Monday, May 7, 2012

Girona: Ups and Downs

Heading from Barcelona to Girona, we just happened to take the same train as Sam and K.O.!  It's always fun finding people you know in some other part of the world.

Girona's a nice town, medium-sized by Spain standards I think.  Sam's friend/employer Marty Jemison of  is loaning us his apartment for the week, called Can Bici.  It's in a great part of town, only 15 minutes walking from the old part of town, and out the front door it has a great view of the town and the mountains to the west.

We've had a beautiful ride at dusk and a beautiful ride up Els Angels.  The weather so far has been awesome blue sky with big puffy scattered clouds that move in during the afternoon.

On Saturday, Sam took us to a friend's house whose family was having a big afternoon lunch.  We rode 1.5 hrs out to the house, which was an awesome affair, with 11 people around the table and food for 20.  They had an outdoor grill and brought out several huge plates of meat -- ribs, chicken, different pieces of lamb, rabbit, fish, several different kinds of sausage, liver from something, and god knows what else.  There were salads, deviled eggs (always a favorite), homemade mayonnaise, and other things.  All of this was washed down with wine, finished with a few desserts, and topped off with some after-meal shots of a liquor that tasted like an herbal Jaegermaester.  After lots of chatting, we took the fast way back; with the tailwind it only took 20 minutes.

We met up with Peter and April at their hotel.  It was a blast hearing about all their adventures.  They've been criss-crossing this region for weeks now.  We all had a nice dinner together.  I was really feeling the jetlag; I've been too excited to sleep more than 4-5 hours at a time.

The next day was not so good for me.  [Skip the next paragraph if you don't want gory details.]

Woke up with pressure in chest, puked a little, went back to sleep.  Woke up a few hours later, pressure in chest and nauseated, went with the glass of warm salt water, asked Emma if she put enough salt in, and by the end of the sentence I emptied my stomach.  Emptied the other direction as well.  Ugh.  Everybody ate the same stuff (except Sam only had the fish of course), so not sure about the cause.  Pretty sure it was a meat product at fault.

Went for a quick ride up Els Angels with Sam and Emma.  Emma rocked it, powering close behind Sam and I, and we were all rewarded with a great view.

Fantastic dinner with the Spiros at a place Sam had been to before.  Great conversation, lots of interesting food.

I woke up this morning without quite as strong nausea, only to find out Emma's stomach was hurting!  Bummer!  It helps to know it's probably mostly a 24hr thing, but I can attest (and Emma agrees) it's been pretty painful.  A water bottle full of hot water earned me the most points today.  I can already tell she's improving, but we'll see how things go tomorrow.

Went for a beautiful ride with Sam during one of Emma's naps; we weren't able to push it too much, but took some videos that I'll post later.


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