22 Monday Apr 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
I’m a Portland, Oregon native. Some say Portland is among the five best places to live in the world. Others say it’s where young people go to retire. That’s fine, but that’s not what Portland is all about. Portland is all about beer.
20 Saturday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
Those of you who read last year’s April in France blog will remember that Tom is a four-year-old in spirit. For example, every time a train goes by our Girona apartment, he points at it and yells “TRAIN!” If he’s really lucky it will be a “CAR TRAIN!” saddled with Seats.
18 Thursday Apr 2013
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
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Our friends Jeannette and Vicens took us out on another well-planned, beauty-soaked adventure to the Costa Brava Saturday night.
13 Saturday Apr 2013
11 Thursday Apr 2013
09 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
Nothing could have prepared me for Catalan. Well, maybe my sixty years of French study and forty years of Spanish study and those two miserable years of Latin. But the Catalan independence movement around here has become so fierce that the signs and menus are no longer bilingual in Catalan and Castilian Spanish, as they were just last year. It’s all Catalan, all the time.
07 Sunday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
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We love our hosts! Vicens and Jeanette own the apartment we’re renting in Girona. They have provided us with an astounding place to live (remind me someday to tell you about the hot tub that shoots fountains in the air), and yesterday – quite to our surprise – they offered to take us on a drive to the Costa Brava, the “rugged coast” of northeastern Spain. Thirteen hours of unremitting wonder!
05 Friday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
Slimy things on beds of ice. This is sort of the general tenor of the fish stalls at our Mercat, which is Catalan for market. The Mercat, of course, is full of raw, natural, farm-fresh unprocessed food. I’ll try any fruit or vegetable, but when it comes to proteins, I will admit that I prefer boneless, finless, scale-free meats and fish which I can recognize, and which is not still looking at me. I am not proud of this, but that’s how it is.
04 Thursday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
At ricksteves.com, Louise’s favorite travel guide says, “On arrival, stay awake until an early local bedtime.” Yeah, but Rick isn’t turning 70 in thirteen months.
The Expat Almanac 