Welcome to my log of visits to the Iberian Peninsula.

My husband and I have been exploring Portugal and Spain since 2006. On each trip, I keep a journal of where we go and what we do, sharing via email with family and close friends. I am gradually putting those accounts into this blog. Click the labels above to isolate a specific trip; otherwise, the posts will appear in batches of seven, most recent first.

Catalunya, France, Asturias

Fall 2015: A trip starting in the upper northeast corner of Catalunya (Barcelona, Girona, and Begur) before crossing to the Atlantic on the northern side of the Pyrenees through southern France, then returning to Pechón, Asturias on the northern Spanish coast before ending our trip in Bilbao, Viscaya.

Sept. 11: Girona, Catalunya

Jerome and I are off on another visit to Spain, although this time with a hop over to Sardinia for a few days. But more on that later. This is the first of my journal entries; may you enjoy them! I'll add photos as I can. I am writing, this trip, on a Kindle Fire with a remote keyboard, and I am taking photos with my cell phone, so I'm not certain how everything will work. But my suitcase is lighter without my Chromebook!

We left Salt Lake City late Wednesday afternoon on Delta's direct overnight flight to Paris, which has become our favorite method of crossing the Atlantic. A change at Charles de Gaulle airport on Thursday took us to Barcelona by midafternoon, and a brief train ride from the airport terminal delivered us four blocks from our lodging, the Praktik Bakery Hotel, which, yes, houses an excellent bakery on the street level. We were pretty jet-lagged. (Interesting aside: I asked our tapas bar waiter, who wondered why we didn't want to eat more dinner, how to say "jet lag" in Spanish, and he answered that Spaniards just say "jet lag" with a Spanish accent, because within Spain one can't have jet lag: The country is all on the same time zone.)

Knowing from experience that the trick was to stay awake until "normal" bedtime, local time, we set down our bags in our very comfortable hotel room, and hit the streets. The hotel is located just off a main thoroughfare, around the corner from one of Antoni Gaudi's famous wavy buildings. Popularly known as "La Pedrera", its official name is "Casa Milo" and it was the last civil work designed by the architect, whose "Sagrada Familia" cathedral, his most famous structure, is still being built almost a century after his death. But I digress.

We walked the streets close to the hotel in a rather foggy state, but the weather was perfect and the crowds interesting. We stopped at an attractive tapas bar-cum-upscale hamburger restaurant and enjoyed some croquettes caseras and patatas bravas (carbs appealed at that point), then wandered some more until we stumbled on a second interesting wine bar with tapas (no hamburgers, though we had watched a small child eat an ENORMOUS gourmet hamburger with great delight at the first place). Another wine, some smoked salmon on toast, some olives, and (yes) some more potatoes (french fries this time). NIght had fallen by the time we finished and we decided we had done our duty to time adjustment, so we went home and collapsed.

I've taken a long time to describe a few hours, and this morning was even more special, because after a delicious breakfast at our hotel's bakery, we headed to the museum of the Antoni Tapies Foundation, to see an exhibit of Tapies' works combined with a room of other artists' works that he himself had collected. (Tapies is one of my heroes, and this was all deeply meaningful to me.) If you are interested in knowing more about the exhibit, go to http://fundaciotapies.org/site/spip.php?rubrique1394. Suffice it to say that, if I can get today's photos to you, many of them will show Tapies' work.

This barely brushed the surface of Barcelona, but we were ready to get out of the big city, so around noon we checked out of our hotel, caught the metro to the train station, and took a high-speed train to Girona, one of our Spanish homes-away-from home, whence I write. Our hotel is in an ancient building, once a private home, in the "Jewish quarter" adjacent to Girona's cathedral. The juxtaposition of cultures is classically Spanish. We had a wonderful "comida", the main meal of the day here, just around the corner, then walked around and reoriented ourselves to this lovely small city. Now Jerome is napping, I am writing, and I am about to see if I can find and send my photos from this morning. They may come separately. More tomorrow, hope everyone is well, and write back if you feel like it!