It’s been a while, hasn’t it. I bet all my loyal readers have given up on me. I’m going to try to post a few updates to get caught here…
First off, once the semester ended back in December, I headed out to San Francisco for Christmas and our 9th annual noon to midnight holiday cocktail party. The party was a success, in that Marc and I did our usual $200 shopping trip to Trader Joe’s, and made it back in time to Will’s place for the first guests. The fireplace video was a big hit, as always:
I spent the next (or previous) couple of days driving around SF trying to get a feel for what’s going on in the city… This pic from out on Evans (Cargo?) is illustrative:
Before I knew it, we were all on planes heading to Spain. I met up with Marc, Jessica, and her friend J in the airport in Barcelona, and we drove up to Cadaques, feeling our way north in the dark. After a couple of detours we made it up over the hill and down the windy road to find the house. It had already been a long long day, and the hour I had to spend in final negotiations with the caretaker didn’t help, but eventually she shoved off and we had the place to ourselves. Saida had arrived a bit earlier, and all of a sudden there we all were in this big luxury pad!
So we arrived the day before new year’s eve, and the next day headed up to Cap de Creus to check out the view and have a drink at the little cafe there. It was blowing like stink — 50-60 knots I would say:
the next few days are a bit of a blur, but this is the general picture… first one, then the other, then again and again and again:
All that hard living’ put me under the weather a bit, but that didn’t stop me from mounting a trip up the coast to Banyuls. My friend Niklas from Stockholm had turned me on to the stuff — like a French port, but not quite as heavy — a couple of years ago, and since it was so close we had to make a stop:
Back in Cadaques some other night, we met a bunch of Italians and dragged them up to our villa for late night dinner and drinks. For some reason this sort of behavior is inevitable when you get Itais drunk:
…it was only at this point that we learned that we had somehow failed to learn of the massive, world-famous new year’s day party on Cap de Creus. We had all wondered where everyone was heading when the bar closed at 5am on new year’s morning, but at that point we didn’t have the presence of mind to ask… As it happens, the whole town, and much of Europe along with them, head up to the Cape at dawn to greet the sun at the easternmost point on the Iberian peninsula. Ah well…
Once everything calmed down a bit, we had some time to walk around. Cadaques is a lovely place. A bit like Bolinas, or Stinson Beach to be more precise. They’ve kept the road very small to keep out the masses.
Another day we took a walk around the shore to the north of town, and ran across a little subdivision in progress…
Near the end of our stay there (10 days!), they put on the festival of the three kings (some sort of Christian thing, right?). The whole town gathered on the beach to watch the boat come in, and the old guys set off fireworks…
Frenchy arrived at some point
…and not long thereafter we said goodbye to Cadaques and headed north across the French border to visit Jessica’s dad at his place in Roujon
I think it was John’s idea to present him with a leg of the pato negro as a housewarming gift:
