Barcelona

- Barcelona, from the plane as we approached.

I have a sabbatical this semester, and Janet has a research leave, so we're spending about six weeks in Barcelona. I have a visitor's affiliation with Eduardo Eyras, in the GRIB (Research Unit on Bioinformatics), in the PRBB (Parc de Recerca Biomedica de Barcelona). This has turned out to be a great place to be scientifically. Janet is working on projects that are not directly related to being in Barcelona, but she's something of a linguistic tourist, and was able to attend the a ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Linguamón House of Languages Visitors Center at Can Ricard.

We are staying in the Barri Sant Pere neighborhood, which is an old neighborhood with narrow streets near the center of the city. The first weekend we were here we spent a lot of time walking about, and at the Museu d'història de la Ciutat. On second weekend, we took the a tour bus around the city visiting Park Güell and Montjuic (including Poble Espanyol and Miramar). Finally, we took a long weekend (it was Thanksgiving, after all) to tour the Costa Brava, staying at the Parador in Aiguablava. We drove into the Pyrrenees one day (we got as far as Andorra), and to Cadaqués and Port Lligat the next.

In addition, we've enjoyed the food and daily life in this remarkable city. While the tourism has been great, there were also some things I had hoped to accomplish while I'm here and time is getting short. I will be busy for the remainder of my time here, but I hope to steal a few minutes from time to time in order to say a little bit more about our trip.