Wildflowers and Surgeons and Cows, Oh My!

At 8:15 AM yesterday morning, about 40 people from the Cardiovascular Department gathered outside a parking lot wearing trekking clothes and backpacks.  We were off for an excursion to Parc Natural del Montsey, or Montseny Natural Park,

which is one of the 3 major parks within a 2 hour drive of Barcelona (Montserrat, of monastery fame, is one of the others).  We were hiking up to the peak of Matagallos, which literally means Kill Roosters.  On the bus ride there, I watched the beautiful scenery fly by, getting greener and greener and then redder and redder as wildflowers dotted the grass.  Then, to my extreme amusement, the middle-aged members of the trip started to have bus singalongs.  It was fantastic.  Well, except for a rendition of a song called "John Brown Was a Little Indian" that was apparently a shout-out to me.  That part was a bit awkward.

Anyway, we arrived at our drop-off point and, after a quick break to chow down on oodles of strawberries

we began our trek through the park.  It was, in a word, gorgeous.  It has been so long since I went for a long hike that I'd forgotten how much I love it, and promptly swore to change my ways and hike more often.
And now, I present you with thousands of photos, far too many of which include me:

Me with my newfound friend, the cow (apparently they let a bunch of them loose here to graze in the Spring and then find them in the Fall when they're fattened up and can be sold for meat)

 My two hiking companions, who kept up with me the whole way so that I wasn't totally alone, and who are hilarious.

 The left two people, Victor and Ignasi, are from my lab.  The two on the right are my hiking buddies (see above).

After our hike, the adventurers went to a beautiful restaurant.  Its location was Paradise.  We had lots of traditional Catalan foods, which was great because I had 41 Catalan guides to eating it correctly.

We started out with bacalau and salmon eggs on tiny toasted pieces of bread (serving food this way is called torrades).  Note: bacalau is cod, which is traditionally salted because it was the fish that was transported to the interior of the country in the days before refrigeration because it kept well.  So if you eat cod/bacalau in Spain, it's almost always salted.

A pork sausage that was DELICIOUS.

 Tomato and garlic are generally put out with meals so that you can make....

Pan con tomate (bread with tomato), a traditional Catalan dish.  Take one piece of toasted bread, rub it down with a cut clove of garlic, and scrub a half-tomato on it so that the juice and a wee bit of pulp cover the surface.  Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and - if you want to taste heaven - put a bit of the delicious sausage and/or some Manchego cheese on top.  Buenisimo.

Olives, onions, and teensy cucumbers (pickles) brined in a spicy vinegar.

  Delicious salad with multiple types of mushrooms (including champagne mushrooms) and the Manchego cheese that I stole for my bread.
  Butifara, a gourmet sausage, served with beans and a potato.
  Crema catalana, a typical dessert that is a little bit like flan or creme brulee, but a bit less firmy and more goopy.  (Confession: I don't like it that much)
  Another dessert, called guajada (granite), is a sort of yogurt/condensed milk (but not sweet like condensed milk) served with a pot of high-quality honey that gets mixed in.
  It was one adventurer's birthday, and they served the most delicious, air-light chocolate cake.

After I got home, I had a long and gorgeous run just before sunset, when the city is cooling down and everyone is relaxing into the evening.  After getting home, I spent the next three hours poring over websites about Barcelona and planning all the wonderful things I want to see.  I’m pretty sure I’ve attempted to join a tango club, a movie-watching club, a Bollywood movie-watching club, a beach volleyball team, and a club that I discovered too late is more about drinking than running, but still sounds fun.  This is in addition to an extensive list of parks to picnic in, museums to visit (including the soccer one, so I can learn something about sports at last), and tapas bars to sample.  My goal is to go somewhere new every other day.  Ambitious? Yes.  Worth it? Completely.

Spotted: The cutest wedding ever, which was taking place at the hotel where we ate (See: Paradise)