tacogrrl

U Street Baby!

La Rambla was such a wonderful place to visit. It was touristy but didn’t feel cheap. I spent the bulk of my four day visit just visiting the neighborhood. There’s so much to do and eat and drink. There are all kinds of museums in the area. Plenty of street entertainment - one night there was an evening outdoor rock opera staged from the windows of an arts building.

The food was awesome and lived up to my very high expectations; I had the best squid ink paella of my life here - and the sangria knocked my shoes off. I felt very comfortable walking around by myself, I was never harassed, not once.

I’m trying to convince some girlfriends to return with me next year.

I’ve been trying to recreate my memories of hanging out at Tattered Cover (TC). There’s just not any other bookstore that I’ve visited that has the same comfortable feeling that TC has. I don’t know how they do it but I just want to get my books (or maybe not) and run from all other stores. I never really care for lingering like I used to at TC.

On a recent vacation I found the new City Park-side location (after first erroneously going to the closed Cherry Creek location). I wasn’t sure about the new spot (still not sure), but the bookstore’s interior was still the same wonderful feeling. I didn’t get a chance to explore the entire location but that’s for the next time (which is really soon).

I’m looking forward to taking a break from NoCal and visiting L.A. But it’s for probably geeky reasons. Not for star-gazing but for visiting the fabric and yarn shops I keep seeing on the fashion reality tv shows and reading about in magazines. I will be on the serious prowl for the biggest bead stores around. I just hate driving and don’t know how I can manage being in a town without decent mass transpo.

Home of Nestle, gotta love it just for the good chocolate. It’s such a beautiful place. Great access from and to Geneva and while staying in Vevey I was able to make quick (day) trips over to Leukerbad, Freibourg and Zurich. It’s just across the lake from Montreux .

I have to return here because when I first visited the Palace, no one was home - well some hoity-toity family friends arrived in a Rolls and disappeared behind the gates. The change of guard didn’t happen, but there was a procession that came round twice, so there was something to see.

It’s a nice walk (as in long but nice) from Piccadilly to here and then on to Big Ben. I’ll be back.

I just want to be able to say I’ve been here because it’s a cute, funny name, like Kalamazoo.

There’s a little Mom-and-Pop place in Leukerbad that serves the best cheese-tomato fondue in the world.

Any city that Parisians crave to visit can’t be a bad city to visit.

In short, first time on my own a very long distance from home. Made friends some of whom I still know.