- Chris' visit and our Thanksgiving dinner here in Barcelona. There will be 13 of us celebrating the holiday, which will be a new experience for the large majority of them.
- Starting the process of renewing my residency visa. My visa expires in March. In December I need to translate my documents (pension, house, savings, health insurance) so that I am ready to submit them in early January,
- My trip back to the States in mid-December. I will be back in the US on Dec 19 for 3 weeks. I'm looking forward to that and to meeting Chris' family.
- Uncovering the mystery of paying taxes. Although I believe I know what the steps will be, this will be the first year to file taxes in two countries. I'll learn a lot about my future tax obligations after going through it next year.
Meeting Up with Friends from the US
Last Friday I had the pleasure of visiting with Mike and Dave, friends who lived in the DC area and were involved with the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington and who are now retired, living in Fort Lauderdale and who spend a good bit of time traveling throughout the world. They came to Barcelona and stayed one night to take a trans-Atlantic cruise back to Florida. They had been to Barcelona a few times before and have done the major tourist spots. So in the short time that we had together, we did a lot of walking (it's a good thing they are in good shape) in the center of the city, visiting places that are not well known, such as the Roman Columns of Augustus when Barcelona was known as the ancient city of Barcino, After visiting some buildings with interesting porticoes, we went to a pastry store called Caelum. Many of the delicious pastries there are made in nuns' convents. We had typical panallets with tea. Delicious!
We then walked into the ethnic section of the city called Raval and ended up at the Sant Antoni Market, checking on the progress of the renovation work there and then going through the temporary building next to it to take a peak at the freshness of the various kinds of foods at this market.
We finally stopped at Mistral, another pastry shop, to have a taste of the best ensaimada in Barcelona, in my humble opinion. I then accompanied Mike and Dave back to their hotel.
Hiking trip to Fegeda and Extinct Volcanoes
On Sunday a group of about 17 of us traveled to the north part of Catalunya to enjoy the Autumn weather and hike the trails at Fegeda d'en Jordà, a large natural reserve with extinct volcanoes. It was a gorgeous day and I could finally see the full effect of the changing of the color of the leaves here in Catalunya. The trail was not too difficult. We climbed up to a small castle on one mountain peak. We then hiked over to one of the volcanoes and hiked into the middle of the crater, which was filled with trees and very green but in which parts of the trail were made of crumbled lava rocks. At the center of the volcano was a small stone hermitage. The vistas were breathtaking!
