a small mountain overlooking a valley of grapevines and olive trees.  We spent a great couple of hours walking around, lunching on a - you guessed it - pannini, and bought a French tapestry of a painting by Modigliani - leave it to the Seaweeds to buy an French reproduction of an Italian painter while in France.  At least he was living in France when he painted it.  The painting on which the tapestry is based - not the tapestry itself. We think.

4/23/14: St. Remy
Today was market day in Saint Remy.  There is a collection of traveling food and general merchandise vendors who cycle between five towns in this area for a big extravaganza of shopping and buying on each town's Market Day.  Impossible to imagine this spectacle in the States - it looks like each vendor has a pre-assigned spot that they return to each week.  Some of them have fancy trucks and trailers that open out, some sell from rickety tables and platforms that they unload from cars and vans, all kinds of techniques, none very efficient looking, and there's a lot of greeting and kissing in the triple smacker French style.  We buy cheese from a guy selling about three kinds of cheese and three only; tapenades from a tapenade lady - there were lots of people selling this stuff, kind of a mashed up olive concoction to put on toast; a small bag of prunes for like $7 - the woman was sold us hard on all of the qualities of this particular prune, which looked, smelled, and tasted like a $1 prune; a teeny, tiny bottle of olive oil; and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables from a few different vendors.  We spent a lot of money - a lot of money on these purchases which added up to about no meals.  We felt like we were walking through the Park Avenue of  foods and we were in Hick Town, France.  The whole thing was fairly exhausting.  Oh, well, when in France . . . 

Back in our apartment which overlooked the market I dozed in the sun in an easy chair, like the old man that I am.  And then we whirled back out into the fray, heading downtown instead of uptown, where we found the Wal-Mart end of the market: shoe and clothing vendors, cheap accessories, home improvement items, a locksmith (yeah, sure, here there's a locksmith) and the like.  The stuff was crap but it was cheap and everyone was doing a brisk business.

Again, strangely tiring.  SuperK and I call this Flu Walking, so we laced up our Nikes and headed out to the countryside to the Sanitarium where Van Gogh spent some time after slicing off his ear.  There are a series of plaques showing representations of his paintings with the landscapes and vegetation that inspired the work.  It was a nice, quiet interlude, and it felt good to be out of the fray.

4/24/14: St. Remy
After a leisurely breakfast - we have been eating muesli or oatmeal; fresh fruit, and bread with cheese - we walked back out to the sanitarium where there are some Roman antiquities in remarkably good shape - an enormous old mausoleum and the remains of an impressive city gate that once marked the entrance to St. Remy - now it sits in an odd spot outside of town.  The site is very near a national park called the Alpilles, a small range of mountains rising out of the Rhone River valley - where we found a good trail and walked for a few hours up to a vantage point over the valley in which St. Remy nestles.  The foot of the mountains are covered with grape vines and olive trees and the tops feature a lot of rocky outcroppings.  Legend has it that the French Resistance in WWII started in these hills.  It felt good to exercise our creaky muscles.

The tourists clear out of St. Remy by late afternoon and we head down to a small square with a few restaurants and a water fountain just outside of our front door.  We sit on a bench, close our eyes, and listen to life murmur around us. 

4/25/14: St. Remy
Awoke to thunder and rain, water pouring off the roof of the church.  We drove out to a small town called Fontvieille which had no real tourist attractions but none of the French small town Provencal charm that probably exists only in my mind.   We wandered some gloomy lanes, looked in on a gloomy church, passed by a small market and then climbed a hill where an old ruin of a windmill stood.  A five minute walk away was a chateau that the French writer Daudet, whoever the hell that is, used as a respite from Paris.  The sign said 5 minutes and it ended up being 20 - the opposite of the States where a 20 minute walk takes 5.  The chateau was closed.

Driving home we looked in on the Chapelle Saint Gabriel, a 900 year old ruin of a church, in the middle of an olive grove, infested with bees and critters.  We went to the twin ville of Tarascon and Beaucaire, which was grimy and uninspiring - the main inhabitants seemed to be a lot of Arab immigrants.  It was vaguely threatening.  Most of our time was spent looking for a bathroom for SuperK - the main church was padlocked and most of the restaurants were closed, although bars seemed to be doing a thriving business.  The bathroom we found was very public and very diseased looking.  We found a little patisserie for sandwiches and coffee, located on a desolate looking channel with creaky looking antique houseboats floating on the oily water.  It began to rain.  We beat it home. 

4/26/14: St. Remy
Small market right outside of our window this morning.  The farm people in France are just so damn fashionable - one of the women is wearing a gaily colored silk scarf.  She peeled and cored an apple and ate it with a piece of bread  for breakfast.  Foie gras is big.  The food is really, really expensive.  It is unbelievably expensive - I can see why the French pay a lot more for their food than the Americans.  The food is better but one pays for the privilege.

I'd love to know what these people are saying to each other as they set up their booths.  A lot of talking and gesticulating. 

I hit the trail for another long hike today on a very challenging up and down trail - didn't see anyone else the whole time.  There were good views from the top of the surrounding groves and the town in the distance.  I strolled by the Van Gogh sanitarium - there is a sort of guided walking tour with occasional signs explaining how and why he was painting what he was painting.  Another square sit and home to use my purchases this morning to make ratatouille. I have nothing but salt and pepper, olive oil, and my vegetables and the meal is outstanding.

4/27/14: St. Remy
Not much to report today - we spent the morning resting a bit and working the laundry room equipment in the apartment upstairs.  This is another example of how and why things take so much longer while on vacation submerged in an alien culture - it took a while to figure out the washing machine, using a translation app to try to decipher the controls, then we washed the first load of clothes with no soap because we weren't familiar with the soap or where to put it.  The dryer didn't run for more than 20 seconds so we had to totally populate our windows with clothes blowing in the wind or sit in the laundry room, working a puzzle, restarting the machine when it faltered.  SuperK figures out how to get the dryer running eventually but by then it's lunch time.

A square sit; more laundry; a reprise on the square, then off to meet Europcar for our car exchange.  They gave me two possible times and dates - my choice.  I chose but they didn't confirm.  I f/up and they ignore me again.  We go to the rendezvous spot anyhow and they don't show.  

We stroll along the route that St. Remy has set up to highlight V. Van Gogh's stay in town.  There is a small museum of sorts at the sanitarium where he stayed, including the room where he lived and painted prolifically the last year of his life.

4/28/14: St. Remy
Today we get up and drive to Arles, a town of about 25,000 on the Rhone River.  The highlight is a very well-preserved Roman era coliseum.  Most of the outrageously expensive tourist sites now provide personal audio guides as part of the admission.  It's a great deal - now we can tour the site and listen to a very in-depth commentary in English explaining the history of the stuff we're viewing; as opposed to stumbling around on our own, too cheap to pay for a guide.  Nimes has a few churches which we peer at myopically - they've begun to blend together, these dark and gloomy old fortresses of fear and intimidation.  

We always stop for a coffee at some point and usually split a sandwich of some sort.  The restaurants are outrageously expensive - $20/per person for lunch is not unusual - but the big drawback is the time it takes to order, get served, and get the check. While we appreciate the care that goes into the food preparation, the professionalism of the staff,  and the implication that lingering over a meal with friends is a wonderful thing we do have a lot of stuff that we want to see.  Kebabs and paninis are the big winners so far.  We can point, pay, and chow.

We have also been able to spend some time appreciating the natural beauty of the areas that we're visiting and this is a benefit of having more time to spend.  Nimes was no exception - we sat for a while in a great park by a great fountain and we sat for a while along the Rhone watching the river traffic go by, cursing the people sitting in the sun, on their nice river cruise with someone doing everything for them.  Not the way we prefer to go but after a few months floundering around, most things a lot of work,  the concept sounds good for a little break.

4/29/14: St. Remy
A get-on-each-others nerves day (blog post 5/2).  I head out to the Alpilles for a long hike.  I take a trail that veers off the main artery and end up on a tough track - very up and down, a few times so steep that the trip down, on loose gravel, is a bit dicey.  But it was great to be walking in the French countryside.  I climbed up high enough to see the city down below me; I ran into guys on mountain bikes, a French family who asked me for directions, and dodged a couple of mountain bikes zooming by.  There are a lot of summer homes for wealthy French people here and lots and lots of goats and grapevines and olive trees.  It felt good to wear my body out physically and not just mentally.  The trail was so steep at points that I had to grab onto shrubbery to give my footing a hand, lest I end up on my ass and sliding.  I detour a few times on small side tracks that end a few hundred yards in, unaware that I've blown by signs saying something about wild boars.  Probably not good things.  I can't imagine what a positive comment about a wild boar would be.

4/30/14: St. Remy
It was market day so I got up and made a foray through the fruit and vegetable stands.  This is another of my favorite shopping experiences because I get to grab things and hand them to a guy who waits patiently.  The French do NOT rush food.  Then I pay him whatever he requests.  The fresh stuff is very reasonably priced as is the bread - I've learned to watch the cheese guys because they'll kill you dead, as will anyone selling small specialty items of an indeterminate nature.

We drove to Avignon, the city where some popes or cardinals or something broke off from Rome and became the Anti-Popes or Quasi-Popes or something like that and it was all very serious and religiousy so we didn't care that much about it.  We walked around the very impressive castle compound but declined to pay to go in, appalled at the price and wary of an old, emptied old building.  Really the highlight of the morning was a series of spectacular U-Turns I made trying to find a parking place.  The city was pretty empty which surprised us given the dearth of parking.  The main cathedral was closed; the ubiquitous gardens - Rocher des Doms, or "Dom's Rock"  - were small and sparse.  We could see what was left of the Pont Saint-Benezet - or "10 Euro to walk 40 yards out onto a ruined bridge" - spanning the Rhone.

So we cross the Rhone and drive a short distance into Villenueve Lez Avignon - or "non-touristy site like twice as cool as Avignon" - and walked by the Tower Philippe le Bel, an ancient defensive tower which allowed us to see the spectacular vista of Avignon and the Palais du Papes across the river.  We strolled through the town square - full of small mansions that wealthy cardinals somehow got the money to pay for and then build so they could enjoy a great view and not feed hungry people instead - and climbed up to Fort Saint-Andre, a 14th century fort and monastery built for defensive purposes.  It was mostly deserted and very, very cool.  Limped back to the car and returned home.

5/1/14: St. Remy
May Day - a public holiday in Europe to celebrate worker's rights.  It's a big deal here - the night before there was a somber procession through town with drums banging and candles flickering and people marching.  In the States we have Labor Day where people get drunk and grill hamburgers - I fear we've lost some of the appreciation for what the Working Man has done for us all.

Avignon wore us out - the long hike blew out SuperK's knee so I went on another long country hike.  We took a long nap.  We spent a pleasant afternoon sitting in the sun in the square and doing our shopping.  The square here is outstanding - no cars, a nice central fountain with some half-fish, half-monster, half-human figures spitting water, stores and apartments ringing the space, one cafe with a bustling owner serving what I must assume are very pricey drinks, and little kids engaged in the national sport of children: hassling pigeons.  It's a chance to Be Here instead of Do Something.  Both are nice but we do more than we be, you feel me?

Parking is a blood sport here.

5/2/14: St. Remy
Off to Orange - or "orange" in English - to see the sites.  It's incredibly windy - my VW Polo is blown all over the road.  It's good to find the A-7 superhighway and hit 100MPH.  It's not Europe until I drive a car at triple digit speed.  And the roundabouts are part of the driving experience as well - one is thrown into a circular maze of merging cars and signs in French pointing off at odd directions.  I make more than one tactical mistake so I re-tour more than one roundabout.  We rarely see traffic signals.  Barcelona K gave this advice: Stay to the right and use your turn signals.

Smooth sailing all the way in - not usually a given - including finding parking.  A French lady offers to help with the parking meter; I trot out "Mon francais is terrible" which helps, I think, or at least it doesn't make it worse.  She's sweet and it's fun interacting with her.  A lot of people speak some English if I try to speak some French.

The highlight of Orange is the Theatre Antique which is as good as advertised.  It is 2,000 years old, one of the largest and best preserved stone theaters in existence.  It's large and in pretty good shape given a history that was rough more often than not.  We have a coffee and head to the Arc de Triomphe, an original gate to the city, decorated with Roman soldiers dominating the defeated Gauls.

The wind is amazing as we climb a hill to the gardens du jour: the Parc colline Saint-Eutrope.  It has great views over the city and abuts the back of the Theatre.  There are some vestigial Roman-Gallic ruins there.  We get a little lost on the drive back which is momentarily irritating but ends up being OK - we drive through a few small towns and make it home, where we collapse.  We found Orange much more interesting than we had thought so we spent a lot more time there than expected. 

5/3/14: St. Remy
Snow day - we do nothing but hang in the apartment.  The wind is unbelievable and we're worn out.  I mean unbelievable - lean into a gust and when it stops suddenly lose your balance.  There is a much smaller Sat market - a few hardy souls set up shop out there and are buffeted about. A couple of them bail early - the ones that remain see bags and signs blown to kingdom come

5/4/14: St. Remy
Off to Aix-en-Provence today.  We blow into this university town with low expectations - it sounds like a mini-Paris of the south, a little arrogant, with a hint of pretension - and are pleasantly surprised.  One of the most highly suggested activities - right out of my 15 year old tour book which I'm too cheap to replace - is the Route de Cezanne.  We walk through some uninspiring suburbs, finding the route immediately, which is incredible, and end up on a narrow, berm-less road, with a lot of traffic.  We try to imagine Cezanne being inspired by this area - we do imagine anyone with a self-interest in tourism trying to dress up something that is not interesting - and abandon the walk after a while.  The uninspiring part was tolerable - the being run down on an uninspiring road was not.  Maybe Cezanne got to stroll along a quiet country lane and not a road called the D7 which sounds like a branch of the French secret service.

Back in Aix we discover a city full of tremendous public spaces, each with a fountain and a ring of restaurants, fronted with old mansions and hotels.  The houses are not as closely spaced as they are in most of the places we visit so the town feels a lot sunnier and a lot more open.  We stroll an art fair and stop several times to sit and watch, ending up at the Musee of Tapisseries.  There are some 300 year old wall hangings here plus an exposition of photographs from a very disturbing artist named Lucien Clergue.  Also, a temporary exhibit of even more disturbing lithographs from a graphic artist named Frederic Voisin - any time an exhibit is based on The Apocalypse you can bet it's going to be disturbing.  

Once again we go someplace with low expectations and are pleasantly surprised; then we go to museum unaware of a couple of temporary exhibits which turn out to the highlight of the place.  We eat a wonderful chocolate croissant; a terrible hot dog thing in a bland croissant, served to us cold for reasons that we can only assume are malevolent; and some really pretty well and good coffees.  I get in some really pleasant extended 100MPH A7 sessions in my VW Polo.

5/5/14: St. Remy
Hiking day as SuperK does some laundry in the Alien Washing Machine.  The hiking trails here are nice but unspectacular.  It feels good to climb for a while and weary my bones.  This hike ends on a narrow promontory where I can see for miles in every direction.

5/6/14: St. Remy
We drive down to a small town called Eygalieres.  There's also a small town called Eyguieres nearby.  It seems silly to put two towns with such similar spelling within a few miles of each other but to the French it's probably "Stanfield" versus "Smithville."  We let it pass.  We walk a winding lane up to the ruins of a church and bell tower and get a great view of the plain.  Outside of town we swing by the 12th century church of Saint Sexte, who was the 24th pope and served a whole one year, although he was responsible for introducing the designated hitter.

We're stretching a little bit by now.  We've kind of done the Provence region and it's time to move on.  Historically we have moved frequently on vacation to make the best use of little time so we wanted to make sure that we didn't wear ourselves out moving.  We haven't - which is good - although we are a bit at loose ends near the end of each of our stays - which sure as shit isn't bad.

I pay for everything with a credit card at home to take advantage of all kinds of cash back offers from the banks.  These same banks charge sturdy foreign transaction fees overseas so we are temporarily a cash-only couple.  It seems like we're spending a huge amount of money but at the end of the month the amount has been about the same.

We have an electric toilet at this location.  It is a thing of beauty.  It rumbles and splashes, hesitates to collect itself, and then sucks the contents of the bowl down with a wonderfully powerful vacuum-ey whoosh.  Sanabroyeur.  Read it and weep.

Walked around the outskirts of town and through a couple of old cemeteries.  They bury their dead here a little differently.  Actually, they bury them the same way - in the dirt - but they honor the burying with big slabs of marble which they cover with permanent porcelain flowers and pictures of the deceased.

Here are some instructions for our next apartment in the mountain town of Montserrat:

Looking for the welfare of all residents are not permitted: 
Making parties, screams, noise 
Pets 
Make fire on the terrace 
Smoking inside the apartment is completely forbidden
Damn it.  I was really looking forward to some good primal screaming. 

5/7/14: St. Remy
France has been a total wasteland for meetings.  We're not talking about English-speaking meetings - we're talking about any meetings at all.  The only groups I can find in my area are a good 25 miles away - the meetings are at night and the thought of trying to drive into the inner core of some 500 year old Medieval city, in the dark, and find a meeting where no one speaks English makes my blood run cold.  A lot of times there isn't an address for the meeting - as if I can find a number on these buildings - just a street name: Rue de Republique.  It makes me reflect on how stupid it is for me to get wrapped around the axle about some minor personalities when I'm home - I'd gladly have a meeting with 10 of the people who irritate me the most at my regular meetings.  And it makes me wonder at the ease at which I can find meetings at every little town in the States.

All in all another nice day.  It's the Big Market day in St. Remy so I head out early for my shopping.  Last week I waited until later in the morning to let the sun warm things up but got caught up in the big shopping crush - today I get my stuff done early.  It's the exact opposite of The States - fresh fruit and vegetables are cheap and processed shit costs one dearly.  It's the same thing with bottled liquids - water is almost free and pop is $3 a bottle.

We stroll out to the Alpilles and hike for a couple of hours which qualifies us for a big nap.  A square sit and some regular grocery shopping and we call it a day.

5/8/14: St. Remy
The party's over - turn out the lights.  It was time to go yesterday; possibly the day before.  I guess it's best to stay in a place a few days too long rather than the other way around but staying too long can have it's own minor irritations.  We visited a small town called Eugliarias today and found absolutely nothing to see.  It was a nice town but not a place a tourist has to visit.  So we drive back down to Les Baux, the fortress on a mountaintop city, because we spent all of our time in the fortress and none in the little city itself.  We thought maybe we could while away a few hours strolling and window-shopping.

We show up and the place in engorged with tourists - we have to park a couple of time zones away.  By the time we make it into Les Baux we're ready to go home.  We wander a bit and decide on a cup of coffee.  I stop at a small take-out window and order two cups, in my flawless French.  The woman looks at her husband, standing next to an espresso machine, and waves us off.  It was still morning so coffee seemed a reasonable request; the machine appeared to be operational; I was polite and clear in my order.  Rebuffed.

It was souring out of all proportion to the event itself.  It was an indication that we should tootle on down the road and perhaps an indication that I haven't been to a MEETING IN A MONTH!
 Back to the hotel for some packing and final square sitting.  All in all a good stay in France.

5/9/14:  In Transit
The VW Polo is in operation today.  Driving is a blood sport here in Europe.  The tolls on the superhighways are stiff and I spent about $90 filling up my small auto.  That adds up in a hurry. We have done all-public-transportation trips before but we had so many different places we wanted to see that an auto made sense.  We don't see too many big vehicles here - partly a victim of a need for high MPG and partly because the narrow roads won't abide them.

Our GPS is so old it needs to be chucked out the window into the path of an oncoming semi moving at a disturbing velocity.  It can't find roads; it can find roads that we don't want to be on; it sends us here and there and yon and hither; it's all very distracting.  We could pay a few dollars for a new one but why do this when it must feel a deep need of ours to be pissed off at an old GPS?

Our Spanish hostess offers to meet us at a highway interchange and drive us right to our place in a residential neighborhood.  It's glorious - big, perched on a hill with a tremendous view over a tree covered mountain range.  The quiet feels good after all of the noise.  We settle in.

5/10/14: El Bruc
We drive into the small downtown area and find a hiking trail.  The actual monastery complex of Montserrat is perched on top of a mountain range running off into the distance: it means literally "saw-toothed mountains."  The area is criss-crossed with trails, some of them climbing up to the top of the range.  We find a nice one that weaves in and out of the foothills - it's a nice day, warm and sunny.  It's a nice hike - we see lots of people on the trail, who say "hola" or "buenos dias" or "hola-buenos."  It reminds me I'm in Spain.

5/11/14:  El Bruc
SuperK takes a pass and I head back out to the trail complex and walk for 3 hours or so, ending up in another small town with a few restaurants and the obligatory market.  There was a competition of sorts with runners heading up the trails which climb the mountain.

We've gone from a huge city to a small city to a country village to a rural outpost, and I think our enjoyment has increased with each.  The exercise has felt good; the quiet has been nice; and there's a sense that one has conquered an area, seen all there is to see while still having some time to sit and stroll and reflect.  Barcelona is not like that - it is going to be the victor - it is too big and too bustling and there is too much going on.

I can also see that some way to exercise and some way to have actual, face-to-face Meetings are going to be important in the future.  I can't see going someplace and spending a fair amount of time with no Meetings - it's simply too grating.  And our apartment is helping, too - I can see that it's not going to be a good idea to go someplace and skimp on lodgings.  We have a couple of rooms here which allows the two of us some leeway to get the hell away from each other.

5/12/14:  El Bruc
We drive a winding back road, climbing up onto the top of Montserrat, on a foggy, misty, cool morning.  The hoodoo formations of the mountain are wreathed in mist, appearing and disappearing as we drive along.   We drive past several million empty parking spaces and a bus lot with several mega-coaches idling, and into the complex which looks vaguely 20th century.  Late 20th century.  Modern 20th century.  There are several restaurants and several cafeterias and several million trinket shops and a farmer's market gauntlet with a dozen people selling the same stuff, overpriced cheese and overpriced cakes, aggressively offering samples to the passing hordes.

We get into the jam-packed main square to find that the basilica is closed for a few hours each day for religious stuff.  We never figure out how to buy tickets or what you need tickets for or what tickets are, exactly.  Maybe we would have needed a ticket for the basilica - money to get into a church.  There's a nice museum which we fund and enter.  Ah, nice and quiet, beautiful art from the Catalan region plus a few of the masters - allegedly - which we never do find.  After a couple of salons a few groups pour in and begin talking loudly and clogging mightily.  It was like looking at art hung in the outside concourse of a football game for geriatrics.  Outside it's louder and more crowded.  Because the wind is blowing mightily and it begins to rain we grab a coffee in a paper cup and decide to bail.  

On the way to the car we see a trail marker and hop off the road and onto the path.  It winds around the mountain and there are small shrines set up every few yards with benches for reflecting.  In a 100 yards we're all alone on a quiet path in a beautiful setting.  Refreshed we dive back into the increasingly clogged main square, veering off onto another trail.  This one leads upward and onward, winding around the mountain with increasingly wonderful views of the monastery complex.  The hubbub lessens.  We're with other pilgrims but it's quiet and peaceful.  After 45 minutes of climbing we walk out onto a narrow isthmus crowned with a cross, sheer drop-offs on all three sides, where we can see the silent monastery across the gorge.

Shut up, monastery.

After returning to the square we enter a cafeteria complex and buy more coffee in paper cups.  It's lunch time and it's windy and rainy and the tour buses are at max disgorging so the place is absolutely packed and loud with day-trippers trying to choke down some cafeteria food before their buses leave.  We really never do figure out the allure or what we were supposed to see.  It looked like a boondoggle to me.

Once again the tourist sites are trap-like while the wonders are just off the beaten path.

5/13/14: El Bruc
Rain all night pounding on the roof, a lovely sound for someone who lives in an arid place.  We're inside this morning, reading and writing and preparing mightily for a nap.  We drive up to the top of Montserrat and take a hike (blog 5/15/14).  

Afterwards we drop down into El Bruc proper - a sleepy little town with a couple of restaurants and a grocery store - to buy stuff for dinner, only to find the store closed.  That's the way it is here - stores open and close of their own accord, or they don't, depending on the whim of the owner and the store and the culture.  We no longer bat an eye but head off in search of dinner.  We end up at a corporate-looking grocery, much larger than we're used to.  It really is mesmerizing shopping for food - the colors are different, the quantity and type of food is all off.  I can locate seven hundred types of jam but nary a jar of peanut butter and the seafood section has a large, I don't know, end of an octopus arm, whatever that's called.  It is very reasonably priced.

5/14/14: In Transit
Today we climb into our VW Polo and begin the descent from the heady spiritual heights of Montserrat and into the controlled implosion that is Barcelona.  The trip has awakened a whole Pandora's Box of nagging little worries: I need gasoline to avoid the hefty for returning the car un-full but I don't know where the gas stations are - they aren't located every 50 feet like the The States - and I don't want to get off in a bad neighborhood, which seems likely the closer I get to the inner city, while making sure I don't buy the gas too early and use up enough gas to put me in Fine Land, AND, I confess, I'd like to use as much gas as possible without the needle dropping below full which is . . . you know . . . pretty unethical.

Then there's the whole driving in Barcelona thing.  The roads in Europe are roughly the same size as a rain gutter in The States.  Driving rules are flexible and indeterminate.  I would be in a deep, dark dungeon in Vacation City were I to pull half the moves I pull on an average drive here and I may be the most law-abiding driver in Spain.  People really just go where they want to go - there doesn't seem to be much concern for where anyone else is.  If I'm kind and let one person merge then I open the door to a whole merge-a-thon, people merging right at my car.  If you blink you die.  Other drivers can smell your weakness and they come from miles around to merge in front of you.  They make outrageously illegal U-turns to come back and re-merge, laughing all the while.  When you start to recognize the people cutting you off it's time to pull over and take some deep breaths.

The gas thing went OK, $90 to fill the $%!! car notwithstanding, although I did get behind some slacker kids at the station trying to buy tobacco and cokes and snacks and shit.  The attendant rolled her eyes at me as if to say "fuckin' kids."  And I did successfully get the car into the general area of our apartment.  There are so many narrow, Medieval one-way roads in there that if I entered I would never get back out.  Fifty years from now I'd still be in there driving around.  I parked in a no-stopping-ever handicapped loading zone next to a fire hydrant in front of a nursing home while SuperK went for the keys.  I had to move the car several times, shushed out of the way by delivery guys and municipal workers with a "eh, what can you do" good cheer.  I had to move but no one seemed too mad about it.  

I had rivers of sweat pouring off me by the time SuperK returned with the keys - keys the owner didn't want to give her because she wasn't . . . you know . . . me.  The woman holding the keys was a new contact and spoke no English and kept trying to take my wife to the apartment. SuperK managed to finally pantomime: "If you don't give me the keys right now I'm going to kill you."  When she returned I put on my emergency blinkers and we hustled the luggage to our place.  I enjoyed using the blinkers - all the lights on the car go on and off, on and off.  There was no emergency, to the best of my knowledge, beyond the fact that I didn't want to move the car again.  We got the car back to Europcar, full of gas and none the worse for wear and despite a printed sheet warning that people will try to steal your luggage, they'll try to divert you by offering to help some non-existent problem, they'll impersonate a Europcar employee to steal the whole fucking car, for chrissake.  I was vaguely worried about this, too.

On the way back to our apartment we stopped far off the beaten path at a Peruvian restaurant with about 5 tables, and had a fine, fine meal in the sun, pleasantly tired.

SuperK said: "I feel like I'm home."  That's a good feeling.  Everything went fine.  Niggling worries added up to nothing.  I didn't worry about them too much but I shouldn't have worried about them at all.  It was a day of little victories over little challenges and that, my friends, is a big part of what makes travel such a grind and such a joy.

5/15/14: Barcelona
Out the door in the morning to do my grocery shopping.  The main store for some staples - cereal, tomato sauce, soy milk, cheese; the patisserie for bread and sweet rolls; butcher shop for sausage; an olive vendor where I order a selection of all kinds of different olives, delivered to me in a plastic bag; and grandma's fruit and vegetable stand, where grandma talks me into the strawberries, luckily for me.  I think I enjoy shopping for food in a foreign country more so than dining out - it puts me more in touch with the rank and file of the population.  I really enjoy the interaction and the localness of it all.  Each successful purchase is a little victory over foreignness.

SuperK and I stroll the Gothic Quarter, our temporary home.  A warren of narrow lanes and alleyways, some too narrow for a car, full of apartment buildings and local shops.  The buildings all have balconies, all decked with flowers.  We know that a few blocks over the tourist hordes have the tourist shops under siege.  It's relatively quiet where we are, Barcelona speaking.  We have a coffee in a quiet square where I've gone often enough that I recognize the bums.

I feel like a sponge.  Everywhere I go a little drip of the place lands on me until I'm a delicious new flavor.  I look and look and look.  Church bells ring, beckoning the devout and the sinner alike.

We've made most of our meals at home.  I usually buy whatever is fresh and local and we find a way to make a meal out of it.  We've only had salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar, and occasionally garlic, and we've made some very tasty meals.  We get to taste the food and not the condiments or preservatives.  

5/16/14: Barcelona
The vacation is winding down and we've crossed off most of Barcelona's major sites, some worth it and some not.  We are trying to stay Gothic this last week - our routine has been me to the market to stock up; breakfast; leisurely stroll through the 'hood; a nap; a sit in the local square; and dinner at home. 

Tonight we make a meeting of The Fellowship.  It has been 35 days.  Neither my wife or I have gone longer than a couple of weeks between meetings, and that only a time or two.  It's good to be there.  We recognize some of the attendees from a month ago and my wife takes a 26 year chip.  We have learned that we need to make Program accessibility a keystone of any long trips we take in the future.  We've done OK but we've missed the love.

5/17/14: Barcelona
Unable to sit, desperate to move, destined to move, we plow into the masses, moving toward the many gardens of Montjuic and the Olympic Village, site of the '92 Barcelona games.  It's a silly exercise.  We wander around, retracing our steps, ending up at the Village which looks pretty much like a big sports stadium and big basketball arena with nothing going on.

There is a kind of somber remembrance going on in one the parks.  I look up "Barcelona holidays on May 17" and find only the following: 

Galicia Literature Day 

What do people do?

Many people in Galicia read poetry or literature in the Galician language on Galician Literature Day. They may also attend public readings of important literary works. Other people enjoy the early summer weather with family members and close friends during this time of the year in Spain. 
Public life

Public life is generally quiet in the autonomous community of Galicia on Galician Literature Day on on May 17. Many businesses and other organizations are closed. Many stores are closed but some bakers and food stores may be open. Public transport services generally run to a reduced schedule but there may be no services in rural areas. Large events may cause some local disruption to traffic, particularly in town and village centers.

I try to imagine public life in the States grinding to a halt to read Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Frost on a Saturday.  It is beyond my imagining.  We're in Catalonia, not Galicia, so we have no idea what we're witnessing.

We end up in a park that has as its anchor the National Art Museum of Barcelona perched at the top of a long series of stairs.  There are tons of fountains with elaborate sprays and waterfalls and spurtings, and tons of people.  It's all very pleasant.  We share a Bikini sandwich and a Fanta Limona and criticize passersby.

We do get lost - again - on the way home.  Very lost.  Lost as in we could be moving away from our destination lost.  It is the third or fourth time I've gotten Very Lost in Barcelona - I've been a little lost many times in my life but I've got a good sense of direction generally so I rarely get completely turned around like I do here.  There are many slight turns and gentle anglings that it's easy to get all whomper-jawed and back-asswareded. 

5/18/14: Barcelona
Down day - way, way down.  I have a bit of a chest cold.  Tired out.

5/19/14: Barcelona
Staying down.  We walked up to the Hospital Sant Pau today, a collection of buildings that are a perfect representation of Modernist Barcelonean architecture.  Somewhat boondoggle aware we do not go in.  The event was nothing more than a lovely walk through some residential neighborhoods.  All done in. 

5/20/14: Purgatory
Sick, dog-like today.  The cold has moved into my face and I'm sick as a dog.  We have been bootlegging TV on a site called Project Free TV, which was infected by a virus today.  We are out of the TV business.  The trip is winding down here.

5/21/14: Purgatory
DEFINITELY sick which brings on depression and worry.  No remorse but some soul-sickness.