2009 Vacation

Vacation to Catalan, Fall 2009

Catalan, where the people are first of all

Catalans and only secondarily

Spaniards. Catalan has now fully

recovered from the ban it suffered under

Franco’s dictatorship and has supplanted Spanish as the language in everyday use all

over Catalonia. We were surprised to

see bilingual signs, not in Spanish and French or English but in Catalan first

and Spanish second. Spoken by more than eight million

people it is a Romance language

akin to the Provencal of France.

Here some of the interior of the immense Sagrada Familia. We were also

impressed with the number of buildings designed by

Gaudi in Barcelona including what appeared to be a bank building that we

saw while viewing a fashion show one evening. We had accidentally come

across the show on the way to dinner one night.

The highlight of our trip, however, was the cooking class we took in Barcelona from chef Bruno. Our class was first escorted to the Boqueria open air market near

the Placa de la Boqueria and Las Ramblas. We are greeted here at the entry by piglets seemingly happy yet no longer squealing.

The Boqueria has the most diverse collection of foods that we had ever seen. There were ostrich eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs and even chicken eggs.

The artisans of the Boqueria use some intimidating tools. Here one of the fish mongers prepares a cuttle fish for our paella.

An impressive blade!

In addition to black truffles at 3500 euro a kilo there were also

meats that were available at a less

expensive price. Here dried blood, brains,

penises and tripe. Try to avoid the butchered bull

meat. It is full of adrenaline and tough.

I found these fellows struggling to get out of their long tubes fascinating.

One more view of the remarkable variety of sea creatures available at the Bocqueria. These fellows are not ordinary shrimp. Look at how small they

are when compared to the characters on the sign!

We traveled by train out of Barcelona to the southwest to the Monastery at Mountserrat. Built near the top of the serrated mountain, it was first mentioned in the 9th century, enlarged in the 11th century and in 1409

became independent of Rome. In 1811 it was destroyed when the French attacked Catalonia but was rebuilt in 1844. Today Benedictine monks live

here.

The church at Montserrat houses the famous Black Madonna. Tina touched the orb held by the Black Madonna after climbing the stairs above the gigantic altar where the

Black Madonna resides!

Further down the coast we shared a view that Greeks first saw in 600 BC when they

settled at this site calling it Emporion (“trading place”) and which is now called Empuries. In 218 BC the Romans landed

here and eventually ruled the area.

On this temple site Greeks worshiped Asidepios, the god of healing. You can see his statue in the background. I seem to have missed the

action at this temple by about 2500 years.

In addition to the availability of the ruins, here a stoa, a covered walkway, there is a fantastic museum which included artifacts from prehistory through the

Roman era and included a Roman mosaic of fish and birds that was remarkable in its clarity, liveliness of figures and precision in its crafting.

Further down the road was the former Roman city of Tarragona the capital of Tarraconensis and base of the Roman conquest of the peninsula in the 3rd century BC. Here, by the sea, their amphitheater was built to entertain the populace with the bloody

spectacle of animal hunts and gladiator battles!

After Constantine’s conversion a Christian church was built in the center of the amphitheater where martyr’s blood had been spilled for the enjoyment of the pagan

crowds.

We reluctantly left the ancient world and were catapulted to the

world of 20th century art when we arrived at Figueres, a town

on the Costa Brava and the site of the Salvador Dali museum!

Dali was born in 1904 and mounted his first

exhibition at the age of 15. Here, an example of his Surrealistic art, the art

form that he embraced in 1929.

The interior of the museum itself is constructed in a

way which is intended to be

somewhat confusing. The

disconcerted museum visitor is led down corridors

that empty into

hidden rooms.

We then stayed on the Costa Brava at Lloriet de Mar and the Santa Maria Inn. Here overlooking the Mediterranean from our balcony we watched as

a wedding party clambered over the rocks on the archipelago to take photos that made them appear to be standing on the water with wedding

dress and star gazed looks.

The Santa Maria was almost deserted while we were there. No other diners appeared on our first night and at best a handful of people arrived for one breakfast. See Paul Theroux’s The Pillars of Hercules in which he reports on isolated, strange spots around the Mediterranean to get a taste for

the Santa Maria. With its 60s décor we expected to see Jean Paul Belmondo, Allan Delon or Sophia

Loren smoking Camels at the hotel bar.

Here is the Hotel Dolci one of our other stops before Tina and I headed back to Paris where she left for home while I took the train to Vichy.

Vichy, the former capital of the fascist puppet government of World War II, the vacation getaway of Napoleon III and residence of his mistress Harriet Howard, source of the curative waters of the Celestine Monks and site of a fascinating

variety of architectural designs. This photo was taken from the 6th floor classroom that was the site of my afternoon workshop.

I am a proud one week graduate of CAVILAM, a french language school in the center of

Vichy. Here the entrance that greeted me in the morning after my three block walk from

my host family residence. http://www.cavilam.com/en/cavilam/index.php

Some of my morning classmates. Reading from left to right Ilyas from Tazikstan, Alina from Sweden, Rinè from Nigeria, Amanda from Sweden, Keko from Korea,

Angie from Korea and Maria from Cyprus.

Also from the morning class from left to closest to the camera Malike from Nigeria, Vanessa from Swizerland, Father Julio from Brazil, our instructor Martine who had

lived in Iowa for a while and Santiago from Columbia. An international group I would say!

#4, my host family home with

the Loriollets.

Bernard and Monique Loriollet.