I can see the red taillights, heading for Spain

I recently took a trip to northern Spain for the wedding of some friends. The timing was exquisite, as my first wedding anniversary was directly after their wedding date, allowing us to extend our trip a few days and celebrate in style.

They rented out a sprawling villa on the side of a hill in a gently mountainous area northeast of Barcelona (near Pavol de Revardit, near Girona, for those keeping score). About as close to the northern border as you can get without eating snails. The villa had sweeping views of the rolling Spanish countryside, and was a proper maze of wonderful old rooms and hidden areas, as well as a fantastic terrace. Coupled with a week of amazing local bread, cheese, wine, etc, it was relaxation writ large.

Most of the stay involved leisurely breakfasts, equally leisurely day trips (Barcelona, Figueres, Girona, Besalu, volcanoes in Olot, etc) and long festive meals reaching deep into the early morning hours. There was a lot of wine to be had, and so we did. The pace of life lulled one into a stress-free routine that was hard to break out of upon returning. The stay at the villa ended with a wonderfully intimate wedding and dinner.

Kate and I then struck out on our own, and headed for the coast. We stayed in picturesque Cadaques for our honeymoon, a whitewashed fishing/tourist village along the Mediterranean, close to the most northwestern point in Spain. The rugged and bizarrely twisted rock landscape would have been ominous if not for the glowing afternoon sun. We celebrated our anniversary in the cozy nook of a seaside cafe on a windy Mediterranean evening. If you ever happen to be in Cadaques in the winter months, go to Cafe Nun and try the duck.

All in all, a very relaxed vacation, as opposed to the usual go go go se everything in the guidebook sort of deal.

Pictures are presented below, courtesy of Picasa web albums. For full size versions, please visit my Flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/jmbower

A terrible beauty is born

So two years of divisive politics have finally yielded a winner and a new direction for a troubled nation. To paraphrase a favorite movie line, I will think of George Bush's era as gone until history makes it so, then I will think of it no more.

I can only hope the Democrats resist the urge to be as blatantly partisan, lacking in transparency, and appealing to the lowest common denominator as the last adminstration was. Now is not a time for gloating, it's a time for moving forward.

Free at last, in so many ways.
Free from 8 years of tyranny,
freer from the haunting ghosts of our racial past...


With apologies to WB Yeats,
we are changed, changed utterly.
A terrible beauty is born.