Vuelvo a Valencia -- con Lluvia

Though it's a really perfect Sunday morning thus far, last night got me worried that the Californian Mediterranean monsoons were already arriving. It certainly felt like that last night as I braced for the wet and winds and ventured over to Firecracker on Valencia for Yin Yang prawns and a glass or Albariño vina rias baixas españa which they listed as one of their "unusual wines". In this morning's Chronicle magazine I read with some amusement an article on La Rioja region's vineyards, something else to add to the list for the next trip.

Although the next three to four months will involve enough travel (albeit to Seattle, Wyoming, Colorado, Ecuador) for work, I started thinking already about a couple of trips I've had in mind for the spring. Manhattan in May has been on my mind as well as somewhere between Santa Monica and Sedona in January. Back in the warmth of home, I did a couple of searches for air/hotel packages for those trips and then -- just for grins -- for Bilbao, Milan and Florence -- all of which were close second, third and fourths when planning this week's trip. All of them came within a couple hundred dollars of the domestic visits, even with the hideous current exchange rate, leaving me thinking...hmm.

Though, torture of torture, I head back to Oklahoma tomorrow afternoon to do some staff training, though fortunately it's a short visit.