Spain for Xmas

Xmas?
Yes, that was approaching six months ago!
: )

We went to Girona, a beautiful medieval Spainish city outside of Barcelona, on the sage and much appreciated advice of the lovely Spainyard in self-imposed Belgian exile Francesc. Thankyou Francesc!

Here we did engage in all manner of cliched (though no less enjoyable for it) episodes of rambling ancient cobbled streets, gourmand dining, market visits, coffee and chocolate indulgences and excessive consumption of laughing cow cheese (maybe not so cliched touristy the last, though the pension we were staying in insisted upon it as a breakfast fortifier in a way reminiscient of that motherly eat your carrots, it helps your night vision kind of way), to this day Imery cannot see it without.

We balanced out this break from the pace of london madness with . . .

Barcelona madness : )
Barcelona was only a 45 minute trip by train so we made the trip several times. It was here I visited my favourite thing in Europe to date -

The Miro Museum!!
Imagine several hours of natural elation. I was in heaven. I have lots of Miro works. Imery has lots of photos of me beaming.

We also checked out some really nice design stores. As per its reputation, Barcelona is a city of style cats and is not so much eye candy everywhere you looks as eye coffee - rather more smooth refined flavours than nasty sugar highs. The food convinced Imery that baby octopus and squid ink are not merely edible but delectable and initiated me into what I'm sure will be a life long love affair with real tapas.

We took a side trip to the Dali Museum which stewed my brain a bit with attempts to comprehend the man. It gave me a much greater appreciation of his work which previously I had identified with merely mysogyny and weirdness. The mental space that holidaying provides to allow you to properly engage with things like art is superlative worthy. His ideas and deconstruction of the concept of literal "wholes" really captured me.