Friday, September 24th, 2004: Calonge, Spain

It is our last full day in our “home for a week”. Although the sky is cloudy when we wake, it clears while we are breakfasting on the terrace, and we have yet another perfect day. Not hard to take at all!

After an afternoon spent lazing around the pool, Greg and I head into town about 5, hoping the shops will have reopened after siesta. Trading hours here seem to be 9 to 1, and then 5 or 5:30 to 10 or 10:30. We are glad that we aren’t working retail in the Costa Brava.

We make our phone calls and continue our search for an apartment in Paris for when we arrive in a couple of weeks. Then we head back to the villa, for a glass of wine and a bit of pâté de foie gras that David has found at one of the local shops. The terrines that we had bought earlier in the week have been relegated to food for the beautiful cat that has adopted us. We don’t know where he’s from, but he looks sleek and healthy, a beautiful mix of Siamese body with tabby face and paws, and icy-blue eyes. He has been visiting since we arrived, and although he has yet to let us touch him, today he will lets Kathryn come almost close enough before he runs away.

A Lovely, Last Dinner Out

We are going out for dinner tonight, the 1st time this week we have not cooked for ourselves and eaten at home. In our welcome kit was a list of recommended restaurants, and we have chosen one, Les Gavarres, that is up the hill and away from civilization. The small village where we are dining, Romanyà de la Selva, has records dating its founding to 1014. Dinner is wonderful! We start with a beautiful Catalonian wine. I have Hake, a fish specialty of the region, lightly poached; David and Greg have a sweet duck cooked in fruit and Kathryn orders poultry stewed in plums. Their choices turn out to be seasonally prescient, halfway through dinner a strong wind comes up, followed by a real fall rainstorm. (Although the rain is over by the time we leave the restaurant, the wind is fierce all night long.) David and Kathryn insist on buying, to thank us for the work we put into finding the villa. The work was nothing, and we have enjoyed the week with them so much that we feel guilty about accepting.

Thank you, David and Kathryn, for a wonderful meal, a wonderful week and for being such great friends!