Sunny Days in Catalunya

One of the best parts of being in Catalunya over the break was that Andy and his family were also on vacation just down the road. Whenever I had the chance, I met up with him and his better half, Pernilla for some fun. It was a quite the change of pace swapping stage gear for bathing suits and hitting the beach with my metal family. Highlights - soaking up the sun, warm waves, cold cocktails - pretty much all we needed!

We did also take a drive, along with our guides Jordi and Albert, up to a couple really cool spots in the mountains. The first was to visit an ancient dolmen in the middle of a cork tree forrest. Let me tell you, cork trees make for a really cool forrest. Their twisted limbs and spotty color make for quite a gothic feeling atmosphere - quite magical! I was told to lay in the dolmen to feel the energy of spirits that had passed through, but with a group of people around I wasn't able to relax enough to really get into it. It would be an great spot to go back and hike tho. We also visited one more dolmen at the top of a mountain. The view from the peak was incredible! It was a hazy day but we could still see all of Spain (or close to it :) The ride to the top was also pretty cool - would be super fun on a motorcycle. If you go, just don't go with Albert because he drives like a maniac!

Chillin Platja d'Aro style.

Compliments of the 3rd best gin mixologist in the WORLD!

Cork trees :)

Dolmen de la Cova d'en Daina

At the top of Spain!

My last day on the beach - must get sun!

Quite possibly the best piña colada I've ever had 

- on the beach at Sant Feliu de Guixols.

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Hola España

Wow, I've already been in Spain over a week and the time is flying by.

I came here in quite a round about way. When I realized we would have 

a 3 week break between King Diamond shows my first thought was 

"why go to Philly when I can go to Spain?!" 

Of course, in vacation mode that would be mucho expensive, so I 

started looking at other alternatives. I began poking around the web for woofing opportunities and found a site called workaway.org. I loved it - it listed all kinds of hosts and you could search by country, region, and type of work. The basic idea is a host offers you meals and a place to stay in exchange for about 25 hours of work a week. It's most often in someone's home, or a hostel and the work can be any number of tasks, but a lot revolve around green living, working with natural materials, and building eco retreats. I ran across a lot of listings saying they needed help with art projects as well. The search was on! If I could find everything I wished for it would be working on an art project, living on an eco farm, near the beach! A girl can dream, right?

My search started months before the tour. Some places said they were booked already, some said to get back to them when it was closer to July, and most didn't write back at all. What the hell people - how hard is it to say no thanks? I finally got the go ahead from an artist, living in a tiny town in Valencia, to come stay with her. I started to get really excited. We were chatting along well over email and she sounded fun. My meals would not be included but she was vegetarian and up for splitting the cost of food and cooking together. We were buzzing about making plans when all of a sudden she had to cancel. Due to a family issue that did not sound fun at all, she had to go to Madrid and couldn't say exactly when she'd be back. Pfffffftttt. Now what?

So, for some reason I have never really taken advantage of the fact that I
know a lot of people, many with connections to all kinds of other people.
I think I need to start tapping into my resources more! With about 2 weeks
to go til the break and nowhere to go, I mentioned to Andy that my
accommodations had fallen through. He and the fam were actually headed
to Spain for some of the break too, so we had been saying all along that it
would be cool if we could meet up down there. So low and behold, Andy has
a friend named Jordi, (who I met before in 2006) who has a friend, who has a hotel…
the volunteer for room and board idea was proposed and BAM!
I had a place to stay! I booked my flight to Girona and set my sights on Spain!

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My Catalonian home away from home. 

Hotel Golf Costa Brava

Cheers to Andy for getting the ball rolling!