Afternoon Tea, New Friends and Sant Jordi Day

What a fun couple of days we’ve had. Sunday, we went to an Afternoon Tea at TulStig DelMar in Vilanova. The owner, Mark, is in my writer’s group and is a new friend. 🙂 Mark did all of the baking and it was AMAZING! Not only was all of the food wonderful but the other guests were so much fun! We met some great people and made some new friends. The proceeds of the event go to a fund Mark has set up in memory of his husband Tony who he lost to cancer two years ago. ♥♥

Yesterday, we played tour guide to Olivia, the daughter of a business associate of Bob’s from Arizona. She has been doing a study-abroad program for the past 4 months and is finishing up this week so it was great that she made the time to come to see us for the day. Her sister and brother were over for a visit back in March and we showed them around as well. We had a lovely time showing her Sitges and beyond. A drive through the back roads to show her the countryside and all of the vines. We had lunch as La Posada which was a yummy as usual.

Yesterday was Sant Jordi’s day which meant there was love in the air. Love, books and roses.

“Sant Jordi or Saint George is Catalonia’s patron saint. It is the Catalan equivalent to Saint Valentine’s Day, but in Catalonia it is not about chocolate, romantic dinners and love letters. Instead, two kinds of gifts that are exchanged: one, a rose, and another, a book. Traditionally, the woman (princess, if you like) gives a book to the man (or knight, if we stay in these terms), and then the man gives a red rose to the woman.

The tradition is based of the legend of Sant Jordi. As the story goes, a knight in shining armor rode in to save a princess from a dragon. After he slayed the dragon, out of the beast’s blood grew a single rose, which the hero presented to the damsel. Although no books are mentioned in the tale, April 23 also happens to be the UNESCO World Book Day. Therefore, every city and every town throughout the country are filled with stands selling books and roses.” ~ Catalan News article

We stumbled across this holiday last year by chance so we were looking forward to it this year. When we were at the nursery buying some plants on Friday they were busy packaging the roses and had a great display of plants and other Sant Jordi items for sale.

And how cute is this little guy. I should have bought him. Those eyes are saying, “Please take me home.”

The beach promenade was busy with stalls selling books and roses and one stall had cookies in the shape of books, roses and dragons. 🙂 There were also chocolate roses.

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It has been a lovely couple of days eating yummy food, making new friends and celebrating love with books and roses.