Sitges Day 4

Again, we started out with café con leché at Café Bar Roy.

Check out the Kentucky Straight Bourbon. This was at the Mercadona. 7.99€ looks like a pretty good deal and I might have to try some.

 

 

As you can see it was a beautiful cloud free day. We walked a while, sat a while longer, walked some more, sat a bit longer. Seeing the sights and watching everyone walk by. Met some folks from San Diego in Sitges from Barcelona for the day. We gave them restaurant hints and recommendations.

Lunch was wonderful as usual - today at La Calma De Sitges. As you can see our pimero was great and the segundos, though they did not get photographed were just as good. Our lunches have been long and we are always the last to leave the restaurant. That is fine with us, we are on vacation. None of the restaurants have rushed us, though some times they are putting things away. Oh, the rosé was exceptional. This one was 100% Tempranillo from Penedes.

After lunch we rested a bit then headed to the bus stop to meet Jorge. After two busses we gave up, did some shopping, then headed to the Piso to wait for Jorge. He showed up shortly later - with no luggage. It is somewhere between Chicago and Sitges. He faced multiple delays and changed flights and airlines. Hopefully it can be found and delivered here.

Since he did not get here until 8:00 and was hungry we took him to dinner and had a great time a Yumluna where we ate the other day. The owner gave us cavá at the end of our meal and we were all happy. Then Jorge took us on a long quest for ice cream. He is now crashed on the sofa. Time for me to check in too!

 

Sitges Day 3

Katie and I are having a great time doing a little sitting, a little walking, a little shop browsing, lots of talking, a little ukulele playing, great lunches, delicious wines, great cheeses at dinner. A really rough life. She says we are living a Bohemian lifestyle. I think it is just decandent.

Today we greeted Sitges from Café Bar Roy with our morning café con leché. Afterwards we headed to the Sitges market looking for chaise lounges. We foound pads but no lounges. We then continued our quest for Chovi Salsa Lousiana. So far we have found NO Chovi products in Sitges. We will continue out quest in Barcelona.

We picked up another apple for me and some butter so that I could fix eggs. I know that Sharon will appreciate them in the morning. Of course we picked up another bottle of wine and browsed wines in two stores.

After all this hard work we headed to San Sebastian beach and sat on a bench in the sun and people watched while I strummed my ukulele. The sun was so intense today we had to relocate under some palm trees seeking a little shade. We sat there for quite a while and then at about 2:00 began our quest for lunch. Our method of picking a resturant is simple. We walk from restaurant to restaurant looking at their menu del dia. We look at the primiros and the secundos and decide if there is sufficient choice and what our options are. Today's choice was Amore restaurant. I had sopa pescado and Katie had gazpacho. We both had canneloni for our seconds. We shared a bottle of water and a bottle of rosé. The food and service were excellent. Our only negative was this is a cash only restaurant, But our meal was only 37.25€. We will be back.

We are now in the piso for some rest from our hard day. We'll be out on the steeet again around 6:00 to wander and to pick up bread and then it will be up on the roof watching the swallows zip by and the sun go down. I've been sipping on Estrella Damm beer while up on the roof. A very pleasant beer, not like what I drink at home. I just read that it won an award for being the best beer for celiacs as it is made from rice, barly, and hops. No wheat.

 

 

Sitges Day 2

Last night after getting to sleep around 10:00 I slept soundly for a couple of hours and then was up and down and rolling around for a couple of hours. I was afraid that I was not going to get any sleep and the next thing I knew light was coming in the window and it was 7:00. Yes! A good night's sleep. I got up and made coffee, checked the news and, lazed around until Katie got up around 9:00 and then it was off to Café Bar Roy for our Sitges morning ritual.

Katie and I did our shopping at the local super market - Mercadona - and explored the Mercat de Sitges upstairs. The Mercat is a great spot for fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. I will be buying some fresh sardines from here and grilling them on la plancha.

After dropping our groceries back at the piso we headed out for a walk around town as we are in training for when Sharon and Jorge get here. They will expect us to walk a lot! We wandered around Sitges checking out shops and a couple of parks and then heading to the walk next to the beach. Sunny, mild temperatures, relaxing. We stopped and watched people and a gathering of a bunch of college age kids here on some activity which had them exploring the town and then dancing.

We then went from restaurant to restaurant down the beach until we found one with a menu that we liked. Yamuna was the winner. They were a bit confused on the service part of getting us a bottle of water and a bottle of rosado, but the food was wonderful and we will be back with Jorge and Sharon. Katie had gazpacho and I had white asparagus for our first course. Katie moved on to lomo and I had a dorado. Both were excellent. We were there for a long time and were not rushed at all, even though we were the last ones there.

After lunch it was back to the piso and a nap for me, and feet up time for Katie. Then at 6:00 we headed out to pick up a loaf of bread, more cheese, and more exploring. We wandered about an got back to the piso around 8:00. After a dinner of bread, olives, cheese, and wine it is now 11:30 and about time for bed!

Goodnight!

 

Café Bar Roy!

Ummm cafè con lechè and a bikini.

 

Chicago to Sitges

Katie Soler and I headed to Sitges, Spain on Montday May 5. We started at O'Hare Terminal 5, enjoying Air France's Sky Priority check in because I booked us in Premium Economy. We bypassed the check in line and and were in the short line through security for a good start.

The newly remodeled Terminal 5 is nicely done with lots of dining options. Katie and I chose Tortas Frontera where she had tortilla soup and I had salad. No white table cloths but a nice spot for a little meal (though the servings where huge!) If you are leaving through here and need something to eat, take a tour of all the options, There is a Big Bowl, Toco Italian, R.J. Grunts, Totas Frontera, and a couple of others.

After our break Katie and I went to the gate and had a short wait and enough time for a selfie before boarding.

Premium Ecpnomy from O'Hare to Paris gets mixed reviews. Priority security and boarding was nice. The service on board was horrible. The food was not good. The seats are odd. Wider than coach but no recline. There were good entertainment options and I watched Gravity. A note on service - we were served our meal - the whole meal at once not in courses as expected. We were not offered an apertif before the meal. Plunk, here is your meal and a plastic cup of Champagne if you want. That was it. We never saw another flight attendent. Katie and I were almost finished with our meal when I pressed the call button. Someone finally showed up after we had finished and offered us a roll. I asked for wine and it took forever before they came back with two individual bottles of white. Bottom line - my expectations for the Premium Economy meal were not met on this flight. Interestingly our experience with Premium Ecpnomy from Paris to Barcelona was great. Good seats, nice, tasty light meal, and good service.

At Charles de Gaulle, getting from Terminal 2E to 2F felt like going through a maze. Down a hall, down escalators, on a train, up esclators, anound corners, down halls, up escalators! Where are we? However, with Sky Priority through security no line. Also no line at passport control. Oh, I thought it was odd that we went through security before passport control! Lots of walking but we made it to gate on time. My connection worries were groundless even if the flight was slightly delayed. It was secheduled for 10:00 but delayed until 10:22.

As usual at Barcelona we had a long walk from the gate to our bags which arrived after we got to the baggage claim but came out quickly. We headed to the bus stop and had a short wait for the Monbus to Sitges and thena short walk to the Piso. Our bags got pretty heavy as we lugged them to the top floor! We had to do it in phases. What happened to my thoughts on packing light?

Katie and I opened up the piso and rested for a bit then headed down the hill for lunch by the sailing club. A bottle of rosé, a salad, and a wonderful seafood canneloni while sitting outside in the sun was great. Katies and I then did a little shopping - wine, cheese, and bread then it was back to the piso and onto the roof. Both of us fell asleep up there for a while. I came down for a showere, we talked for while then had a snack - our shopping success prizes - and by 9:30 we knew it was time to turn in after a long day.

 

Childhood Memories

This week I was reading Hanna Rosin's The Atlantic article "The Over-Protected Kid." As I contemplated the article I remembered my childhood where I was not over protected. My mother set rules and boundaries, which I often ignored, but then she pretty much left me on my own from the time I was about six years old, or likely even before.

League City, Texas

I remember when I was in first and second grade and we lived in League City, Texas, right across the highway from Galveston County Park, I recall two rules - don't cross the highway and don't go past the railroad tracks. I was pretty good at not crossing the highway and the railroad tracks were a good natural boundary. But, I roamed far and wide with my buddy Byron Marshall with plenty of freedom. (Our street was named for Byron and his sisters Crystal and Velvet had their streets too.) I do remember once when I must have been hanging too close to the house and going in and out, my mother told me to stop banging the screen door. She finally locked it, keeping me out. Byron and I used to climb a row of pecan trees about a block away from the house, hunt for horned toads, walk through the fields watching the swallowtails fly, lose my shoes in what I referred to as quicksand. We had plenty of unsupervised adventures. Looking at the map of our neighborhood today, I see that the boundaries set were not too wide but for a six or seven year old they seemed large.

We moved to New York I strolled the streets around our apartment in New York City and then later in Yorktown Heights I remember roaming through the woods surrounding our house. There were streams and an abandoned quarry and small graveyards dating to the 1700s, and many other things to explore. My limit in one direction was the Taconic Parkway, not because my mother set a limit, but because i did not want to venture past it. I was an explorer but I had my limits. In the winter I would seek out the best places to sled. In the summer I played with trucks and plastic army men in the dirt, road my bicycle all over the place, and explored the woods, fished in the Quarry, and traded comic books, Friends I remember - Peter Smallman, Mike Hendel, Peter Torpey, and my next door neighbor Bruce Jenner (yes, the gold medal decathlon and Kardashian Bruce Jenner.)

Spring is FINALLY Here!

I had my doubts but spring has finally arrived in Glen Elllyn. No patches of snow on the ground, the crocus (is the plural of crocus croci?) are finally blooming, fish are begging for food, and the grass is greening. Sharon has been home this week and we have been doing spring cleanup in the back yard, filling bags with leaves and the remains of last year's growth, getiing the garden ready for seeds, and pots ready for flowers. The PVC I used for the pond piping last year did not all survive the winter. I don't know if the issue was water freezing in the pipes or exposure to sun. This is PVC designed for interior use, so it is not meant to be used outside. Research is in order, but for now, replacement PVC.

The past couple of days it has been very comfortable outside in the afternoon but still a bit too cool in the morning. I have made the transition to sandals but jeans and sweat shirts are still in order. I'm looking forward to having my morning coffee outside in the sun in shorts! (Next month I'll be having cafe con leche at Cafe Bar Roy in Sitges and I will be wearing shorts!)

This week I have been putting together a ukulele song book to take with me on the road. I've included many of my favortie ukulele songs plus some I want to learn. I still find I need to look at words and chords when I play. I wonder if I will ever actually memorize songs? Oh, just remembered I need to add some kids songs for when I am entertaining Brady. The Wheels on the Bus and If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands. And while on the topic of ukuleles, I added a decal to my outdoor ukulele.

John sent this great photo of Avery with a beautiful rainbow trout taken on the Crooked River during spring break. I wish I was there with them this year. My favorite guys to fish with on my favortite river to fish.

Kristie sent this one. John is now a soccer coach. Love the pose with John and Anika!

Gotta include a cat picture. This is Shelby posing and looking pretty.

We have finalized plans for getting to and from Sitges this year. Katie Soler and I will be heading there on 5 May and Sharon will follow us on 12 May. We are flying Air France this year, through Paris. We have always flown American and/or Iberia but price and availability was an issue this year. We are trying Air France Premium Economy which cost a little more but does give us larger seats as well as enhanced food and beverage service. We are all coming back on May 30. As we have for the past few years we will be staying in the Soler piso in Sitges and are planning little more than relaxing on the beach, in cafes, and on the roof. There will be side trips to Barcelona of course since it is only 40 minutes away by train. We may do a train to Girona, maybe to Valencia, maybe Madrid. We shall see what pulls us. Matt Olson has been enlisted once more to house sit and cat sit while we are gone. It is good to know someone will be looking after everything here.

Enough writing! Outside to finish pond repairs.