I jumped the gun a little.  On the first official day of my retirement, I was actually already in Spain.  A friend of mine is living in Barcelona, so I spent a few days there, and then a long weekend in Ibiza.  (It turns out that Ibiza is an island in the Mediterranean, a hundred miles or so south of Barcelona).

The best picture from Barcelona is one I didn’t have the nerve to take.  Nudity is legal (and not uncommonl) on Barcelona beaches.  (No, I did not — thanks for asking.)  One day, just off the side of the busy beachside boardwalk lay an older, fairly-heavy, very-tanned Spanish gentleman, sleeping buck naked with his head resting on his own artificial leg (which he had removed, apparently for use as a pillow).  I didn’t have the nerve to go over there and take a picture.  So…no Barcelona beach pictures.

The first several pictures below are actually at Montserrat — a hilltop monastery outside Barcelona.  Then there are a couple at the relatively modern and decidedly odd Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona — designed by the architect Gaudi, after whom was coined the word “gaudy,” for reasons the cathedral makes apparent.  The pretty beach is Ibiza.