It was our first full day in Barcelona, and we were wandering around after an amazing morning at Sagra Familia.

Up early … the new decade morning … David went to dip his toes into the Mediterranean before our French petite dejéuner in Fréjus. The HOTEL LE CATALOGNE had a lovely offering, and we enjoyed croissants, pain au chocolat, and café au lait. …

We were on David’s birthday tour … first stop, Milan. With no missed turns or major re-routing, amongst the usual mélange of Milanese motorists, we found the garage entrance to the SUNFLOWER HOTEL in the Bisvio district. We had arrived in the limbo between lunch and dinner. When we asked…

When you’re young, you can have a birthday party every year. In fact, people plan parties for you … bring gifts … play games … sing and make wishes … eat cake and ice cream. Then celebrations slow down … and you celebrate the ones with 0s. …

We weren’t going to attend my high school reunion. We’d gone to L.A. a year earlier, even though that reunion had been Covid-canceled prior to our trip. But, finally, we said why not … especially when we attached it to a couple weeks in Hawaii. We were lucky to get…

Caveat lector: This is just an excuse to post photos of Hawaii. FeeL free to scroll through the blah-blah-blah and behold the blue. This wasn’t going to be a tourist trip. No lei greeting … no hotels … no luaus. We’d stay with David’s niece Aja and assorted friends. …

Lago di Garda is our lake, our favorite. David fell in love there. Not with me, but with Italy in 2004. We stayed in Room 411 … quattrocentoundieci was David’s first word. …

After cappuccino and cornetti, we said arrivederci to our hosts in Rome, newlyweds Joyce the American and Claudio the Roman (sorry for the geographic mismatch), and drove north to Orvieto. After our supermarket tourism stop at the Coop, we made our way up the winding hill along increasingly narrow streets…

It would be a short trip. Our American friend and newlywed Joyce wanted us to meet her marito romano Claudio. They had moved to an apartment in a Rome suburb with a guest room … an offer we couldn’t refuse. As with all trips, once we pick the dates, I…