Nancy Bizjack bikes through Spain, including Figueres, home of the Salvador Dali Museum; Girona, Game of Thrones filming location; and the beach town of L’Escala.
I do want to welcome each of you whether you’re a a newcomer visiting with us for the first time or whether you’re a longtime attendee as I see that many of you are recognized seen you here before um I am personally so proud to be associated with the group that sponsors
These events friends of Tulsa City County Library is U offering so many wonderful things for the community to enjoy and it’s a joy to be a part of that if you’re not already a member if you think that you might like to be a part of offering those kinds of
Activities for our community these types of programs then there is on the back table an application form that you can join the friends group uh also I noticed on that table there is a a a submission form if you want to take part in the creative writing contest for adults so
Those are both back there and available a to you and feel free to pick either of those up I think in Tulsa we’re fortunate to have so many people who are well traveled and who are willing to share with us their anecdotes their Adventures as they visited places as
Farflung as we’ve seen this season as the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania to the hiking trails of New Zealand and uh every opportunity to hear we’re someone else has traveled is perhaps an inspiration to you to visit that place too or if you’re not able to it’s a good way for you to enjoy
Somewhere that you won’t be able to visit uh if you pick up one of these on the back table you’ll see that next week we’re going to be exploring the D Dalmatian coast of Croatia on a yacht and the week after that on February 28th we’ll be trekking on a truck
Through the African countries of Zimbabwe batswana and Namibia I believe was the other one so really diverse offerings and where we might visit through the travels with tulson program and hope that you’re enjoying all of that as it unravels this season today you’re in for a treat as
Longtime tulson Nancy bisj T takes us bicycling in Spain and when she comes up here you might notice that she wore especially for us today some of the biking T attire that she purchased in Spain and she can show you a little bit about that if you have ever sat at a
Performance at the Tulsa performing art center and browse through one of these an intermission magazine your life has already interconnected with Nancy’s life Nancy bizjack is retired from the Tulsa performing art center where she served as assistant editor and then editorinchief of the intermission magazine for 17
Years she is currently on the boards of the Tulsa town hall and of global Gardens and she delivers Meals on Wheels once a week Nancy and her husband Paul don’t consider themselves to be serious cyclists but they do like to take B bike rides whenever and wherever they go on
Vacation so far they’ve cycled in 17 States including Alaska and Hawaii and in three foreign countries Nancy says whenever I hop on a bike I feel like a kid again now relax and enjoy Nancy’s program Beyond Barcelona Viking the Costa bra region of [Applause] Spain thank you Carol Happy Valentine’s Day
Everyone to me there’s nothing more romantic than taking a trip with your sweetheart so I’m going to tell you about a vacation I took a few years ago with my husband Paul who’s still my sweetheart after 43 years of marriage how many of you know how to ride a bike yeah pretty much
Everybody and like me most of you probably learned how to master that skill when you were about five or six years old and I bet you still know how whether you do it or not you still know how here’s a photo of me and my two sisters with our bikes when we were
Kids I’m the one in the middle I’ve ridden bikes with varying frequency throughout the years since then like Carol said Paul and I like to rent bikes wherever we go as a result we’ve ridden bikes in Golden Gate Park on the west coast Central Park on the
East coast up north on MAA Island in Michigan and down south near Lake Pon train in Louisiana we’ve cycled to Niagara Falls in Canada not from here I mean we did up there short short ride and um to a glacier in Alaska and we ride we ride a
Lot here at home as you probably know Tulsa has a wonderful trail system we can ride our bikes from our home near 96th in Yale all the way to Brookside the Gathering Place Cherry Street or even downtown via bike trails we usually only get as far as Brookside though
Because we like to stop and eat breakfast or have lunch and then we decide to go back home after that this is a photo of us not in Tulsa but that’s on the Katie trail in Missouri which is another favorite place we like to ride it follows the path of
An old MKT railroad which ran along the Missouri River so there’s a lot of Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boon history there too which I love and best of all it’s it’s very flat anyway at some point um 2007 to be exact Paul and I decide it might be fun
To go on an organized group Bike Tour our first trip was to Maine with an outfit called vbt we enjoyed the experience so much we later took vbt trips to California Spain and Vermont today I’m going to tell you about our trip to Spain with vbt in the summer of
2018 the tour at that time was called cycling do landscapes which conjured up surreal images for me at least of riding past riding bikes past melting clocks draped over dead trees what it meant of course was that we would be riding through Catalonia where the famous artist Salvador delali
Was born and lived and worked for much of his life it’s in the northeast corner of Spain near France and includes the city of Barcelona which is where we began our journey we arrived in Barcelona and checked into our hotel located on lambla which is a wide pedestrian street lined with trees
And shops sort of a prominade after dragging our jetlag selves along L rambla for a while we had a late lunch of sangria and seafood that’s my husband there later probably after a nap we wandered around the gothic neighborhood El gotique there was a crowd in the plaza
In front of the cathedral and we joined them to watch some street performers we had dinner at El quatre gots the four cats we were drawn to the restaurant which opened in 1897 by the image of two men on a tandem bicycle on the out on the sign outside
We also like the fact that Picasso used to eat here and he created the art for the menu cover which you can see in the lower right corner more recently a scene from the movie Vicki Christina Barcelona was filmed there so that was kind of
Cool the next day we T the famous sagata Familia designed by Anton gudi ground was broken openen for the Basilica in 1882 and it’s been under construction ever since when we were there it was projected to be finished in 2026 a hundred years after Yai’s death but the pandemic slowed things down and
The projected completion date is now 2040 will it ever be finished who knows I I hope they keep working on it yeah it looks like a giant sand sand C don’t you think it’s very cool here are some interior shots and they they really don’t do it justice it’s it’s
IM it’s immense and absolutely gorgeous afterwards we went to park G another unique creation from the Whimsical mind of Gaudi there’s sort of the Dr Seuss look to most of his buildings I think other gudi design structures in Barcelona include casaa and Casa botlo in case you’re wondering no we
Didn’t ride bikes in Barcelona it’s very crowded we arrived there a few days early so we could experience the city which we’d never seen before and recover from jet lag before the biking began but on our third day in Spain we met our bike group at the hotel and took
A bus to the medieval town of Jona about an hour Northeast of Barcelona that’s me on a bridge designed by Gustav Eiffel over the Ryu onar and yes that eiel no one that does the Eiffel Tower guy Catalonia has been seeking independence from Spain for many years
When we were there the buildings were festooned with yellow ribbons to promote that cause that night we had dinner at an outdoor Cafe at the halfway point of a long flight of steps which you’ll see in the next Slide the next day we went on a walking
Tour of Jona if you watched games of Game of Thrones you might recognize parts of Jona as the city of bro since season six I’ve been told that this Cathedral on the right was where Jamie Lannister had a showdown with the High Sparrow I didn’t watch the show so I
Have no idea what any of that means but maybe you do I know it was very popular at this point I must have had to recharge my phone or something because I have no more pictures of that day um but according to my notes we got got fitted
For our bikes finally took a practice ride around a nearby lake and had a picnic lunch on previous BBT trips I had used a regular bicycle but on this one I asked for an ebike and I was glad I did because many of the medieval villages we
Wrote to were at the tops of Hills also my husband is a stronger cyclist than I am so with the ebike I no longer felt like I was holding him back he actually had a hard time keeping up with me when we were going up hills in
Spain which we both thought was funny well I did anyway another upgrade that everyone got was the navigation app Ride with GPS which was pre-programmed with oral instructions telling us when to turn when to stop Etc because you don’t always sometimes you’re riding with the group and sometimes you’re kind of you
Know some people go faster than others some people want to stop and take pictures every you know a mile or so so that was great because um before they had just given us on other trips they just had these written instructions there on your bike and you know you can
Imagine trying to read that and keep your eye on you know not have a wck so the Ride with GPS it’s like you know it’s like what you probably use on your phone or in your car it’s great um later that day we had a welcome reception in dinner with our group at
The hotel the next day we took a short bus ride to pubo Castle which was built in 1420 Salvador Del bought the castle for his wife and Muse Gayla and decorated with his art including this long-legged elephant sculpture in the garden which was really cool and see elephants on my shirt
Yeah Gayla spent time in her castle every summer throughout the 1970s you can see that that red couch there has a real 70s vibe to it I think and it truly was her castle if Salvador wished to visit her there he had to get Advanced permission from her in
Writing didn’t you know he bought her the castle but it was her castle so with your own castle and that kind of power you might as well have a throne right so on the left you’ll see the throne and then the on the um the wall
Next to it if you’ll notice there’s it looks like there’s a door but it’s actually a trump Loy painting very realistic and the photo on the right is the ceiling of gayla’s Throne Room yeah that there she is I don’t know what else she did but um
Before Gayla married D she was married to the French poet Paul elard and she was his Muse as well as doll’s and other writers and artists including Max Ernst nice work if you can get it right she was married to do from 1934 until her death in
1982 and she is buried at pubo Castle after touring gayla’s Castle we hopped on our bikes and rode to monells a tiny medieval town of about 200 people we ate lunch there under those arches it was very Charming after lunch we wrote to Castell de pora where we would be staying for
The next two nights the earliest document in which this Castle is mentioned dates back to 1301 before he bought pubo castle for his wife Del had tried to buy this place paying for it with his art but the owner preferred cash so I don’t know which would have
Been the better deal maybe the art but after being abandoned for almost 20 years it was restored and opened in 2001 as the Lovely Hotel that it is today that night we had dinner by the pool with our group the guy in the plaid shirt talking
To my husband is Martin one of our two tour guides the guides on these tours are always knowledgeable and helpful and in this case also very attractive here’s Martin the next morning going over the day’s route with us one of the nice things about these tours is that
While one guide Cycles with us the other one drives a van that you can call to pick you up if you get tired or need anything the van driver also rides ahead and sets up snack and water stops for everyone our group which numbered around 20 had most likely stopped for snack
When this photo was taken in the photo above it you can see what I mean about those hilltowns I believe that is PALS where we stopped for lunch and speaking of snack and water breaks one of my favorite memories was later that afternoon when my husband and
I separated from the group at the next town peralada and found a quaint bar where we had a refreshing Coke in its secluded Courtyard it was just a beautiful blue sky day and that coke was the best thing I’d ever tasted it was very refreshing then we rode back to our
Castle I love saying that and here are some magnificent views of the surrounding Countryside from the cassus tower um this was in June and it was warm but I don’t remember it being like terribly hot it it was warm but yeah it was comfortable okay the next morning our other guide
Andrea led the daily briefing telling us about the apple orchard we would visit that day and here we are tasting many varieties of cider made from the local fruit then we rode on to an old farmhouse where the owners a couple named Mark and Eva were preparing lunch for
Us but first we practice drinking sangria from a communal vessel you can tell this was before the pandemic you know we thought nothing of of course we weren’t T trying not to touch our mouths to it but you know it was pretty entertaining and kind
Of messy our hosts were smart to have us do that part Outside Inside Mark and Eva had set a long table for us in a cave likee room which created a cozy atmosphere we enjoyed enoyed a delicious meal of rice with vegetables from their Garden after lunch we pedal on to our next
Accommodation I didn’t think anything could be better than the Castell deura but when we arrived at the Mediterranean coast and saw hostile ures near lascala I could see that I was wrong this is the view from the hotel lovely isn’t it the rocky Shoreline is what inspired
The name coast of bra which means wild or rough Coast the hotel itself however was far from rough here are some interior shots that night we walked to the small village of s Marti deice which was first settled by the Greek in the 6th Century BC we enjoyed a delicious seafood dinner
And music at an outdoor Cafe the next day there was a bus ride North to cantallops to ride in that area my husband went along with everyone else but I decided to take a rest day you can do that on these trips you know as they always say it’s it’s your vacation so
You know within reason you do do what want so I stroll back to S Marty took some pictures did a little day drinking and had a lovely seafood salad at the same place where we’ been the night before then I went back to the hotel took some more photos sat on the beach
And read it was very relaxing that night we taxied into lascala for dinner with two other couples and shared our experiences some of the women wished that they’d stayed back and had a rest day like I did but I’m sure they had a good time
Too the next day we took a boat ride down the coast of the Mediterranean for an hour or so then we got off grabbed our bikes and rode to toroa deontre where we ate lunch I don’t know if I’m pronouncing all these words right but anyway after lunch we rode back to our
Hotel stopping to celebrate the end of our ride at this Monument to the Olympic Flame commemorating the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona my excuse for not lifting my bike is that the the ebikes are a little bit heavier not that I would not that I would have picked it up
Anyway but it was a it was felt good to you know say we’ve done it later that afternoon we toured the ruins of impares a city that was founded by Greek colonists in 550 BC and later occupied by the Romans the ruins were a short walk from our hotel which was
Originally built as lodging for the archaeologists who began Excavating the ruins in 1908 we had a Bittersweet fairwell dinner that night at the hotel these folks had been like our best friends for the past week as you can see they were mostly couples around our age people in their 50s 60s and
70s we’ve also been on bike tours where there were people in their 40s and even 80s and it’s not always just couples there are usually a few singles or two friends traveling together and we all mix and mingle and you know get along fine together the next day we took a bus to
Feras to tour the Del Museum there in the artist’s Hometown Del created the museum beginning in the 1960s saying that he wanted people who visited to quote leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream sounds very Dolly right and I would say he succeeded it was a surreal experience
The museum in addition to being a work of art itself houses the largest and most diverse display of doll’s Works many from his personal collection my favorite title if not my favorite work is the one on the left soft self-portrait with grilled bacon but as you can see the artist was
Also capable of painting more mainstream representational art such as this one of Gayla Del who died in 1989 is buried there at the Museum from feras we returned to Barcelona for one more night before flying back to Tulsa we went to this tiny topas bar there was a crowd outside
Waiting for it to open and when it did when it did we all rushed in we could hardly find a place to sit there were so many people and then before we knew it our adventure was over and we were back in Tulsa this is our granddaughter wearing the little
Flamco dress we brought her bought her in Spain I hope I made this type of travel look like fun because it really is but like anything it has advantages and disadvantages under dis advantages you don’t cover as much territory obviously as you would on a bus or train tour you need a certain level of Fitness
To be able to ride 15 to 30 miles a day over two to four hours and there’s always a slight risk of injury with like with anything but maybe a little more when you’re riding bikes um although nothing serious has happened to anyone on any of the trips we’ve taken the
Advantages are you get excellent exercise even on an ebike the company provides the bicycles plans The Roots books the hotel hauls your luggage so that’s really nice um some meals and snacks are included you get to enjoy the camaraderie with the other cyclists and you get to see things slowly and up close
Are there any questions you show the again okay let’s see I guess I just have to go back back back back back is there a quick way to do this terara or just okay well if you notice like in um one of those first pictures where we um after
We went to gayla’s Castle and then we rode to Monell’s it was a little it was a little rainy oh I went all the way back there it is but just it didn’t rain much many oh I don’t know but yeah well probably at least 15 miles a day but maybe more the
R yes and the dotted line is um like a van yeah and then there was that little part where we took the boat ride in Mediterranean This was um I think five days you guys are asking good questions I just forget the answers um yeah and like on most days there’d be
Like you could ride um just like the basic route or if you wanted to ride more they would give you another little route to ride or if you wanted to you know take a short route so you have options yes the Katie trail in Missouri yeah it’s it goes almost all
The way across the state of Missouri and like when I say we’re not we’re not like hardcore Riders I mean yeah we don’t we’re not like the people that ride it in one day or ride it even in two or three days camping along the way no no
We get a hotel or bid and breakfast or something and um we just like ride out as far as you want to go and ride back the next day we ride out the other way and go back then we might go on down the road to another place and do the same
Thing so’s the closest jumping off it would be um Clinton Missouri it goes yeah from Clinton it goes up to sadelia Boonville goes near Colombia Jefferson City all the way to St Charles which is where um leis and Clark began their their Journey my family says I’m obsessed with
The Katie Trail maybe I am but it’s it’s a nice close by place to ride any other questions no not another bike trip our next trip is gonna be a Mediterranean cruise and um I don’t think we’ll be riding bikes but knowing my husband
He’ll he’ll find a way to get a bike in there oh vbt vbt uhuh vbt stands for I think it started out as Vermont bicycle tours but they go all over the place now so vbt yeah I think it’s one of the kind of we
We feel like it’s a good value um it’s kind of one of the like mid-price ones there are some called um Backwoods and Butterfield and something or rather and those are like the topnotch ones in vbt I I mean we stayed at really nice places
And there I mean we loved it we would just never thought about even looking at another one because we we liked it and think it’s a good value and then there are other that are you know less expensive where you know you stay at you know more casual places I guess But that was part of the museum yeah you you’d have to ask dolly no he was just yeah he’s a very wh he was very Whimsical artist that just you know yeah yeah why not put a piece of bacon on your self portra maybe you really liked bacon I don’t
Know does anybody have any questions about the ebike well it’s it’s um it has an electric motor but it’s it’s it’s really a better description is pedal assist because you do have to pedal and it’s got you have gears like a regular bike but you just have this extra little thing that most
Of the time you keep it kind of on low but when you’re going up a hill you can crank it up a little bit and it’s like it’s got if you got this invisible ible hand just whoops pushing you up there so it’s really great um you know that’s a good question
Because and I don’t know because the um the tour takes care of all that you know they you just you ride your bike and then you just hand it off to them you know so um I think it might be a little of both but I’m pretty sure they probably had to
Charge them yeah as well so yeah that’s interesting so you don’t have to worry about bike maintenance the tour company does it like you get aat Tire chain comes off handt yeah yeah and they you know they provide the bikes and um you have different options you know
Um some people like the ebikes Some people prefer regulars and and a few people I think have brought their own bike you know if you’re real you know attached to your own bike I think you can do that but why you know they have really good bikes you were you asking
About if you if you get an ebike in town yeah I think those um I think those yeah and I think those ones out that you can rent out on river parks aren’t I think those are too solar powered or something I think yeah okay yeah those are those are stationary bikes though
Right oh okay okay yeah yeah I I think they’re wonderful it’s um let you keep on doing it as long you know longer what thisy what nonunited states sites do they have available for biking trps oh I don’t know um well I know they have uh at
Least one in Canada that we were going to go on and that was like the the gulf Islands you know up near um Vancouver yeah we were going to do that and then the pandemic you know so they kept like post postponing postponing and finally we just you know kind of gave up
And did their Vermont tour in 2021 which that was nice yeah um I think probably oh gosh lots of lots of other countries they’ve really expanded I mean I think there’s probably France Portugal South America some places I don’t know but you can go on their website and check it out anything
Else well thank you all so much for coming out and being interested in seeing my vacation pictures