Even Happier

This is the kind of terrain I was hiking around in, in Catalonia. I had a great time. The trip was everything I could have wanted--a companionable group, beautiful and challenging hiking, a lovely, comfortable hotel in a charming village. Oh, and I got to speak lots of Spanish. The people in the area speak Catalan as their first language, but they were tolerant of, even encouraging toward, my Castilian Spanish.

The picture below shows the front of the hotel where we stayed. Now, picture 15 or so tired hikers gathering at the tables as we came back from our hikes, drinking beer and discussing our aches and pains as the late afternoon settled around us.

Below, a bridge that you had to cross to get to our hotel,which quickly became known as "the wobbly bridge." The sign says, in Catalan, that jumping is forbidden and that no more than ten people can cross the bridge at one time. Some of the people in my group took both prohibitions as a kind of dare.

A street in the village:

Other areas in the village were full of greenery and flowers:



And here is the group, stopping to rest on one of the hikes:

As Joni Mitchell once said (or sang) about a different European spot, I'd go back there tomorrow. (If not for . . . well, life, work, all of that.)