Photos of the grand Spanish hiking excursion are up, all over at Flickr. Lots of pics of us looking winded and sweaty on hillsides, and some beautiful tomatoes and a very silly video of Peter trying out all the public gym equipment they have in the villages.

Also, there’s a separate set from our afternoon of “fonting”–kind of like birding, but looking for obscure fonts. And boy, there are some doozies in Granada. (AV, why did you never mention this? It seems so right up your alley… And the Auto Escuela Dorado right by your apartment!)

The photos contain the juiciest anecdotes, but let me just say, in brief: Peter and I may actually live to hike again. It’s hard to believe, but we enjoyed ourselves. Peter was such a convert, in fact, that he walked home from the East Village the other night. I’m not giving up my bike anytime soon, and I still feel a little embarrassed about being seen in public with a backpack (ooh, a matching backpack with Peter’s, no less! That’s what happens when you emergency shop on the day before your flight). But it was a good trip.

And as a guidebook-updating gig, it was fantastic. I could only travel so fast, and was not expected to travel any faster, which is the exact opposite of any trip involving a car and an impractical number of small towns. But I still didn’t manage to buck the Curse of the Missed Swimming Pool. This occurs whenever I have a night planned in a really nice hotel, and I think, “Ooh, maybe I’ll just be able to check in and chill out by the pool that afternoon!” No. Inevitably, my schedule gets jacked up, and there is no swimming or sunning or anything, after I check in at dinnertime, totally pooped. On this trip, it meant that the night we were scheduled to stay at the really lovely place, we got lost near the end of the day, finally found our way, slogged through the river bottom and clambered up the hill just as the sun set and a cold shadow was cast over the pool. We swam anyway, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned.