Westworld Alberta

NEED seone TO travel WITH? JOIN US ON A SOLO TRIP! Our community of over 650 Go Solo travellers continues to grow thanks to our most recent events. These popular Go Solo itineraries are booking up fast! A Down Under Adventure, New Zealand & Australia April 12 – May 5, 2016 Peru Explorer May 13 – 28, 2016 Irish Explorer June 17 – 27, 2016 Atlantic Maritimes September 1 – 13, 2016 Our next Go Solo Social is in January featuring Ireland & the Maritimes, and our next Information Sessions will be in February. Keep an eye out for details on our website or join our Go Solo Facebook Group. Book a solo trip now, or join in on the fun with other like-minded solo travellers at our upcoming events. AMATravel.ca/GoSolo 1.877.589.8413 16 W E S T W O R L D A L B E R T A | W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 from Morocco, Romanian, West Africa and elsewhere. e scent of fresh baking mingles in the air with exhaust from a passing motorbike. A trio of West African women in colourful dresses chat outside the bakery, their attire a sharp contrast to the reserved style of typical small town Catalonia. Kids race around on skate- boards and scooters, dodging cars. Our chil- dren have struck up friendships with these boisterous ragamuffins, using the universal language of play to communicate. Food is my universal language; daily outings to gather ingredients for cooking back at our flat is my way to meet locals and speak Spanish, rusty since my last trip to Ecuador a few years ago. My next stop is Queviures Cal Gall, the local butcher. Like a scene from a vegan's night- mare, pork is as ubiquitous in this country as olive groves and sunny skies; massive legs of Iberico ham hang in thousands of butcher shops. "My husband makes the sausage right here in our kitchen," the señora tells me. "No y chemicos." No preservatives. I leave with a few links of this local delicacy, called llonganissa. e rhythm of Spanish life takes consider- able adjustment for North Americans. Streets bustle with morning activity; people shop- ping, commuting and socializing. By mid- afternoon, these same streets transform into a ghost town as shopkeepers draw metal shut- ters and citizens settle in for a sprawling lunch followed by that national pastime, the siesta. Then, in the early evening, people fill the streets again to shop and socialize before fam- ily meals that begin as late as 10 p.m., an hour that would render most Canadian children inconsolable and unfit for public spaces. One day, provisioned with sausage, cheese and pastries, we set off to explore Castell de Montsoriu, an impressive, semi-restored cas- tle near Arbucies. Besides a young couple with a baby, we're the only ones on this windy hill- top fortification. The castle was once the northernmost outpost of the Moorish occu- pation of Spain, which began in 711 and lasted through to the 15th century. Spanish history is infinitely complex, a layer cake of Phoeni- cian, Greek, Roman, Moorish and Catholic cultural and architectural influences. Arbucies has served as our base for explor- ing the surrounding Catalonian countryside and coastline. Later that afternoon, we drive up the long, meandering road into the Mont- seny Nature Reserve. Because it's the week- end, pelotons of recreational cyclists own the road. But wild-mushroom collecting takes a

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