Catalonia capsule
A few days in Barcelona really just isn't enough. I feel slightly tortured that my trip was cut short at both ends (a sad story I'll spare you). Next time, I'm going to see FC Barcelona no matter what. But I did luck into hitting Barcelona during La Merce 2006, an annual cultural festival which involved lots of live music on multiple stages in downtown Barcelona which also brings out just about all the children in the city during the day and allows for drinking beer in public squares at night. I mostly stuck to Catalan folk bands or folky-rocky-ska bands, but also caught some Afrobeat on the main stage. Somewhere in the city, Neko Case was playing but she bored me to tears last time I saw her in Chicago. Dirty Pretty Things were playing a free show the afternoon I arrived. There were loads of gigs in the city on the 28th (the Rapture), but I was up in the Pyrenees pretending to be the Duke of Cardona for a night. Two shows I would have like to have seen were Digitalism and the Divine Comedy, but I'm sure they'll come around here. The drive from the Costa Brava into the Pyrenees itself proved to be one of the trips highlights. Next time, I'm putting the pedal down. No sleep til Andorra. The other revelation was this... Spanish food totally rocks (Cal Pep was everything it was promised to be and more) and Spanish wine... good God! I ended up drinking wines from the Ribera del Deuro region but Baldoma Seleccio, Lealtanza Magnum, Alidis tinto were some of my favorite reds. I got in the habit of drinking a glass of cava before dinner and took it easy on the Estrellas (which are in fact, just a type of beer made by Damm, I had no idea). Some of my favorite places were small, restored medieval towns that are pretty unknown. During the driving portion of the adventure, iCat was my companion, a Catalan station that plays the likes of Beth Orton, Cat Power, new Paul Weller alongside regional folky singer-songwriter rock. There are also a few stations kicking out the Ibiza anthems non-stop. The big revelation being that Catalan radio kicks ass over what you get in the States but that's Barcelona for you, really stylish but never, in my experience, annoying.