A wine country safari

    When you think of wine you usually don't think of New Zealand but as we discovered Sunday when we headed out over the Rimutaka Range from Porirua to Martinborough maybe you should.
    Getting to Martinborough is an experience in and of itself. I'd love to show you some pictures of the twisted tarmac that takes you up and then down the sides of assorted mountains but I was too busy trying not to panic as Elena negotiated the curves, S-turns and hairpins that make up what Kiwis fondly refer to as a road to shoot any photos. Martinborough, as it turns out, is a not-so-big place with about a dozen boutique wineries scattered around it. It's also a favorite hangout for folks who ride motorcycles. As we walked through town I could hear them talking about what a joy the road through the mountains is to ride on... back in the days when I rode I might have agreed with them but these days not so much.
    Elena, who must have been an infantryman in a previous life, thought we should walk to the wineries rather than drive. I was of two minds regarding that: On the one hand, walking is difficult for me these days so I wasn't sure this was such a good idea. On the other hand, my heart was still in my throat after the ride to Martinborough so maybe a walk wasn't so bad.
    In the end, we walked.
    Because it was Sunday afternoon when we arrived some of the wineries were closed but we found one that was open and hiked up a long dirt road lined with lavender bushes to a tasting shed. There, the owner poured several varieties of his wine for us and explained the whys and wherefores of winemaking in New Zealand. It was pretty fascinating, even for someone like me who is not much of a wine drinker. I wound up buying a bottle containing a very nice 2010 pinot noir that won some prizes for the winery. I didn't care about the prizes, I did, however, care about the taste, which was excellent.
    We walked another mile or so after that to a small restaurant called Poppy's where the only thing on the menu is a seasonal platter for two. There were fried pork bellies, roasted peppers, fried zucchini, mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinegar, a Greek thing consisting of grape leaves wrapped around rice, homemade hummus, homemade pate and a few more things that filled up a large wooden platter. Elena had a glass of wine but I opted for some New Zealand-brewed ginger beer that, in fact, had chunks of ginger floating in it. (After a few small glasses of wine earlier I was feeling pretty darn mellow and figured ginger beer was a better option at that point, especially since we had to walk back to Martinborough.)
    Lunch over, we hiked back into Martinborough, had a coffee and then wound our way back home back over the mountains. On the way back we saw one snow-covered peak way off in the distance. Elena, of course, wants to go there next weekend. If we go, I think I'll crack open that bottle of pinot noir and start drinking it through a straw as soon as I buckle my seat belt... that way I might just survive another mountain journey without having a stroke...

Martinborough is a haven for bikers who, apparently, think racing around mountain curves is a good thing...

After racing around those curves, bikers stop in Martinborough for coffee, beer, wine or whatever...

We met this couple at one of the wineries... of course, after sipping a half-dozen varieties, I forgot to ask their names... duh...

Elena on the road to one of the wineries... business must be pretty good because the winemaker lives in that palace behind her.

Sunset at Titahi Bay...

    Saturday was bright and beautiful and, for a change, warm so after a day of wandering around Elena and I went to Titahi Bay to see the sunset.
    There is something about the air in New Zealand that makes rainbows and sunsets just a little more spectacular than they are in Florida... I know, I know, hundreds of people gather at Mallory Dock every evening in Key West to watch the sun go down and I've been among them more than a few times in the past BUT the sunsets here are a little more vibrant, a little more, well, spectacular.
    We got to Titahi Bay around 4 p.m. It's winter here so the sun usually sets around 5:30 p.m. Because we had a little time, we went for a walk along the beach where we ran into a very friendly old bulldog who wanted his ears scratched. Back to the walk after a few warm-and-fuzzy minutes with the dog, we scrambled (well, Elena scrambled... I sort of hobbled) over some rocks until we came to the remains of a fossilized forest that is only visible at low tide. No one knows for sure when these trees fell or, in fact, why they did but they're old... really old. At first they look like some very odd rock formations but when you get closer you can see that they were once trees. Very, very cool...
    We continued past the trees until we got as close as we could to the point at the bay where it becomes the Pacific Ocean. Elena might have been able to go farther but the rocks were too steep (and too jagged) for me so we turned back. We made it to the parking lot just as the sun was starting to go down and tried desperately to get pictures that really show just how spectacular it is. Unfortunately, in my case, I'm not skilled enough with a digital camera to capture the brilliant colors... sometimes (well, let's be honest, ALL the time) technology defeats me.
    All I can say is, if you ever find yourself in New Zealand it would be worth your time to go to Titahi Bay and watch the sun go down.

It's hard to believe but these "rocks" are the fossilized remains of ancient trees.

This is a better shot of the fossilized trees at Titahi Bay

Sunset at Titahi Bay

Another shot of the sun setting at Titahi Bay

I thought if I kept shooting photos of the sun setting at Titahi Bay that eventually I'd capture the beautiful colors but...

Really... can you go to the beach, any beach, and not take pictures of the gulls?

Writing, walking and getting wet

    New Zealand is an island (well, it's at least three islands) in the Pacific Ocean so it's not surprising, perhaps, that strong winds are a fact of life here.
    That was the case when I got up this morning. Thick gray clouds were racing across the sky at 8:30 a.m. and there was a light rain falling. A perfect day, I reasoned, to stay inside, write, drink some coffee and catch up on emails. I worked on some short stories that I've neglected for too long and started the final editing process for my newest novel - a political thriller entitled "The Session" that I hope to have on Kindle in a few days. Things were progressing pretty smoothly, or as smoothly as they ever progress when you're editing, when the sun burst through the clouds and another beautiful rainbow caught my eye.
    Because the weather here in Porirua can be so changeable, especially in winter, I decided that I should shut down my laptop and take advantage of the sunny skies to go for a walk. I didn't intend for it to be a long walk but as I tramped along I got to thinking about more story ideas and lost track of time and place. I wound up at Titahi Bay just as the sky clouded over and rain began falling... There isn't much in the way of shelter between there and the motel where we're camped until we find something more permanent so I resigned myself to getting wet and started back. The rain let up about halfway back and I headed for the mall where I planned to get a big cappuccino and rest my old legs for a bit. The rain started falling again just before I got to the mall but by that time it didn't matter much. I mean, I was already wet so a few more drops here and there didn't really seem like such a big deal.
    Since I always carry a book in my backpack along with my camera and at least one notebook, I spent an hour lingering over my cappuccino, re-reading the full version of Stephen King's "The Stand" and drying out. It was pleasant, and warm, and the conversations around me were interesting so I put down my book and started taking a few notes... you never know when you might need a funny anecdote or an interesting observation for a future story and there's no better place to get those things than in a place crowded with people.
    Later, back in the motel, I sent a short story entitled "The Water Carrier" to TheWriteDeal.com in hopes that it will be published on that site in a few days. I also managed to catch up on some emails and started work on a new novel, this one about a New Zealand woman who is a sort of freelance spy... not sure where it's going yet but, as always, it will be fun seeing where this character leads me.

Queen's Wharf

    Another beautiful day - that's three in a row! I took the train into Wellington to wander around Queen's Wharf for a good share of the day. Queen's Wharf is, as you'd expect, on the Wellington waterfront and it's full of small shops and tony restaurants as well as a couple of really nice museums.
    The best part of the wharf, for me anyway, is the fact that even in the middle of a workday it is crammed with people. It's winter here, but that doesn't stop Kiwis from taking full advantage of a nice day. The wharf - which stretches about a mile, maybe a little more - was jammed with runners in shorts and T-shirts, rollerbladers, skateboarders and walkers as well as a lot of people just sitting on benches reading or having a coffee. There were even a couple of people lying in the grass working on their suntans, which I found pretty amazing given the fact that I was wearing jeans, two pairs of socks, two T-shirts, a shirt and a hoodie to keep warm. I think all those years living in Florida wimpified me :-)
    I met up with Elena at the train station around 4:30 p.m. and we went to check out a house in the Thorndon section of Wellington... a cute two-bedroom place that would be great for two people but is, I think, a little too small for four. We'll go see another place Wednesday, a three-bedroom house outside the city about halfway between Porirua and Wellington in Lower Hutt.
    Wellington is still trying to get back to normal after last week's storm. The storm washed out two sets of railroad tracks so a lot of people who normally take the train to work have to drive and that's been creating some enormous traffic jams. Fortunately, it didn't affect the tracks from Porirua to Wellington so I have no trouble getting into and out of the city.

It was a beautiful day and people took full advantage of that fact along the Queen's Wharf

The view across Wellington Harbor from the wharf

I found this fountain as I walked along the wharf

At one point there is an amazing wooden bridge at the wharf and it features sculptures such as this one...

There are a lot of statues and monuments on the wharf

It might be winter, but that doesn't stop people from enjoying the water

   

A beautiful day

    After a week of rain and a storm that sucker punched Wellington, Sunday was a beautiful, sunny and reasonably warm day, perfect for doing a little exploring north of Porirua.

    Elena went for a long hike in the morning - I drank hot coffee and wrote postcards. When she came back from her tramp up the side of a mountain we set off in the car - a tiny Suzuki - heading north on Route 1. Our first stop was in Pukerua Bay where we went for a long walk on the beach and then along a narrow track for a couple of miles. The scenery was amazing. Among the sites: A giant rock that the sea had hollowed out to make a natural tunnel. Elena also picked some wild spinach that one guy told us was "wicked good" and warned us not to eat it with salt. "It grows here near the beach so its already got plenty of salt in it," he said.

    Next we went to Paekakariki (you gotta love these names even if, for someone like me, they're almost impossible to pronounce) where we stopped for a late lunch of fish and chips (I know, its a cliche but what the heck.) After that we continued north to Paraparaunu Beach where Elena went for another long walk while I started reading "Empire State" by Henry Porter. (There's only so much walking my legs can take these days... a tough thing to admit for a former infantryman but sometimes even I have to face facts.) When she came back we hung out for awhile watching the sun set and then headed back to Porirua. Along the way we saw this gigantic full moon so we detoured to Titahi Bay where we tried to shoot some photos of it. Mine did not come out as well as I'd hoped but it was worth the effort just to see it climbing into the night sky.

    It was a great day.

The full moon over Titahi Bay

Elena with some giant seaweed

The sea hollowed out this giant rock creating a natural tunnel

A Maori wood carving (about 20 feet tall in all)  in Pukerua Bay

Elena picking some wild spinach plants... we added them to soup later in the day

This was just a very cool bird I saw along the way

    

Cuba Street, the Southerlies and more rain...

    We spent Saturday apartment hunting in Wellington, without any success, but it was not a wasted trip by any means because we wound up on Cuba Street, which is variously described by locals as "funky" or "seedy" depending, I suppose, on your moral perspective.
    Cuba Street, which has cafes called "El Fidel" and "Havanna Good Time" among others, is full of little bars and eateries, vintage clothing shops, stores selling everything from wood sculptures to  LP records and even a Flying Burrito Brothers restaurant. It also has a pedestrian mall that is a little like the Ramblas in Barcelona. It was raining pretty hard throughout the day and the wind was fairly strong, though nothing like the Southerlies that hit us a couple of days ago. The rain made it difficult to get any good photos but it didn't keep people at home. They were out in force throughout the afternoon.
    It was while we stopped for some coffee to take the chill off that we picked up a Dominion Post and discovered that the Southerlies we experienced in Porirua on Thursday hit Wellington even harder. The Post put out a special 4-page section noting that the storm was the worst in 37 years and even worse than the infamous April 1968 blow that sank the ferry Wahine in Wellington Harbor. There were more than 700 people aboard the ferry when it rolled on its side and about 70 of them died. As of Saturday afternoon more than 30,000 people in Wellington were still without power and clean-up crews were busy clearing streets of tree limbs, and a few trees, that were blown down in the storm.
    After Cuba Street we went to see the Wellington city museum, where we learned a lot more about the Wahine disaster and the history of the city itself. The museum was recently voted among the Top 50 in the world, putting it in the same class as the Smithsonian, and it's easy to see why. The exhibits are wonderful and they don't pull any punches... this isn't a Chamber of Commerce-type facility that only highlights the positive things about the city. Instead, it treats issues such as racial prejudice, the subjugation of the Maori people and bloody labor-vs-management clashes with great objectivity in addition to extolling the virtues of Wellington's earliest European settlers and it's even earlier Maori pioneers.
    On top of all that, it's free.

Someone spent a lot of time painting this cat...

Cuba Street in the rain... 

The South wind doth blow; it doth blow

    It came out of Antarctica like a runaway freight train, its boxcars loaded with angry air animals baring icy fangs, hungry for the taste of anything warm. It brought rain with it; stinging rain that numbed cheeks and hands and then sought out the marrow in the bones of living things.
    The Southerlies swept over Porirua Thursday afternoon and on into the night with wind speeds reaching 130-kilometers an hour. The rain did not fall straight down as a result but came at you sideways, almost perfectly horizontal to the ground at times. It was not a fit night for man nor beast to be out and about and yet after-hours life in Porirua went on without taking much notice. The restaurants in town did a good business; the shopping malls were full until closing and people, knowing from long experience that they could not walk upright in the face of a gale-force blow, simply bent into the wind as they walked to their cars or to their homes.
    I have known cold winds such as these, but not for a long time. I grew up in New England and upstate New York and, later, in Northeastern Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie. Winds that came out of Canada that were cold to begin with became even more so as they blew across the icy fields, rivers and lakes of my youth so my brothers and I simply added another layer or two of clothing and went skating or sledding. The only time the cold wind seemed to bother us in those days was when we were adding those extra layers of clothes so we'd be reasonably warm as we trudged to school in places with names like Ogdensburg and Brocton. In a chorus of whiny voices, we often complained bitterly to my mother that we needed a ride to school because it was so cold outside and the wind was strong enough to steal your breath. My mother, however, never gave our complaints much credence. She had grown up in the Great Depression and her family didn't own a car so she and her sisters walked to school no matter what the weather.
    Besides, as she pointed out more than once, the cold and the wind never seemed to stop us from playing hockey... she had a point and she knew it.
    So did we and so, grumbling all the way about the unfairness of it all, we walked to school in brass monkey weather and were never the worse for it.
    The past few years, however, I have not known winds such as these.
    Strong winds, yes.
    Even winds that could be called fierce: I rode out Hurricane Andrew in a light pick-up truck with photographer Jim Virga when we worked for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and later, working for The News Journal in Delaware, I went to Louisiana with photographer Carla Varisco and, together, we rode out Hurricane Rita in an SUV.
    But while those winds were fearsome they did not carry with them the stinging bite that these Southerlies do. They were big, muscular winds that could knock a man down and tear a tree from its roots, to be sure, but they did not cause your fingers to stop working properly the way these winds from the bottom of the world can.
    Kiwis take them in stride.
    I, however, am older now and less resistant to the cold so I am inclined to treat them with all the respect due a proper bully who wants my lunch money. In other words, when the Southerlies blow in the future I intend to stay inside with a cup of  very hot coffee and listen to the wind sing its siren song.

Wellington in the rain...

    I took the late-morning train from Porirua to Wellington and spent a good share of the day wandering around New Zealand's capital city with no particular destination in mind: Just wanted to get a feel for the city and its people. It was a rainy day - well, it is winter here and most of New Zealand gets rain instead of snow during the season - but Wellington has a lot of covered walkways so I didn't actually get soaked.
    What I discovered was a very pleasant, very busy city of about 400,000 people. You can tell early on that this is a capital city: Just as there are in Washington, Madrid and London there were a lot of well-dressed men and women carrying briefcases walking briskly from one office to another with that look of grim determination that bureaucrats everywhere seem to adopt. There were also, however, a lot of people who seemed to be enjoying themselves despite the weather. People carried on shopping, chatting, having lunch and going about their day as if the rain wasn't really falling fast and furious. I honestly got the sense that people who live in Wellington know they've made their home in a special place, are glad of that fact and just accept the rainy days as part payment for their good fortune.
    I also discovered that Wellington has a lot of bookstores - something I'm very thankful for - and despite the presence of Burger Kings, Subways and the ever-present Golden Arches it's not what I'd call over-Americanized. It also has a very cool railway station, which comes complete with a "Platform 9-3/4" for those Harry Potter fans out there. This is a city that has grown tall because of the terrain so you're reminded of New York in some parts of town and there's a temptation to do the touristy thing and gawk... I'm a tourist so I did. It's also a very friendly place... people went out of their way to explain to me - patiently and with a smile - how to get from Point A to Point B and in one case even offered to walk me to my destination. (I declined the invitation because I didn't want to make the poor guy late for wherever he was going before I asked him for directions.)

Tall buildings that absolutely cannot be leapt in a single bound...

You thought I was kidding about the Harry Potter reference...

   

We made it...

    There were some delays along the way that turned our 37-1/2-hour flight from Barcelona to Wellington into a 45-hour flight but we actually arrived safe, sound, exhausted and reasonably exultant in New Zealand late Monday afternoon.

    We flew British Airways from Barcelona to London then on to Singapore and, finally, Sydney where we switched to Qantas for the last 3-hour leg of the journey. I'm not a big fan of airline companies in general but I have to say that the BA folks took very good care of us on this trip. The food was very good, the drinks were free (I drank a lot of tomato juice because, well, the idea of getting drunk seven miles up in the air just terrifies me) and the flight attendants were friendly.

    Wellington was a bit of a shock... the airport was small, something that I didn't expect given the fact this is New Zealand's capital city. We got through customs with a minimum of hassle and found a cab for what turned out to be a 25-kilometer ride to our motel in Porirua, which is one of four cities that make up what's known as Greater Wellington. It's also where the hospital Elena will work out of is located. That cab ride cost us $80 NZ but the driver, a refugee from Sudan who has lived in Wellington for about 10 years, was friendly and helpful so it was probably worth the cost. He pointed out some local sites and gave us some information on how to take the train into Wellington's downtown ($6 NZ) rather than taxis.

    We left Spain at the beginning of summer but here in the Southern Hemisphere it's the beginning of winter. The skies are generally gray and there is a lot of rain as a result. According to the local weather report, we are also due to get hit by something called the Southerlies (very cold air coming up from Antarctica) sometime in the next few days and there is a very real possibility that we could get snow. Not Buffalo-type snow - maybe an inch or two instead of a foot or two - but enough of it to make headlines in the Dominion Post. Elena is having a little difficulty adjusting to the gray skies and wet weather but it seems okay to me, at least at this point. One advantage of the rain: We've seen some spectacular rainbows, including a double rainbow yesterday afternoon. (I tried to take a photo of it but I didn't do it justice...)

    We're starting to look for a house to rent and hope to find one within a few days. There are some very nice ones listed in the local papers so we have hopes of settling into a pleasant place. Pleasant or not, it needs to be big enough so that we can avoid bumping into each other all the time, something that will be especially important in a couple of weeks when Elena's 13-year-old son Josep and his cousin (also named Elena) arrive.

    I'm still a little jet-lagged so I'm going to have some hot soup and crash... there was a time when jet lag happened to other folks but these days... sigh... it happens to me.

A beautiful double rainbow... this photo really doesn't do it justice

The Sydney skyline as seen from the airport

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go...

... so much for my homage to Peter, Paul &Mary but I will, indeed, be leaving on a jet plane in a very short while, bound for New Zealand until late August. Travel time, according to the ticket, is 37-1/2 hours so I'm bringing along some really thick books: "The Stand" by Stephen King; "Watership Down" by Richard Adams; "The Foundation Trilogy" by Isaac Asimov and "The Inexplicables" by Cherie Priest. I'm also bringing along two shorter classics: "Trouble is my Business" by Raymond Chandler and "The Quick Red Fox" by John D. MacDonald. I figure I won't be ale to read them all unless we get stuck in an airport for an unexpectedly long time. Airlines don't like you to think about things like that - they're always boasting about arriving on time or even ahead of schedule - but it's been my experience that delays can (and do) happen. When they do, there's nothing worse than sitting in an airport with nothing to read...
   

English only please, if only for a little while

    Many young people in Reus - and some who are not so young - are working hard to master English, which is, as any student whoever tried to diagram a sentence knows, a devilishly difficult language. The reason is not academic, it's economic: Spain's economy is in tatters these days and unemployment - depending upon whose figures you want to believe - is somewhere around 30 percent. As a result, many folks have come to the conclusion that being able to speak English in addition to Spanish and Catalan gives them greater access to jobs, both permanent and temporary.

    To help them practice their conversational English, there's a small bar not far from my apartment where on Thursday nights from 8 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. people can gather to talk to one another in this most-unfamiliar tongue, network and make a few new friends. My friend Elena and I have gone a few times and we've always found the group to be friendly so, following Thursday's chili luncheon, we stopped by last night.

    The conversation, as usual, was all over the place: Jobs (or the lack of them); what to do during the summer; plans for an upcoming marriage and honeymoon; family matters of every description and the like. It was, as always, very cool. Afterwards, nine of us went to get tapas but the restaurant owner refused to put a couple of tables together so we wound up having late-night crepes instead... actually, a better choice (in my opinion) because the crepes were great (and cheap.)

    If you're ever in Reus, stop in at this bar on a Thursday night and just join in. You'll like it, I promise...

    

Chili and congenial company

    I spent part of last night and a good share of this morning and early afternoon making a couple of gallons of chili for 10 people who were coming for lunch. Mindful of the batch I made last October, which might possibly have induced a heart attack or two, I really toned down the recipe this time. The result: No spoons melted and no internal organs were damaged, at least not permanently.
    It might seem easy to make chili that doesn't set your hair on fire but I found it hard to do. The reason is simple: Chili is, by definition, muy picante and the temptation to rev it up to what I consider acceptable levels of heat was very strong. I mean, if you don't make chili strong enough to at least make your eyes water and your tongue swell then, at least in my opinion, it's just a kind of stew... In the end I did, however, successfully fight the urge to jazz this batch up (I'll be applying for sainthood soon because it was really tough to do that) and somehow managed to put together a big pot of fairly reputable chili by substituting a lot of extra garlic and some fairly potent onions for the jalapenos and other spicy chili peppers I'd normally use. I also cut way down on the amount of  pepper and other spices and increased the amount of brown sugar I use when making my Adirondack Red Devil Chili. (Of the 40-plus chili recipes I have, that seemed the safest for this luncheon group because, despite the name, it includes some fairly safe ingredients such as mushrooms and sweet corn...) I thought it was pretty mild but my luncheon guests thought it was pretty spicy... not spicy enough to call for an ambulance, but spicy. It must not have been too spicy, however, because there isn't any left.
    The best part of the luncheon, however, was the fact that 10 of us sat around the table talking for a good share of the late afternoon. The conversation didn't end when we finished lunch because after eating we adjourned to the terrace outside the dining room and drank small - but very potent - cups of coffee and talked some more. There was a lot of laughter as well as some serious conversation about the sad state of Spain's economy and - because everyone around the table was related to my friend Elena, including her 94-year-old mom - some sharing of family stories that were, in some cases, embarrassing enough to cause a few blushes here and there.
    Nice day, well spent in congenial company.

A good day for shopping...

    Turned out to be an interesting day... I was on my way to the supermarket to do some shopping for lunch (we eat at 3 p.m. here followed by dinner at 9 and sometimes 10) when a friend told me I should, instead, go to the city market... a large building that has 50 or 60 small specialty shops selling everything from squid to sweet potatoes.

    What a fascinating place it turned out to be, filled with amazing sights and smells... I got some really nice tuna steaks, potatoes, snap peas, onions and green beans for lunch for me and my friend Elena's son Josep (she was out for the day with friends who wanted to say goodbye... she's only going to be in New Zealand for four months but I'm learning that here in Catalunya people will seize upon any excuse whatsoever to get together to eat and drink and just hang out... my sense is that if she was going away for a year they might well hold a week-long festival complete with fireworks. 

    Anyway, prices were cheaper in the city market than in the supermarket and the food was fresher so it was a good day for shopping,

    I'm planning to go back to the city market tomorrow because I'm making chili for 10 people for Thursday's lunch. Chili is an exotic food here because it's virtually unknown, something which surprised me when I was first told that. I learned just how exotic it is when I visited here in October and was asked to make a couple of gallons of chili for some friends who were throwing a party. I did and word kind of got around about it so now more people want to try it. This time, however, I'm toning down the recipe... I made what I thought was a mild version last time and people nearly died eating it... The reason: Contrary to what some people might tell you, Spanish food (unlike Mexican food) really isn't very spicy so habaneros and jalapenos are out, at least this time.

    After lunch Elena's friends who are coming for lunch want to watch "Casablanca," which I have on DVD, and listen to my Frank Sinatra CDs... who knew?

   

A good place to write...

    The bungalow I lived in while in Englewood, Florida was a great place to write. It has big oak trees dripping with Spanish moss in the yard along with an orange tree and lots of flowers, birds that sing almost constantly and a gentle breeze off Lemon Bay. Combined, they provided the  atmosphere I needed to get about the business of finally turning all those ideas for novels and short stories into reality; something that I never really had time to do during my nearly half century as a journalist.
    So it was that after retiring as publisher of the Englewood Sun I set to work. In the first year of my retirement, before moving here to Reus, I wrote the rough drafts for seven novels (one of the good things about being a single man of a certain age is that you can stay up all night writing if you want to) and actually polished two of them to the point where I put them on Kindle. "Corpus Delectable," a murder mystery set in Lewes, Delaware and "The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit," a Steampunk adventure, have been online for a little more than a month and though sales aren't through the roof, they are actually selling.
    One of the things that initially concerned me when I started thinking seriously about moving to Reus was whether or not I'd be able to write here as I had in Englewood. This is, after all, a city and the trees are in parks and plazas, not my front yard. In Englewood the birds that regularly visited my yard were wood storks, great blue herons, great egrets, cardinals, blue jays and mockingbirds along with palm wrens, finches and a wide variety of song birds. Here, we have pigeons. Lots and lots of pigeons.
    I needn't have worried, however. Reus has a wonderful energy about it and it's a city that even at 3 o'clock in the morning has people in the streets. It's not the same as Englewood in any sense of the word but it's a wonderful place to write... so wonderful that I'm just putting the finishing touches on my third novel for Kindle - a political thriller called "The Session."
    Life is good.
   

Things to love about Reus...

    I moved to Reus on purpose but even though I'd visited here several times in the past I didn't really know when I arrived a few weeks ago just how special a place it is.
    For example, you have to like a city where the police cars have a blue rose decal on the hood... I mean, what self-respecting Dirty Harry wannabe would cruise the mean streets in a car that has a rose for a hood decoration? Here, however, no one thinks twice about that... Catalunyan cops may have as much macho to contend with as any other copper anywhere else in the wide world but apparently they are not troubled by the fact their cars - which, by the way, are not big and are not powered by engines the size of a locomotive's - are a little "arty."
    Another quirk: The city's workers wear brightly colored work uniforms with a smile emoticon on the back... As someone who once spent a summer working as a garbage man, I am especially fascinated by the men and women whose job it is to keep the plazas clean of bits of paper and other trash. They go about their business with casual efficiency and seem to spend a fair amount of time helping baffled Ukranian tourists find their way from one place to another... I'm not sure exactly why Reus is popular with Ukranians, but for some reason it is and in many restaurants the menu is in Spanish, Catalan, English and Ukranian.
    My apartment is on a narrow street with a few bars and restaurants scattered along it and when it's late I can hear people on their way home from a night out as they pass beneath my bedroom window. They laugh, they talk in that over-loud way that people who have drunk one or two beers too many do and they seem pleased with their lot in life. I like the sound of their voices.
    Another thing to like about Reus: The statues. They're everywhere and with one huge exception they are NOT dedicated to the military. The exception is the statue in the Placa Prim, which is dedicated to a Reusian general from the 19th Century. I'm not normally attracted to statues of men on horseback waving big swords around but in Prim's case I've made an exception. He was a remarkable soldier: A general who led his troops from the front, not the rear. As a former infantryman, that appeals to me... Although he was a brave man who was much honored for his heroism, he was also a man who believed firmly in democracy and he wasn't afraid to say so. The result: Even though he was made the Count of Reus and had other titles of nobility bestowed upon him, he was exiled from Spain more than once for telling the royal family that the people of Spain had rights. At one point he was even among a group of like-minded people who went searching across Europe for a suitable king, one who would uphold Spain's constitution. They found such a man but Prim never saw the realization of his dream for a ruler who would respect the rights of the people: He was assassinated in Madrid soon after.
    I still miss my Mr. Coffee but one of the things I like most about Reus is the number of coffee shops there are. I've been told - and I think it's probably true - that you can have a cup of coffee at noon in a different coffee shop every day of the year and still not have been in them all. When I take a break from working on short stories and novels, I go for a walk and find a coffee shop. I can spend an hour in one working my way through a cup or two of cafe con leche and reading or just listening to the city as it rotates around me... there are not many better ways to spend some time away from a keyboard...
    These are a few shots from around Reus:

General Prim - a remarkable soldier

You so seldom see statues of half-naked fat guys but Reus has one

This statue of a young nobleman is in a small plaza dedicated to the artist Fortuny... the statue is copied from one of his paintings

The National Museum of Catalunyan Art

    Barcelona, like New York City, is a fascinating place though I wouldn't want to live there... too much traffic, too noisy and way too expensive for us poor folks. Still, it's about an hour-long train ride from Reus and a nice place to wander around.
    I was in Barcelona a few days ago and a friend took me to the National Museum of Catalunyan Art... it's not an easy place to get to when you're walking on a pair of bad legs because the parking areas are a little far away but it's well worth the hike. This part of Spain, Catalunya, has never really considered itself part of the country and that sense of separateness is reflected in its artistic traditions, which are often radically different from traditional Spanish art. Gaudi's architecture is one example of just how radically different that art is, for example. Catalunya has produced an entire battalion of remarkable painters over the years and many of them are represented in the museum. The most remarkable exhibit in the museum, however, doesn't feature well-known artists such as Fortuny... it's a giant exhibit of frescoes dating from the 11th Century that were "liberated" from ancient Catalunyan churches and installed in the museum. The frescoes have been left just as they were when they were in the churches so there are parts of them that have worn away over time... you might think that would diminish their impact but it really doesn't. Instead, it gives you a real sense of just how old they are.
    The museum is housed in a palace that was built for the 1928 Barcelona world exhibition and it sits above the city and gives you a really wonderful view of it. Inside, the palace is decorated with some really wonderful ceiling frescoes that reminded me of Firenze.

Cambrils

    The people of Cambrils, like many Catalunyans, are mad for flowers... and, sometimes, for trees,,,