Monalia's World

Photo below is of some of my morning padel group of 8 to 9 am padel players. Padel is a big part of my life, it keeps me fit.

This is Barcelona-Lia, tooling around on my bike with my dog Zuma. In the below video, we explore my immediate neighborhood in Barcelona. As time passes, Mark and I have joined the “LAT movement”, or “Living Apart Together” demograph of married couples who live apart, but remain actively together. Evidently there is a real movement for this arrangement which we came up with on our own, heh heh. Either I visit him in the mountains every few weeks, or he visits me here at the beach. We get the best of both worlds with this arrangement, pursuing our personal interests while continuing to collaborate on projects. We spend quality time when we are together but follow the rhythm of our own drum while apart.

Since buying the house in the mountains (a 1 1/2 hour drive from our beach pad) Mark is happily spending most of his month in the mountains, where he records new songs, takes nature hikes with his drone and gizmos, cultivates an indoor garden and recuperates after making it through a difficult year suffering long covid.

I, on the other hand, remain healthy (to date) and love my beach life, where I play padel 3 mornings a week and ride everywhere on my bike. I am making new friends and loving my connection to this wonderful city. Next month I plan to go to Florence to see my Zia Fiorella (my mom’s sister) who turns 93 next month. I’ll bring Zuma and spend 6 nights there, so I can see family, kick around with my camera(s) and shop too. That’s the plan.

I will share more of my bike rides as I slowly master the use of my 360 degree InstaCamera RS.

Below is the “other” me; butch mountain woman who bought a Polaris and named it “Jeepy Jeep”, or “Gippi Gip” as they say here. I have discovered many a waterfall and/or unexpected streams, valleys, gorges, natural springs etc by tooling around Montseny in it.

I will spend more time in the mountains once it is spring, and cherries begin to blossom etc.