....The Costa del Magnifico, the cost of living's so low..

Rental car to the Costa Brava. Until last summer, the only Costa that I knew was featured in a Dire Straits song (quoted above).

Last year, Costa Brava. Rental car for my beloved and me to Palamos, the Best Beach Town Ever.

Can we recreate the magic. With 5 of us this year?

To start - I yell at K through 10 Barcelona city blocks this morning. "Hurry up - we gotta get the rental car." Magic gone by 9:15 am. Then, I yell at my trusty navigator wife, who swears she has her Dad's "bloodhound nose." Now, I love my wife with all my heart. She makes me a better person. I would be a mere shell without her. But, if she's the bloodhound, then Paul Newman gets away in "Cool Hand Luke." That's all I'm saying.

So, it's a bit of a zoo in our car as we careen 1.5 hrs outside BCN, with the rented GPS falling off the rented windshield every 6 minutes and a Costa Brava station playing US Top 40 Pop - Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, much to M's delight.

And then, we turn a corner, and there's the town of Begur, gleaming in the sun. Begur beats out Palamos like the Yankees beat out the Sox right now (six + games ahead of the Sox and not looking back). Like Angelina vs. Jennifer. You get the picture. http://begur.org/turisme/cat/index.php

Beach after beach. Cove after cove. Sand and surf. Germans diving off cliffs into 10 feet of water (just to show they can). Great waves. Great sun. Homemade salcichon and manchego sandwiches on crusty bread. Quite simply, one of the chillest days ever. Even if the kids wouldn't walk with us up the cliff pathway (and therefore didn't get to see the nude beach when we turned a corner one km up the path, overlooking the coast). And even if the strawberry ice cream was briefly melon ice cream as a crafty vendor sought to move some slow-moving melon ice cream inventory (until I put my foot down and declared, in Castillian, that we prefer our strawberry helado to be made from *strawberries* not melon, gracias). And even if the family wouldn't let me stay forever in the biggest wine store ever, Grau, on the outskirts of the Costa Brava (they carry at least 50 Spanish rosado wines, for starters, and a bunch of offerings from our cava guys, Raventos i Blanc, out in Penedes ... http://www.raventos.com/ ).

And on the way home, Catalan Public Radio - who knew there was such a thing? http://www.icatfm.cat/ - playing Wilco and the Specials ("Message to you Rudy") for a salty family inside the Avis rental car. No navigation fights. No fights in the back seat. A sweet day. Even if I still don't get Lady Gaga.

Go to Begur. Someday. It's great, and is the "Best Place Ever", right now, this summer, just like Chatham, Nantucket, Chilmark and 100 other beach towns...

:)

The KD Theory

So last night, we encountered quite a fiasco while choosing a dinner restaurant. First, our reservation was cancelled because the restaurant is closed for the entire month of August (the Spaniards take all of August off in some places, and that includes the “best wine bar in Barcelona" that my Dad wanted to go to... http://www.monvinic.com/ )

So, we started wandering around looking for a restaurant. I saw the first one, liked the menu, and said “Hey! Let’s eat here!” Mom, however, had a different opinion. “We’ll keep walking.”

So we walked 4 or 5 blocks down the road, and there it was. A place that wasn’t packed to the roof with people. The hostess woman spoke into a walkie talkie and suddenly we all got the feeling we were in some sort of Spanish T. G .I. Fridays or Chilly’s. We sat down at a table right next to a man smoking a cigar, and there was some sort of high pitched beep, like a dog whistle. The menu appeared as if everything on there was freeze dried and pre cooked, and the restaurant seemed to scream “CHEAP!”

We dashed and walked back to the beginning of the trail of restaurants we had visited. We wound up eating at the first one we had seen. This brings up the K D Theory. It basically is “One of the first few restaurants you see will be the one you will wind up eating at, and you’ll probably walk back and forth between a bunch of them before you realize that the first was the best choice.”

Adios! - K