Begur

The four of us headed to the coast to have some beach time before returning to the big city. We’re staying in Begur, which has a population of 3,900 in the winter and 40,000 in the summer. The town is very small, very cute, has very nice restaurants and is very expensive compared to Barcelona, but it’s right on the Mediterranean and many beaches are very accessible.

Like Sa Tuna

And Aiguafreda

And Aigua Blava

It also has towers that were built in the 16th and 17th centuries. Begur was, for some reason, a favorite target for pirate attacks. So the townspeople built towers that they could climb up and then use to drop big rocks on the pirates. We went up one and didn’t drop anything on anyone.

After a nice dinner at one of those nice restaurants, Martha and I sat in the central plaza overlooking some of those nice restaurants, drank wine out of a water bottle that Martha’s been dragging around with us for several days and ate dessert out of a paper bag from an assortment of things I picked up at the bakery. “You do you and we’ll do us,” is what I say to Spain.

Girona

Sometimes you think you know a place and then one day you realize that you really don’t know anything about it at all.

Like Girona. I’ve been here several times. The Onyar river runs though it, separating the old city from the new. It's generally a genteel, wealthy town with reasonable, well-educated people.

It has an old wall dating back to the 9th century, which was meant to keep invaders away. But as we know, walls don’t really work and the invaders came anyway. Including from France, which you can see in the distance.

I thought I had a handle on the place. But then on this trip I noticed this baffling sign. Something climbing something involving something that is prohibited. What could it possibly mean?

Zoom out and there’s an actual figure of something climbing something. What could that second thing mean? Turns out the “thing” is a lion climbing a pole and that people would kiss the ass of the lion to ensure that they would come back to Girona some day. Almost nothing could diminish the tourists’ desire to kiss the lion’s ass, including the fact that someone died a few years ago after falling off the ladder he climbed to get his face close enough to the ass (a writing “first” for me). But COVID finally made a difference. After determining that multiple strangers putting their mouths on the same ass (sorry) could spread the virus, kissing the ass was outlawed. Thus the puzzling sign.

Then this, which just seemed wrong in so many ways. 

Zoom out again, and it turns out that it’s not only a product; it’s the name of the entire business. What are people here thinking?

Then we had a delightful dinner at a restaurant that had menus only in Catalan, a language none of us spoke or could even guess at. And the bill was written in a secret code. That’s when I realized I really don’t know Girona at all. 

Barcelona Day 6

Our apartment is about 100 feet from the Santa Maria del Mar, a church built in the 1300s that rings out the time every 15 minutes. Fortunately our apartment has soundproof windows.

The church is famous because unlike almost every other church, which was built by royalty, this one was built by fishermen and shop owners who voluntarily dragged the stones one by one on their backs from the port. Back then there wasn’t room for working class people in the established churches so they decided to build their own damn church. And it is quite a church.

Also, judging from the Netflix series Cathedral of the Sea, which is a dramatic account of some happenings here around the time the church was built, the people were really good looking and fell in love a lot.

Speaking of love, you can get married here if you remember to make a reservation years in advance, meaning that women (men around here generally don’t do this) reserve a date before they even have a boyfriend, hoping that the timing will work out. Being a male, I can imagine the pressure this puts on the poor guys who are dating the women who have already reserved a wedding date at the church. 

We had a little potluck dinner at our rooftop overlooking the Santa Maria del Mar and bade it farewell since tonight is our last night here. Nothing now stands between us and Girona, our next stop, other than . . . 

. . . a James Taylor concert tonight at the Palau de la Musica, the theatre that you really have to see to appreciate. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the theatre looks like some wild fantasy designed by a committee. But a committee of what is the question.

Barcelona Day 5

I see it as a good sign that whereas during my first trip to Spain there was no president here,  nor had there been one for over a year, and during my second trip to Spain the Spanish government arrested the whole cabinet of northern Spain and charged them with treason while northern Spain’s president fled to Belgium where he still is today, the huge scandal today is that the New York Times grossly mispresented the process of making tomato bread.

Tomato bread is something that accompanies most meals here, and at the risk of incurring the wrath of every Catalonian Spaniard, I’ll say that it’s more or less tomato slurry on toasted bread. But just this weekend, the New York Times posted a recipe that suggested you could use cherry tomatoes, cut lengthwise and rubbed on toasted bread. Catalonia exploded – “You got it all wrong,” “You deserve extinction,” “Stop using Spanish for Catalan dishes,” and “Where can I file a complaint,” were some of the milder comments posted from Spanish readers.

Along those lines, I say that if Catalonians want to focus on these types of frustrations, then why not:

• The fact that in my neighborhood here there are two bakeries very close to each other. One is called “Funky Bakers” and the other is called “Fucking Bakery” (no kidding). These names are not only confusing, but they’re pretty bad names.
  
  
  
• Duck Stores 

  

  
  
  
  
• A tattoo parlor that allows the word “oops” to remain in its marketing message. 

• Terrifying mannequins
  
  
  

As for us, we ignored all of that and went for a bike ride through Barcelona today.  

Barcelona Day 4

Not being satisfied with my tour of Barcelona, which consisted only of photo opportunities and amusing anecdotes about my prior trips here, the girls decided to go on a more traditional tour today, which probably involved learning things about Barcelona. That gave me a couple of hours to recuperate from last night, during which we had a wild party on our roof terrace until 8:00 and then went to bed.

Post tour, we hopped down to the park and then to the Mediterranean for a quick dip. Between you and me, it wasn’t Mallorca good, but it was pretty good.

Then, energized by a fresh supply of wine and cheese, we had another party on the roof terrace this evening. Unlike last night, we didn’t have a roomful of Europeans for Carolyn to entertain by explaining that not all Americans fit the stereotype they have come to understand from watching CSI reruns and reading Yahoo! News, so she explained it to us instead.

After which we went out for dinner. Tonight, the girls managed to stay up until 11:00 and I figure tomorrow we can really let loose.

On an unrelated note, northern Spain has an old tradition that reflects a very thoughtful, sensitive and contemporary understanding of the natural cycles of growth, harvest, consumption and returning nutrients to the soil that make an agricultural society prosper. Unfortunately, northern Spain has adopted this physical manifestation of that complex understanding, which means that no one outside of Spain ever takes it seriously. Honestly, these statues are everywhere, and people hang smaller versions of them in their Christmas trees, and when anyone makes fun of them, Spain says “what’s so funny? This is just how we express our desire for healthy crops next year.” In some ways, Spain is so misunderstood.