Gee, but it's good to be back home

Oh, the joy.
It's been the best holiday ever, but I have a theory that says that a holiday isn't a proper holiday unless by the end you're itching to get back. That is the true test of its therapeutic power.

And so it is. I was desperate to leave, and I'm so glad to be here, with my darling goose-down pillow and my kitchen and my blog.

Now I´m going again, which sounds a little stupid, after all that, but it´s only for two days and to the country, to stay with my family, so it doesn´t really count.
I´ll have all the trip report on Monday, but for now, I want to celebrate Spain, in all its dusty glory. We´ve been driving on Baltic roads for fifteen days, and yes, they´re beautiful, don´t have too much traffic, and sport those really cool "beware of elks" signs.

But they don´t have road bars like we do. They don´t have any road bars, as far as I can make out.

Ours are oddly likeable in their crumminess, their loudness, the clank of the slot machines, the crushed paper napkins and toothpicks on the floor. The shrill blast of the espresso machine, and the snappy shouted orders for dos de bravas y un carajillo.
I love to sit at the bar,and look around at the posters of local bullfighters, the parsley and lottery tickets tucked behind an image of San Pancracio, and the various calendars from trucking and fertilizer companies,while listening to the locals growling about football or the harvest as they drink their coffee with brandy and their anis.
There´s a lot of commercial enterprise, too. You can buy cassettes,mostly Manzanita and Azúcar Moreno, with a couple of Julio Iglesias thrown in. They´ll usually have gallon bottles of local oil, and boxes of doubtful looking almond pastrires, chorizos in oil, cheese, keyrings with ferrari logos, or their patron saint.

Yep. I really like them. The only difficulty is in making J stop at them. He´s just as bad as my father about pushing on til we arrive at our destination. Let´s see if I can make him stop this time.