Beautiful Barcelona!

We spent three days in Barcelona, visiting friends from Santa Barbara who are living there for two years. We had been walking and touring museums and cathedrals and sights in Florence and Rome, and I was looking forward to some down time with our friends. But it was not to be! Janis had us moving from the moment we arrived until we left on the train for Madrid three days later.

On the day we visited Gaudi’s spectacular basilica, Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), we were lucky to be there to see a demonstration/competition unique to Catalon called Castells, or human towers. Dozens of people create a human tower by building a base and then climbing up on top of each other. It was fascinating, and also terrifying. One of the towers collapsed as the top people were descending, which was heart-stopping.

Castelleers climb on top of each other to build a human tower

A photo of the stunning interior of Sagrada Familia, which doesn’t come close to doing it justice

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Easing Back into Life

I’ve been home for almost two weeks, and am just starting to feel like myself again. Jet lag after a month in Europe and days of walking seven to 10 miles each day definitely took their toll! But I absolutely loved every minute of our travels, and especially my 10 days in Tuscany with my colleague Helena Hill and the 11 women we took on our writing and painting retreat. (See my previous posts for more on our retreat and my subsequent travels through Italy. I will post more photos from our time in Spain, as well.)

One of the things I realized once I got home is I want to do it again! So I am looking into leading a writing retreat to southern Spain in 2020, and Helena and I are talking about another writing and painting retreat in Tuscany in 2021. Stay tuned for more details, but if you’re interested, take a look at this trip’s itinerary, and let me know if you are interested in a future retreat. And if you would like to get my Weeping Willow Books newsletter, sign up here.

Meanwhile, here are more images from our time at Casa Fiori in Tuscany:

Painting our ceramic plates at the watercolor studio of Katinka Kielstra near Lucca, Italy

Helena with a typical lunch at Casa Fiori

Celebrating a successful shopping expedition into Lucca

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Ciao from Lucca, Italia!

Greetings from beautiful (and, today, rainy) Tuscany. My colleague, Helena Hill, and I arrived two days ago with one of the eleven women joining us on this writing and painting adventure for the next ten days. All but one of the rest of the group are expected within the hour.

We are at a 400-year-old villa run by the inimitable Karolina Lenart, a fabulous chef, and her husband and family. We were welcomed warmly with a lovely pasta lunch and wine.

Yesterday morning I walked down from our rented flat in Lucca (we came two days before the retreat) to the cafe below to be greeted by Boris the bulldog and the friendly, and, thankfully, English-speaking staff. I gobbled a sticky and sweet rice pastry with my cappuccino as I wrote. Boris was friendly but not so much that you were assured he liked you. Coincidentally we encountered another bulldog this afternoon at the villa— Bonito. See if you can guess which is which.

The overnight flight from LAX was uneventful and I even managed to sleep about five hours, though fitfully. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had the entire row of three seats to myself. I also watched two movies and listened to almost four hours of my audio books—Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and Pam Houston’s new memoir, Deep Creek, Finding Hope in the High Country. I finished Pam’s book early this morning when I awoke at 2:30 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Honestly, every human being who cares about the natural world—and perhaps more importantly those who don’t—needs to read this book. It is a lovely treatise on the value of hard work amid the reality of nature and death and grief and loss, humanity and animals and the environment, human folly and hope and despair. It’s funny how someone whose life experiences are so vastly different from your own nevertheless can feel like a deeply connected sister or best friend.

Our flat in Lucca was vast by European standards—three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the heart of Lucca town. Lucca is a medieval walled city filled with colorful buildings, fine leather shops, boutique clothing and pottery shops, restaurants and gelateria. Oh, and churches, towers and cathedrals.

Tomorrow—Casa Fiori, painting and writing, on our Call to Adventure.

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Last Night in Greece

We spent one last night in Athens before catching our home-bound flights to London and LA. Rob and I had dinner at Orizontes, atop Mount Lycabettus overlooking the whole city. It was stunning at night, with views of the Temple of Zeus and the Acropolis. Here are some photos from the restaurant and our hotel.

The colossal Temple of Zeus, which took more than six hundred years to build. There are only sixteen columns left of the original 104. It's more than impressive when you see how enormous the columns are.

I'll write more in coming days about the Greek island of Rhodes, and our visit to the Monastery of Saint Nicolas, the Sanctuary of the Cats, on Cyprus. I left my tzedakah dollar at the sanctuary, where nuns continue hundreds of years of taking in stray cats. The dollar was given to me by my dear friend Arthur Gross Schaefer, a rabbi. In the Jewish tradition, one writes a Jewish blessing for safe travels on the dollar, and at the furthest point of the journey, the traveler gives the dollar to someone in need or a charitable cause. The cats were first brought to Cyprus and the monastery in 326 AD to control venomous snakes, and they continue in that role today.

The mosaic above the entrance to the Monastery of Saint Nicolas.

Two of the residents. They do not necessarily have an easy life. One of the cats we saw was missing half of her face, no doubt from an encounter with a snake.

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Cyprus, Home of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love

We leave tomorrow after five nights on the island of Cyprus, the third-largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia. It remains divided between the Turkish territory in the northern third and the Greek Republic of Cyprus in the south, which is the only officially recognized state. We visited Larnaca, the largest city on the island, with beautiful beaches, and Paphos on the western coast, where there are many ancient ruins sites. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and romance, is said to have born in the sea near Paphos. We visited her famed Baths of Aphrodite and the Temple ruins that were devoted to her before the Roman era and Christianity.

Paphos has a lovely harbor, where numerous restaurants and tavernas and souvenir shops vie for tourists' attention. We swam in the gorgeous aquamarine Mediterranean several times, and it was clear and warm. Here are some of my photos from our time here.

The view of the Mediterranean from our hotel in Larnaca.

A traditional Cypriot meze, with sausages, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, ham, fried halloumi (a delicious cheese), and tzatziki (yogurt dip). And, of course Cypriot beer--Leon.

Rob at the ruins at Kourion, near Lemessos.

Inlaid mosaic at Kourion.

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Crete's Chania and Red Beach Near Matala

Rob and I spent five nights on Crete, the largest of the Greek islands. We flew into Heraklion, then rented a car to drive to the charming harbor town of Chania. Our hotel, Domus Renier, was exquisite and the owner, Litsa Paraskevaki, was warm and welcoming. She spent three years renovating a very old building, and it is beautiful with attention to every detail.