Te Gusta and Pantastico

I am still in Valencia, fighting off the same cold everyone else has, looking forward to finally arriving in Madrid tomorrow. This morning I somehow dragged my aching, coughing, exhausted self to a porcelain factory tour, which was followed up by a ceramics museum, as if the porcelain wasnt enough. Then I skipped out on the rest of the activities (which weren´t much), walked back to the hotel, and slept.

I have been shamelessly exploiting this hotel´s free Internet. Last night I ate at Burger King across the street, followed up with a $2 bottle of wine. Classy. BTW the BK was quite delicious. (I wanted something cheap.) And also btw, the wine wasn´t that bad. A local red. Too bad I spilled some on my shirt.

We have done some amazing things on this trip. Toured 1000'year old Arabic baths, basked in the sun in Mediterranean gardens, sampled the out-til-dawn (almost) Barcelonian nightlife, walked among ancient Roman ruins in Tarragona, tried some Brazilian girls´Moroccan hash in an Argentinian bar in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. That last one wasn´t quite a group activity.

But I am really looking forward to settling.

Another random observation: it still hasn´t rained after 2 weeks here. Actually it was 2 weeks to the day that our flight left JFK. Seems ages ago.

I certainly miss everyone from home as well as the lifestyle itself. I miss NYC. I miss NY pizza as well, and I miss being on campus, even in weather that makes one wonder how humans survive this (and worse) every year.

I am considering moving here for good and opening a couple restaurants; One will be a bakery called Pantastico; the other, a, um, like place where you get tea, called Te Gusta. That´s probably only funny to anyone who has taken elementary Spanish. Oh well. It´s a pun.

I´m going get some more Burger King now and try to clean the wine stain out of my shirt. See you in Madrid....