For the past many months my husband and I have been planning a dream trip. We never set out to go on a long journey, this was one of those “if you give a mouse a cookie” scenerios. About a year ago I joined my long time and dear friend Kari on a yoga retreat. She had become a teacher at Sellwood Yoga in Portland, Oregon and had begun teaching with her friend, studio owner, Savonn. Kari and Savonn were bringing a group to Lucca, Italy and invited me to join. As you can imagine it took me all of 4 seconds to decide to go! Many, many years ago I owned a very small yoga studio in Vermont and although I know very well all the ins and outs of yoga, I no longer practice, and am in despicable shape. I marched myself over to Kripalu for a few warm ups and off I went to Lucca to join this extraordinary trip. Little known fact: Many gorgeous villas and estates throughout Europe rent out their spectacular facilities to yoga retreats. Seriously, who makes better guests than yogis??!! Yoga retreats are also a great value and often include meals made on site by local cooks… and there are sure to be visiting masseuses! I had wonderful plans to meet Don after the Italian retreat, and we enjoyed romantic Lake Como and adventuring around Switzerland - even returned to Murren, where I had studied in college. I did however, feel that Don had missed out. There were other men at the yoga retreat and our group had the opportunity to thoroughly enjoy Savonn and Kari’s classes and the chance to see many lovely sites in Tuscany. We had dinners in neighboring villages, went on a wine tour, visited Cinque Terra, and took Italian cooking lessons. (Which have resulted in the purchase of TWO pasta makers and NO homemade pasta to date!)

When another retreat presented itself, I immediately invited Don to join me. This time in France!! And thus, we have the beginning of “if you give a mouse a cookie” or in our case “if you are going to a yoga retreat in France, you might as well….”

If you are going on a yoga retreat in France, you might as well go to Barcelona!! 6 years ago we had the most fantastic International student Patty come and live with our family. For the last 6 years Patty and our Birdie have gone back and forth to spend great amounts of time with each other!! Birdie has completely adopted Patty’s family and vise versa. It was high time we made our way to Spain to see Patty and meet her amazing mother Louisa!! We tore ourselves away from Barcelona this morning after 3 full days and 4 nights of living it up in Spain. We toured the city and museums, we spent time with Patty and Lousia’s family and friends, we saw other girls who had studied in Vermont. We even celebrated Don’s 60th birthday. Because we were traveling with a local family, we often found ourselves in settings where we were the only tourists, which I love. This included the Barcelona Polo Club. It was very hard pulling ourselves out of our friends’ warm and inviting home but we had to continue on our journey.

If you are going to France for a yoga retreat, and you are going to Barcelona, you must take a week between and drive through the Pyrenees. (Marital traveling tip number one: When you plan a trip, have each spouse pick different locations or activities. Each spouse needs to be very enthusiastic for the other’s activities. This creates great travel harmony and a high percentage of future travel!)

Don loves athletic pursuits and adventure. As evident by the photo above, I am very happy sitting on a couch needlepointing. (Extra points if there is auditory enjoyment such as conversation with family or friends, television, or a great audio book.) I absolutely love to travel but my own personal choices might not include steep inclines, maps, undergrounds, or the woods. I also insist on staying far from Alligators. Don takes me way out of my comfort zone…which includes my current packing accoutrements… hiking poles, hiking boots, and scratchy wool socks. Tomorrow I fill my pockets with asthma medicine, grab my favorite travel tool (my beloved camera), and follow my husband through the gorgeous mountain range between Spain and France. I thoroughly expect a gooey cheese and baguette reward!!

Stay tuned for more Pyrenees stories and the other “cookies”, we are adding to this adventure!