Odds and Ends at the End of a Travel Blog

I'm in Pampaneira at this moment, up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern Spain. At 5:00 pm a bus comes rolling through town, and I plan to be on it this afternoon, heading to Granada, and then from Granada through the air to Barcelona. On Thursday, I should be headed home to Wisconsin.

Too soon to take stock of the totality of the past eight weeks, best I can do right now is to pick up a few lost pieces. There are important things that slipped through the blog cracks. For example, whatever happened to the rest of the story about Lyon?  Way back in September?

Check out this fine example of Trompe-l'Oeil painting on the side of this building in Croix-Rousse:

 Ha! Zach and I went up to the ATM in the lower right to extract some Euros... from the wall!

I was charmed by this musician, and soon dismayed when he was surrounded by police checking his permit to make music on the street. (He was OK, and played on.)

And here's our cousin, Marie Therese, such a bright light on this planet, showing us around Lyon, her new happy home.

And then, how is it that I totally neglected to note the Wieliczka salt mine in Poland, near Kraków?

All these sculptures are carved out of SALT!

We went down into this salt mine with our cousin, Małgosia.  Back in September!

Time to go home now.  I'm ready.  It's been a phenomenal eight weeks. A big thank you — Mercí, Dziękuje, and Mulƫumesc — to all who were so kind and generous to Zach and to me. You have enriched our lives. Come and visit us in the United States! 

And thank you to all who have responded to this blog, in one way or another, in the last couple of months. You've kept me going! Come travel with me next time!

I leave you with this shot of sunset last night, here in Pampaneira: