11 Saturday May 2013
Tags
This year they’re separated by only a week. They both began as small celebrations of flowers. Nowadays, one carpets the city with parades and carnivals. The other just carpets the city with flowers.
09 Thursday May 2013
Posted in Travel
If you’ve been reading along, you know that Tom visited many floors of the Dr. Josep Trueta Hospital — Emergency, Neurology, three different intensive care units, and Cardiology – as though trying to figure out whether Orthopedics or Gastroenterology might be worth a try. He could have been a Secret Shopper for Spain’s Department of Health.
08 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Travel
Wherein Tom discovers a new strategy for the advance of immersion language learning in Spain.
I counted fourteen gowned sycophants in the room, buzzing about a solitary, supine individual like bees in a hive. At their center — it chafes my sensibilities to type this — playing the role of the queen, was me.
07 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Travel
Tags
The hematoma didn’t dissolve. Msrs. Black and Decker were summoned. McDreamy approached the project with the enthusiasm of Bob the Builder fresh from a clearance sale at Lowe’s. The incision exceeds two feet in length; there are forty-one staples. Half of my skull was removed. It’s a good thing chain saws weren’t on sale.
06 Monday May 2013
Posted in Travel
I open my eyes to a Niagara of gauzy pastel blues and yellows, softly waving in the air. Appropriately, a waterfall of cacophonous Catalan chatter sprays my ears. I am entangled by intubation.
It is visiting hour at Josep Trueta hospital in Girona, Spain, where I am awaiting the prognosis of what has initially been diagnosed as a subdural hematoma, which is doc-talk for a clot of blood under the dura mater that covers my brain. The pressure is incessant. There is pain. They conduct a CT scan and tell me clot is the size of a deck of cards.
03 Friday May 2013
The l’Escala waterfront, ca. 1966. Credit: Restaurant Cal Galan.
Last week we took a 45-minute, rather glam bus ride from Girona to the old fishing village of L’Escala on the coast of the Mediterranean. On a previous brief visit, we were captivated by the charm of the old village, the 45 miles of shoreline around the Bay of Roses, and some very intimate little restaurants that called our name.
The Expat Almanac 