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The last time I was in Barcelona I was on my way from some place where I had stayed too long and onward to another place where I was expected. Thus time compressed, my sightseeing of Barcelona consisted of skirting the city with eyes open for a department store called El Corte Inglis from whence I sought to purchase two pairs of socks with some kind of fluffy animal on them as momentos of how close I came to the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. The good news is that the socks lasted many years and were fun to have; the bad news was that each time I pulled them on I wondered about Barcelona and what I may have missed. So armed with a new love for Spanish cities, culture and food, warm clothes and practical socks we left the country life of Torrox for the Catalan heartbeat of Barcelona.
Once again Clarissa had the magical touch when booking our accommodation (I won’t begin to share the kinds of places I have dropped us into when it was my turn to find accommodation). After only two train changes and a 40 minute ride from the airport we found our pension.
In the thick of things it was three blocks up for the Rambla and a few streets away from a wide array of vegetarian eateries. This served as a good base for train transport, city sightseeing and of course … shopping. Clarissa had been to Barcelona before so her days were mainly filled with winding streets and shopping bags - that’s of course when we weren’t on the obligatory trail of Antonio Gaudi masterpieces.
We can’t find enough adjectives or superlatives to describe what we saw and felt through his architectural genius all around the streets of Barcelona. We cannot begin to describe his revolutionary ideas and concepts because they challenged so many of our usual notions of structure, shape and form. We don’t wish to foreclose on his work any kind of judgment or value because still today they each have such a timeless existence and artistic everyday practicality. Nor can we convey the sensation of leaning into a rounded corner or against a curved chimney pot because we became less viewers of architecture and more like the participants in organic art. Of course we have photographs and here we share a few but ultimately to fully appreciate
Barcelona you have to go there and see, touch, hear and feel Gaudi. You won’t be disappointed.
With our Gaudi appetites satiated the next Barcelona ‘must do’ was shopping … Skunkfunk was on the radar and easily negotiated - check one green hoodie for Clarissa (plus numerous shirts that were ‘just too good to pass by’ ‘such value’ ‘will be perfect for Egypt, South Africa, South America’ etc etc) and of course Karen got some new Barcelona socks! The next step was dealing with unwanted WWOOFer hair. Armed with her magazine cut outs Clarissa set out for a haircut while phrasebook in hand I investigated beauty salons for waxing. Needless to say we had mixed success. In stilted Spanglish Clarissa kind of got what she wanted and with mime I organized a waxing at 10am on Friday (I think). After bad dreams on Thursday night I almost backed out but decided that I still wasn’t close enough to Rio to get a full Brazillian and settled on a half leg and bikini. Clarissa’s hair was shortish and not quite to her liking - but it’ll grow and in two months time we’ll once again be dealing with our WWOOFer
hair. Thus hairless and dressed up Barcelona style we hit the town ... and got very drunk.
The bar we went to is a Friday night regular on the scene and when we arrived at 11.30pm Clarissa had flashbacks (I didn’t ask) and we found the place all but deserted. We ordered drinks - one beer and one vodka and lemon. The beer came in a bottle and the vodka almost did as well. It seems the Barcelona style of drinking vodka (or any other liquor) was to ¾ fill a glass with vodka (or until you asked for them to stop pouring) and to add 5 cubes of ice and a dash of soda (the can then came on the side). For that we paid less than 5 euro. Needless to say I ordered vodka next time, the bar looked much brighter and Clarissa giggled off to the bathroom. About half way through our second vodka’s (around 1am) people started to arrive. By 2pm the place with packed and we were trolleyed. We sang along with Beyonce (O O Oh O O Oh) and shuffled around to Shakira while the ladyboys took center stage with their mime and
synchronized dance act to Lady Gaga. Talk about a rare treat - and we thought it was the alcohol that made all this so funny! Then quite unexpectedly around 4am the music stopped, people got their jackets, and the bouncer yelled at us to leave. By 4.10am everyone was out and we were downing the last of vodka number four and fumbling for our map to the door. On the street we were swept up into the party crowd who simply rolled around the corner and down the block to club #2. Needless to say we didn’t need any drinks here however what we did need was an Italian translator, a gas mask and some kind of device to navigate a sea of dancing queens. Things were kind of deteriorating and with my Italian failing me we made for the door - again needing some biblical command to get us out to the street. Getting home by sunrise is early for the Spanish but we had had enough. Thankfully we didn’t fly to Cairo till Sunday so we did the only thing the Spaniards would do - slept late, drank lemonade and ate pizza all day while waiting for the
cigarette smoke to drift out of our clothes.
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Wish I was young again
Appears you are having a "toure de difference" unlikely I will ever make the trip but certainly looking forward to seeing the pics when you get home. We are expecting to increasing our family by up to ten Golden Retreiver pups in the next three weeks