We packed up things in Barcelona after what seemed like six eventful days, rented a couple of cars, and made the three-hour trip to Languedoc, in France. The north of Spain and the south of France have much in common, linguistically, culturally, historically. But they seem very different to me. Let me count the ways.

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  For most of the people who live here, and perhaps even a higher fraction of tourists, Barcelona never needed to make a comeback. But my wallet was stolen here, and I was inconvenienced by a wildcat transit strike, and I was a bit down on the place. It rallied today, in a couple of […]

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I first saw the Sagrada Familia basilica/church, what there was of it, in 1992, during a break (for me) at the Barcelona Olympics. I remember leaving with two impressions:

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I knew about Barcelona’s dire problem with pickpockets. No overview of the tourist experience in this city is complete until it mentions it. Do a Google search for “barcelona pickpockets” and hundreds (thousands?) of results come back. Among the titles: Barcelona “Worst City for Pickpockets” … Barcelona’s Fatal Flaw: Pickpockets … And one entire site […]

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It just worked out this way. In Barcelona around the weekend of October 7, when FC Barcelona and Real Madrid were scheduled to play. A colleague writing about the match. Me mentioning I was going to be in Barcelona. His note that he knew someone who might have tickets. My inquiry … And there we […]

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In my lifetime, suggesting that Barcelona could compete with Paris as 1) a place to visit and 2) a place to live, would have been ridiculous. Talking 1960, 1970 … In 2012, it no longer is a ridiculous notion. From the perspective of sitting in a lovely restored apartment in Barcelona, after another beautiful day […]

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Back to B-Town! Don’t really need an occasion to visit Barcelona, but we have one: The 50th anniversary of the wedding of Leah’s parents. We went west from the UAE and they came east from Los Angeles … And it involved one major surprise:

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Sort of a classic conundrum coming up here, at the end of the American League season. One guy won the Triple Crown. The first man to do so since 1967. The other, however, had a better season. A significantly better season according to stat wonks. So, how will this turn out?

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Down here around Abu Dhabi and Dubai, approaching the outer edge of the Empty Quarter, nature is boring. What we have is hard-baked sand and miles and miles of flatlands. On some of that, buildings have been constructed. The whole country is not like that, however. The northern emirates, especially, have hills and mountains and […]

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The search continues. We’ve done three of the big developments. Multiple tall buildings in a small area. Today, we tried one big building in what is a fairly normal/regular neighborhood here on Abu Dhabi Island. Maybe this is where we should have been looking all along.

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