On the road again: Spain, day 7

We slept, as usual, a great deal in our lovely chilled and dark bedroom, then awoke to greet a gray, also chilled day. We wandered the now roaring Mercat Boqueria, which is a great market indeed. We ultimately lunched at a small restaurant there, a place with chairs that let us get out of the crowd but still observe it. People watching in a big city is always fun, but it's particularly interesting in large outdoor markets like this one, where the expectations of the visitors seem to vary as much as their nationalities and bearing.

We have to get up insanely early tomorrow morning to begin the long travel process, so no late blogging or email for me.

I will, as one would expect, be very sad to leave. I'll miss having so much time with Scott, and I'll also miss Spain, Gaudi, Spanish ham, the view of the Mediterranean that greeted me each morning, a culture that eats late, sleeping late, and so much more.

On the other hand, I'll be happy to be home, to know the language almost everyone speaks, to be among family and friends, and so on.

On the third tentacle, I am sad in advance because I get to be home for only about 36 hours. I have to leave the house insanely early Sunday morning to fly to San Francisco. Now, normally, I greatly enjoy my trips there. I have some good friends in the Bay area, SF is a great town, and I am always happy to visit it. This trip, though, for reasons I really cannot explain (and may never be able to explain; it's a work thing), I am likely to be booked essentially 24 hours a day and never be able to have free time. I do not expect to have any time to myself that isn't dedicated to work, nor am I likely to get to see my friends at all, which sucks, but so it goes. On the scale of bad shit I've faced in my life, this really doesn't appear, so I have no real right to complain further.

When I next write, it will be from either a plane to the U.S., a plane in U.S. skies, or home.