Al final

I'm down to the last few days here in Barcelona and already sad to go... despite the fact that I've been looking forward to moving on for a while now. Barcelona's a tough city, like New York. Tough to get to know people, to get into the flow of the place. And there are so many foreigners that often it seems you could be in any big city: London, New York, Amsterdam... And, much as I love the wilds of northern Catalunya, rather than feeling happy about my Spanish, I've mostly just been embarrassed to not speak a word of Catalan (the widespread push for Catalan independence makes language a matter of political import here). So I've been looking forward to moving on to Andalucia, with its smaller towns and its reputation for warm hospitability, for being "real Spain."
But I'm ambivalent. The guys at the bike shop have finally gotten around to inviting my on their rides. I know the folks who run the corner store. I can time the stoplights on my ride into school. And, the hardest thing: I just said goodbye to my Bikram yoga teacher. The studio opened days after I arrived in Barcelona, and I've been a regular ever since. I've learned a lot there (all the body parts in Spanish?), wrung out the exhaustion I carried away from New York, and have some budding friendships there that mean a lot to me.
I'm going to Grenada next, where I would be lucky to find any kind of yoga studio. But the city is cradled by the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It showcases a mix of Spain's three religions, reflected in strikingly varied architecture (the Alhambra, for instance). There are coastal towns to discover. And it will be very much not New York.
Until then, a few more days in Barcelona. Tomorrow is el dia de los santos, yet another national holiday. I'm going to Montserrat, a 1000 year old monastery up in the hills not far from Barcelona that was erected in 1025 after someone had a vision of the Virgin there, was wrecked by Napoleon in the 19th century, rebuilt, and now is home to a community of monks. The guidebook tells me there are "truly weird rock pillars" on the mountain; who could resist that?
And here's another picture of Girona. The city, an easy train ride from Barcelona, is hands down my favorite place in Spain so far. It has a medieval warren of narrow streets with small arches, winding staircases and flower boxes. It has a city wall, crumbling at parts, with ivy curling out others, showing views of the national park (with volcanoes!) in the distance. It has a city park with what seem to be the remains of old old buildings at odd and crumbly angles, mostly overgrown. It has two cathedrals that ring out the hours in cacophonous harmonics. It has a river running straight through the center separating the old city and the new and spanned by too-picturesque-to-be-true stone footbridges. Surprisingly, despite all this, the city feels like Seattle. It's overrun by students in dreads and various configurations of metal. There are athletic supply stores at every turn, vending all manner of equipment to be used in the outdoor cornucopia a stone's throw away. It is, of course, a celebrity spot for cyclists, and the ocean is not far. There is music. There is energy.
And (sigh) a lot of Catalan.