Many, many things are going on. For example, I’m in Provence—St Remy de Provence, to be exact—as I write this, and I’ve recently left Barcelona. To the left is a picture of the nave ceiling of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and if you’re at all interested in architecture, let me say that Barcelona—aside from the food, the people, the excellent design and the freaking CHOCOLATE MUSEUM—is worth visiting simply to see this church, designed by Antonio Guadi. I can’t even begin to explain how amazing it is. The only building I’ve ever been to that affected me as much was the Sydney Opera House (and seriously, I cannot vouch for my sobriety at Sydney, although I can tell you I was sober at Sagrada Familia . . . mostly).

Here’s another pic from Barcelona, just to entice you further. This is something I call “brainfrog,” one of the many excellent examples of Barcelona graffiti. Another reason you may want to visit there.

I should now mention that Frat Boy and Toppy is an Erotic Romance finalist in the National Excellence in Romance Fiction Awards—more info available here. I’m completely excited (and not simply because I’m editing Sweet Young Thang, Collin’s story, right now) and I’m eagerly awaiting the results in May!

D’accord! Now let us go to Provence. I don’t have any great pics of where I went today, because I left that up to the husband, but he apparently can’t figure out how to download them to my computer (um, maybe a little less vin rouge and you could, dude). At any rate I went to Glanum, which is one of the best Roman sites I’ve been to. It’s a fantastic example of the layout of a Roman town, but also makes a great analogue for a Roman city.

The problem with Roman cities is that they’re huge. Even if you go to Pompeii (a relatively small city) it’s overwhelming. Glanum is smallish but was prosperous enough to have all the major elements, plus some pre-Roman features and houses. FANTASTIC!!!

However, since I can’t show you pics of Glanum—although you can see lots of info here—I will show you images of what I did yesterday. We went to a medieval castle on the then-border of France and Spain that I can’t remember the name of, but which was built in a huge hurry in 1479 (the Moors; they were scary). It was a very cool place, although I tend not to be that into things that were built/happened after about 600 a.d. Still, completely impressive.

Then, I conned the people I rode with (a.k.a. my husband and children) into going to check out a pre-Roman hillfort—sometimes known as a town. That was uber-cool. However, since you aren’t my children, I won’t bore you with over-generous explanations of impluvium, sarcophagi or oppidium. (The husband, if you were wondering, learned long ago to send me into museums and archaeological sites by myself. It’s likely that has saved our marriage.)

Don’t be shocked if I come up with more things from Provence which I’ll wax enthusiastic about which you won’t be interested in. Sorry. (But it’s my blog, so . . . yeah.)