perspective

did you have a good break? i ask HOM. or was it too stressful? because i know the emails and the problems do not stop even if he is on leave. and tempus fugit.

he thinks for a bit. it was a good break, he says. and it was stressful.

on reflection, it will be like this as long as we have internet access supervisory duties and a job to go back to, i guess. also, internet access supervisory duties and a job to go back to are not unmitigated horrors.

king David says, ...of thee the whole, and out of thy hand we have given thee.* we are grateful for the whole and for the privilege of giving out of the whole.

*1 chr 29:14

giving thanks

J2's long haul flight back to Montreal gets cancelled at the airport. she finally makes it to her destination, twenty hours late. then she picks up her cat and begins her two-day, six-hour solo relocation drive to her new home in her geriatric two-door sedan.

she makes it eventually. so does my heart.

barcelona in review

first off, barcelona has wide open pavements with generally courteous drivers and cyclists who share. vive la birkenstocks, i tell HOM. this has been a trip even my plantar fasciitis could handle. for a place with so many dogs and for a trip in the heat of summer, it has also been a pleasant, dog-poop-free trip.

you can eat up and you can eat down, and both satisfyingly. which is harder to achieve in some places than you might think. HOM says the trouble with french food is that it is such a big deal and takes up the whole night in addition to costing the earth, and the trouble with good british food is that it is elusive. in barcelona you can eat scrumptiously in holes-in-walls and you can buy jamon sandwiches and gelato off the street and you can also eat at hisop and montiel and feel just vaguely profligate. what you need is google and a data plan.

the catalans bring their dogs everywhere! we see more dogs than children! the dogs are almost uniformly better behaved than children! except for the chihuahua we saw trying to bring his mistress for a walk last nite. it makes me feel good to see another dog as ill-mannered as E, i tell HOM happily.

also, by a twist of fate, catalan women apparently come in my size. years of frustration have driven me to uniqlo and teenage sections and stretchable t-shirt material and sub-optimal fits. here i discover i am model size, pretty much. this could be a city to visit again and again.

if you notice, we did not do too many museums and monuments, but we did do la sagrada familia, and it was gorgeous. and we walked the length and breadth of the gothic quarter and inhaled the historic atmosphere and we oohed over casa batllo. 

it was a lovely trip.

tripadvising

HOM happily reviews eating places hotels and other consumables. i'm leveling up in life, he says. they gave me my junior reviewer badge! they gave me my senior contributor badge!! 

the points have no concretizable value whatsoever, he says in a bit. but he writes on. there is esprit de corps, and great fun, in giving to a commons that social media has unlocked, and that we have largely ignored in real life.

beach bumming

HOM and i do the tourist thing and bring ourselves down to the beach. a pretty and well-appointed beach it is too, with public amenities and orderly arrays of bodies on beach mats and towels and a balmy breeze under a clear blue sky.

the only problem with the beach, i always say, is the sand.

not the cava

possibly my favorite drink discovery this trip. aqua gaseosa con flavor.

la cova fumada

this place takes hole-in-the-wall to an entirely new level. there is no signboard. the seafood is heavenly. the service is prompt.

what i say is, data plans and google have changed the face of successful modern travel.