Until Next Time . . .

After 24 days, multiple train stations, airports and bars, we say adios to Spain until next time.
A quick trip to the Barcelona beach this morning . . .












And a short stop at the staircase in in our hotel. And then, goodbye.




















Goodbye to the English translations of varying quality, from perfect to imperfect but understandable to baffling.
















Hasta Luego to the very artistic graffiti in Barcelona.

Mas tardes to the skinny building.

Till next time, to the truly one car garages.














And goodbye to the tacky store window displays in Zaragoza.

Back to Barcelona Via Beach

Begur, Spain is a small town on the Costa Brava – the summer home location for many wealthy people. It has beach after beach, some in little rocky coves and other larger expansive ones, most of which are surrounded by homes built into the rocky cliffs looking over the ocean.

We had dinner in Begur last night at a restaurant where the kitchen and the dining area are pretty much the same room (you can pull this off when you have 8 total tables in the place). The guy prepares the food on a counter, then turns to his right to put it into a wood—fired oven, then pulls it out and hands it to the waiter to deliver. Then we spent the evening walking around town listening to the two clock towers announce the time roughly 45 seconds off from each other, so as soon as the first one stopped the second one started. Which just made everyone in town look at their cell phones to see which clock was more right. This happened every 15 minutes until midnight. Then it started up again at 7 am.

Then we left in this car, which we’ve learned over the last few days strongly preferred to be driven on level roads or going downhill (and it didn’t do great with bumps either) . . .

. . . and we gradually made our way back to the train to Barcelona, but not before swimming at this beach (Sa Tuna).

And lying out on this beach (Plajta Fonda).

And having lunch at this beach (Cala Augiablava).

You could probably make a whole trip out of just this.

Au Revoir, France

The sea, she was agitated this morning.

This caused her to send waves crashing along the walkway into town, which resulted in many people scurrying in between episodes of agitation.











But we somehow made it to a place that serves coffee, from which we could observe the agitated sea.













We took a slightly different turn out of town and ran across this market, where we bought two hats (mine jaunty and Martha’s, I don’t know, maybe self assured?), as well as a bread and a huge chunk of cheese because I don’t know how to say “I actually only need about a quarter of that” in French.








We passed on the open-air oysters that were being sold as a “grab your own” six oysters and a glass of wine for 6 1/2 Euros at 9:30 in the morning. So many reasons not to do that.

And then we walked back to our hotel, during which the agitated sea soaked part of our bread.











And then off to Begur, Spain, where we found a much more relaxed sea, and another beach.

France - Day Trois

The stupid waves kept us up all night because we could hear them through the delightful refreshing Mediterranean breezes that blew through our open windows.














For the first time in pretty much my entire adult life, I mostly did nothing today, other than taking naps, walking around town, sampling local wines and seafood, and feeling inadequate around French tourists who seem pleasant enough but I have no idea what they’re saying to me. I just smile.

We had lunch at the town windmill (windmill not pictured).












The only unsettling thing that happened is that we got this whole lecture yesterday about how the French commandos who train here use red guns when they’re doing exercises to differentiate from real guns so that we don’t all freak out for no reason. Red guns. And today – blue guns. What does it mean?

Image Credit - Martha Pierce

France - Day Deux

We walked up to the Collioure Fort today. It’s a good thing we didn’t get attacked and had to take refuge in the fort because all the wine is down in the town.

















Next time you drink a Grenache, you can thank grapes like these, which are right around the corner from the fort. There are a couple of wineries in town, which make some of the blocks in town smell like slightly overripe fruit and which I will take any day over what some of the streets otherwise smell like.










At the top of my list of specialty food combinations is salt and nougat, the only two things this store sells. Who says you have to make two stops when all you need is some red Himalayan salt and a few pounds of vanilla almond nougat?








To ensure that all distributed photos of this town show it in its best light, any privately-created photos have to be taken through these government-approved frames.














If this is how you’re going to do “handicap accessible,” you might as well be honest and just don’t do it.















And finally, we now know what commandos on vacation look like. Small story here – these are actually commandos and a large group of them trains here on the water every day. About a year ago, they did a practice storming of the town with guns and people still talk about the volume of screams that came from the tourist-artists who were in town quietly doing their watercolors. To cut down on the chances of tourists having heart attacks, the military issued replica red guns – that is, guns that look completely authentic but they’re red – so that no one thinks they’re actually being attacked. Question – if you were peacefully visiting a small town in France and a squad of commandos blasted around the corner and pointed a bunch of red machine guns at you, would you laugh and say “Oh you guys with the red guns! You crack me up.” No, I thought not.

France, Day Un

Today we rented a car and drove over the Pyranees to France. It was really just a road, but emphasizing the fact that it went over the Pyranees makes it seem much more interesting.














We drove along many steep, winding stretches and eventually ended up in Colllioure France, which is a beautiful port town whose claim to fame is that in 1870 it got 39 inches of snow.













I just have to mention that on the way we stopped at a small town whose name escaped me, and the public parking was in this tunnel. At the entrance to the “parking lot” was a sign in six languages saying that in the event of a heavy rain, you should definitely come back immediately and get your car the hell out of the tunnel.










Anyway, once in Collioure, both of us went swimming . . .

 and took a lot of pictures to scout out where would be good places to paint watercolors tomorrow. Actually only one of us did the second thing.






Is it only me who thinks that Catalonian music sounds like a soundtrack to Warner Brothers’ cartoons?

This is the view out of our hotel room. After checking out 20 or 30 restaurants, we ended up getting carry-out pizza and wine and sat by the water enjoying ourselves. Until we realized that we actually needed more pizza so we got another one and finished out the evening sitting on the plaza with two greasy pizza boxes and an empty bottle of wine between us. Welcome to Americans, Collioure.

Big Mercé Night

Nothing says “good time out” quite like some anonymous hooded guys trying to set you on fire. That’s why I had such a great time at the Carrefoc where the devils actually try to make sure that something flaming or sparking makes it out to everyone in the crowd. I didn’t personally witness any serious injuries.

And then on to the Mercé performances, which included the crowd favorite projection-on-building, light show at the big fountain and many musical performances. We were out wandering around until 12:30 and when we left things were still in full swing.

And on a more dignified note, about forty feet from our apartment is the Santa Maria del Mar church, built in the 1300’s. Yeah, plenty of people who come to Barcelona take tours that come to this place, but for me it’s just the place I walk by on the way to get café con leche and fresh-baked bread in the morning. No big deal. But I noticed two people getting married there just now. It would be pretty cool to get married in a place like this. But you’d better make sure you’re marrying the right person cause I don’t think you can get divorced after a marriage here.

Begins the Mercé

I’m going to skip the details about Martha starting her morning on our “patio,” our run and our time at the beach . . .












. . . and go straight to the Mercé, which technically started today but the big day is tomorrow – 600 performers and 2 million attendees. This was originally a religious festival, but there’s not much religious about it now. We started respectfully by visiting the historical parade and the entrance of the huge puppets, which participate in a short play about kings, queens, animals, dragons and a turtle.

1. Note how happy the bull puppet is, which I’m guessing is because bullfighting was banned in Catalonia in 2010.

2. The guy in the dark sport coat who turns in my direction just in front of the dancing lion is one of many armed, secret security people who were talking to each other with little microphones and earbuds, which made me feel comfortable.

3. The King and Queen video is blurry because the air was filled with smoke and confetti from a canon that had just gone off and scared the shit out of everyone.

But then we went straight for the music, about which nothing is religious. But there’s a lot of great food, people dancing and general noise. This is all just a warm up for Saturday.

Barcelona Day 5 - So Many Shoes

In violation of the universal rules of both microeconomics and supply and demand, the street vendors in Barcelona are selling exactly the same things in exactly the same place, by the hundreds. Do you want fake Nike shoes? You can go to this blanket, or this one right next to it,

or this other one two blankets away. Or the other twenty within 100 feet.

The same goes for hats, sunglasses, keychains and refrigerator magnets. The ironic (and callous) truth about these vendors is that a lot of them also live together and buy their stock from the same place. So, I really don’t get it. What if instead of having a Starbucks on every other block, we had 10 of them on a single block. How would you choose which one to visit? And even then, I actually need coffee to survive but I don’t need a brown ceramic bird that whistles when you blow through its kiln-hardened tail feathers?

It’s just hard to imagine how most of these guys ever make a sale.










But on to more important things; Martha joined me today in Barcelona and so far has been sleeping for roughly the same amount of time that she’s been awake. It’s not only fun to have her here, but I realize that I have spoken more English in one abbreviated afternoon than I have in the past two weeks. I also realize how much easier it is to speak a language when I don’t have to think through every word and sentence in my head before I say it.

She’s preparing for the Merce by painting watercolors in the park. I’m preparing by trying to decide which I want to do first, go to the parade of flame throwing demons where it is recommended to wear heavy clothes (or be married to a doctor) or standing next to a 10-story tall human tower, where, according to the program, “Barcelona is ready to take its place in the human tower scene.”

But there’s one thing I’m definitely not going to do . . .

Barcelona Day 4

On the spur of the moment I hopped on a train to Figueres to see the Salvador Dali museum, which he designed before he died and then got himself buried there.











No shortage of imagination there. Some of the rooms are huge, but it does take a lot of space to, for example, position a boat with bright blue globs of something under its hull 20 feet above a large car.
















I mostly enjoyed the fact that the museum itself didn’t even pretend to know how to make sense of Dali’s art. But honestly, what more is there to say about hiring nude models to parade around an art exposition with fresh seafood attached to them (this was a while ago, not today), or decorate the entire building with immense eggs.

My impression is that Dali was much better with images than with words and he named his paintings with pretty much all you need to know – “Telephone in a Dish with Three Sardines,” or “Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon.”





But actually the thing that I found most unsettling about Figueres was this large picture in the window of a barber shop. Tell me anyone in their right mind is going to walk in and expose their neck to this guy.

But a good time was had by all and by the end of the day I was back in Barcelona tidying up the apartment because Martha is coming tomorrow . . .

. . .At which point we can start participating in the festivities leading up to the Merce, the three-day blowout that happens every year at this time in Barcelona. Outdoor concerts with performers from around the world, weird parades including the Carrefoc spark throwers who can literally set spectators on fire, human towers, free-flowing alcoholic liquids and more, 18 hours each day. I. Am. Ready.