1. I am so grateful to Albert and Álvar for letting me stay with them for 10 days in Barcelona, for sharing many meals together, taking me out with them, and always being so sweet. I hope they (and Marie!) come visit me in Andalucia. I am also very thankful to Jaime in Portland for putting me in touch with the boys.
2. It all started with Albert's sore throat... then snowballed into a flat of sick people. I'm on the road to recovery from a sinus infection.
3. I visited the Picasso Museum. The Blue Period moved me so. As I wrote to my friend, these paintings depicted vulnerability, loneliness, isolation, nudity, and softness... The plaque on the wall read: "With the passage of time, blue came to monopolize the compositions while an atmosphere of mystery, sadness, and melancholy pervaded most of his paintings. Blue has literary associations with decadence and is considered a highly spiritual color. When combined with green, it suggests immense loneliness of the sea and for that reason Picasso often uses blue when there is no natural reason to do so, with that correlation between sadness and sincerity. The world of outcasts takes on great importance."
4. I should have packed less. Damn.
5. Saturday was a 12-hour train ride from Barcelona to Sevilla. It started along the coast, went through vivid greenery, then at some point through dry desert reminiscent of eastern Oregon.
I saw a field of citrus, but not one tree...
6. My roommate in Sevilla told me that there's a main street here called "Avenida Kansas City", how the mayor of Kansas City came to Sevilla, and how now Kansas City and Sevilla are sister cities. Go figure.
7. Sevilla's really beautiful. And I don't understand the Spanish.
photo credit: destination360.com
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