I will forewarn you that this is going to be a long one, but after the most incredible week in Krakow, there are plenty of stories to tell about the highs and the lows of my time there.  I also have to admit that I have never actually watched/read Eat, Pray, Love, but from the brief synopsis I read on Wikipedia, I promise my version is not nearly as radical.  Rather, my week in Poland can really be best categorized by these three areas and I intend to lay out this post in a similar way – categorically rather than chronologically.

I really didn’t want to go to Paris.  The French people there were mean, the cost of living was expensive, and I felt I had got everything out of the city I needed the 4 other times I had been there.  I had to go to Paris though because it was the jumping-off point for me to get to Poland (I’ll explain more in a following post), and I had to pay my good friend Art a visit at his bar, La Cave Café.  It was an evening spent truly like a local and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else.

I was starting to find a rhythm in my travels; for each busy, touristy city I would need to chase it with a calm, more peaceful, prayerful place.  Keeping this balance in my travel is how I answer the remark people make “that’s a long time to be gone!”  Although Barcelona wasn’t as much as Madrid, I still needed calm to follow the crazy, so just like Madrid had Manresa, Barcelona had Lourdes, just across the border in France.  I’ll admit, I was sad to be leaving Spain and the comfort of the language I knew, but I knew I needed to eventually start making tracks eastward if I was going to make it as far as I wanted to in the limited time I had.

It was a good thing I got the rest, peace, and privacy of the quiet little mountain town of Manresa because my less than 24 hours in Barcelona would be pretty much the exact opposite. I had spent a decent amount of time in the city when I visited 3 years ago, so I figured I didn’t need much time there as there wasn’t much new to see and really only one thing I wanted to go back and visit. It was more of a jumping-off point for me. It would be a fast and furious 20 hours in the city, but by the end I left feeling satisfied with my time, not wanting a minute more or less there.

Having been to Ávila to see St. Teresa of Ávila and to Segovia to see St. John of the Cross, it was only natural that I rounded out the “Great Spanish 3” by making a trip to Manresa for St. Ignatius of Loyola.  This time I already knew his body wasn’t there (it’s in Rome), but there was still an attraction there as it served as an important city in St. Ignatius’ spiritual development and works.  Also, I was excited to get out of my capsule hostel and the big city to travel to this small mountain town where I had a whole apartment booked to take some time to slow down and care for myself.

I decided to extend my stay in Madrid two days longer than I had originally planned for several reasons.  First, it was really convenient knowing the language and being able to speak it rather fluently when necessary.  Second, my lodging in the capsule hostel there was relatively cheap and had nice facilities.  And third, I think I had tried to cram too much into too short a time, and wanted to make sure I was still leaving time to you know “stop and smell the roses”, or in this case, stop and taste the wine.

One of the main reasons I had in coming back to Spain was to see the things and places I didn’t get to see the first time I was here. While I have a very strong devotion to the three most famous Saints, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross, I never got to actually visit anything having to do with them the first time I was in Spain. I was bound to change that this time and experience them to the fullest.

I had everything planned out.  I was prepared for anything.  But of course, God had to humble my pride along the way.  But still, I’ve made it from Mobile to Madrid with really only a few minor hiccups in the process.  Here’s a little insight into the prep and then execution of what I’m calling my “Single Silver Lining Summer”.