Barcelona

My short stay in Barcelona has been super! Among the highlights . . .

- I´m staying in the apartment of Xavi, a friend I met on the Camino de Santiago. It´s in the neighborhood called Barceloneta, and I can´t be more than fifty paces from the beach. I went for a run on the beach this morning - November 1st! - and saw all the surfers and beach bums out there. (I am, or would like to be, one of them!) What hospitality, huh?

- Yesterday was the Castanyada. I went to the home of Luis, another friend I met on the Camino, and his mother prepared the three key ingredients of the Feast of the Chestnut: Roasted chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes, and a Catalan Castanyada dessert called panellets - made with a dough of potatoes, sweet potatoes, sugar, egg, and pine nuts. MMMMMM. Good thing I´m a food scholar, so I can say that with authority. In fact, I´m going to say it again: MMMMMMMmmmMMM!

- And I went to Montserrat. Another important pilgrimage center, though I was a bit monastery-d out, so - Catholic guilt begone - I skipped seeing the Black Virgin, which, I suppose, is the entire purpose of going to Montserrat. Well, I didn´t skip it, really; I just kind of ran out of time. (Partial dispensation? Reduction in pennance?) Instead - apparently I´m not quite tired out enough - I went for an awesome hike to the top of the Montserrat peaks. Google Montserrat to check out some pictures - it´s pretty spectacular, with a monastery "nestled" (obligatory travel writing word, I believe) in the pointy needle-rocks of the Monserrat (serrated mountain, maybe?) range.

I leave tomorrow for France. Au revoir!