Casa Ventola

This week, I’m living in a villa on a vineyard about 9km North of Tarragona, on the East coast of Spain. Gotta say, it’s a pretty place to walk the grounds of. A large part of our choice of location for this trip was, of course, the total solar eclipse that’s expected this evening, whose path of totality just barely passes over this spot before disappearing somewhere over the Mediterranean. We tested by watching a couple of sunsets that, at the time of day the eclipse will occur, the sun will still be visible over the horizon.1 26 years ago, almost to the day, I blogged about witnessing the 1999 solar eclipse from Paris, where we were fortunate enough that Europe’s cloudy conditions on that day broke just in time for a midday totality and a proper “diamond ring” occlusion. I’m not confident I’ll ever see an eclipse quite so spectacular again in my lifetime, but I’m hopeful! Obviously the eclipse is a primary deciding factor in our location this summer, but this family holiday’s about…