Pont de Suert & Bristol Bucks

Hiking in Pont de Suert

A few weeks ago my friend Tom came down to Barcelona from the People's Republic of Stokes Croft, which is the wannabe autonomous region located in the wannabe autonomous region of Bristol.

He came bearing gifts.

• Two "Think Local Boycott Tesco" coffee cups made of fine Stokes Croft China. Obviously these are beautiful mugs and I'm not even showing you the beautiful blue flower on the back. But they're also great because it's very easy for Sarah and I boycott Tesco since grocery store chain doesn't exist in Spain or are future home of the San Francisco. 

Interesting side note in a blog post full of unrelated side notes: Tom bakes cakes for a local Stokes Croft restaurant that is all about the "think local, boycott Tesco" movement. Pretty much all of Tom's ingredients come from Tesco. If there are any Tesco rioters who aren't in prison and who are reading this, feel free to email me and I'll give you Tom's address for future destruction. 

• The kind soul by the name of Tom also gave us two Bristol pounds, which is the city's new currency backed by rather legitimate planning and a fascinating website. Currently the pounds are 1-to-1 to Sterling Pounds. But as soon as they become 1BP to 2,000USD, Tom is going to come visit me in San Francisco. 

After ample time was spent sipping tea from anti-Tesco mugs and marveling at the new currency, we romped around Barcelona until continuous eating, drinking, and cycling got to be a bit stressful and we needed an escape.

We then headed to the visit Tom's friends in Pont de Suert a tiny town in northern Catalunya, where continued to eat, drink, be merry, but we swapped out cycling for hiking. 

We stayed with Tom's friends, Maria and Eric, who live in a breath-taking house on top of a mountain that overlooks a picturesque valley. 

Every room in Maria and Eric's house had insanely stunning views that made me wonder why I'm not living in the mountains. They both work at a bank 8-3 five days a week and spend the rest of their time relaxing with their 4-year-old daughter who babbles in French, Catalan, and Spanish. They pretty much live the dream. 

Eric also plays the accordion, which I was hoping to get a chance to try out, but I never worked up the courage to ask him. Once the bustling town of Pont de Suert and it's population of 2,000 got to be too stressful we headed to a tinier town (whose name I forgot) to attend a horse festival. Tragically we just missed the brunch and our opportunity to eat horse for the first time in our lives. 

No accordion playing, no horse eating. I know. I know. Why did I even go on this trip?

On the way back to Barcelona we visited Tom's friend in Lleida (Tom has a lot of Catalan friends), where we ate at a restaurant that was so old-school that the menu was in euros and pesetas (Spain's currency before they switched to the euro in 2002). 

la casa

el coche y fall colors

cows on the trail

nature, man.

mas nature

picnic

Lleida castle