Barcelona Day 3 - Beaches, Guinness and SILENCE PLEASE!

I haven't described our accomodation yet. We stayed in 'apartments', which basically means that we had our own bedroom, but that the kitchen, toilets, showers and dining room were shared. Can't be beaten on price, and the toilets and showers were never being used when we needed them.

Due to the nature of the arrangement they ask for SILENCE between 10pm and 8am....I'm assuming what they mean is 'please be quiet for the sake of others', but you know these continental types, big on overstatement. Normally this would be easy peasy, I'm always happy to comply with the rules, and Nicki and I were hardly likely to be up partying into the wee hours.

However, for somewhere demanding 'SILENCE' they seem to have gone to the ends of the earth to make everything as noisy as possible. The very nature of the building meant that even the slightest sounds travelled, large vacuous spaces. The floors were tile or laminate, the doors slammed without any encouragement whatsoever, you really had to make some effort to close the door without making a noise. The locks on the doors were of the kind where you turn a little wheel mechanism and a bolt slides into place, it sounded like you were trying to crack a Wall Street safe with a sledgehammer.

On top of this, our room was off of the kitchen, so every morning we were woken up at whatever mad time one of our neighbours decided they wanted breakfast or a cup of tea. It wasn't their fault, people who had only just arrived didn't even realise our room was a room. The kitchen was also handily equipped with marble worksurfaces....extra good for clattering around with crockery.

This morning in particular we were woken by a very loud conversation between 2 50-something Scottish ladies who clearly didn't enjoy laying in. Nicki grumpily opened the door and asked if they'd PLEASE be a bit quieter, and the shocked ladies complied immediately, but the damage was done, we were up.

We bimbled down to the coast today, coming from London it's quite a nice experience to stay in a city that has a beach! We arrived firstly at the port, have you ever noticed how the boats all look so pretty bobbing around in the harbour, but as soon as you try and take a picture all you seem to end up with is a heaving mess of sails and masts that don't look very aesthetic at all!?

We MAY have had some Hagen Daas, but I shan't implicate us directly....you have no evidence!

Ahem....so we had a wander down the beach and a little paddle in the sea. At various intervals we passed those wonderful contraptions.....showers that they seem to have installed on all continental beaches. They haven't quite caught on in most british resorts I've visited, I'm sure they just need a couple more decades. Then....a sight to behold. Plonked down on the edge of one of these little shower platforms was a portly gentleman reading a paper. He was in his 60's I'd guess, wearing nothing but a little pair of speedo's and baring an inordinate amount of crack. None of this would have been remarkable in itself, you see it at every beach resort. What was remarkable was the shade of the chap, he had clearly spent FAR too much time in the sun. So long in fact that, in Nicki's words, he had 'begun to resemble a person of another race', I believe my words were 'one giant malignant melanoma'. In fact, he just looked filthy, as if he's been rolling in mud.

Scary. Clearly the warnings have been passing him by and he's still slathering on the cooking oil.

When the beach ended we visited the Parc de Ciutadella which houses Barcelona Zoo. It was lovely in there, the first thing we came across was the boating lake, then a little way down the path we found the randomly placed 'Mamuth' a large stone mammoth. I'm unsure of the provenance or purpose of this mammoth, but I shall endeavour to find out as I know you're on the edge of your seats. Then you walk around the corner and are faced with the 'Cascada'. This was built for the 1888 Universal Exhibition. It's a Triumphal arch with fountains and waterfalls, decorated with romanesque figures, and what appear to be griffin/s (plural for griffin??). It's gorgeous and very impressive. So impressive that we decided to take a pew at the café and admire it over an Estrella.





Such hard work....sigh.

A wrong turn on the way home takes us past the Arc de Triomf which was cool, we probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise!

The afternoon took us to La Rambla where we'd walked past La Bougeria on a couple of occasions. Neither Nicki nor I can resist a market. It turned out to be a huge food market, and despite the fact that we weren't going to buy anything we had to have a look around. The sheer quantity and variety of fruit, veg, chocolates, cheeses, meats, shellfish and fish on offer was mind-boggling. The shellfish was so fresh that the langoustines were still wriggling.

I really really really wish we had something like that around where I live. I'd be as round as a beachball though....so maybe it's just as well.

Must admit, I didn't care for the tripe or lamb brains....but there's no accounting for taste.

After some food back at the apartment we hit the typical British hangout abroad.....the Irish Bar. Nom nom Guinness, I'd been gagging for one since we'd first walked past the bar on the way to the Cathedral. It was lovely lovely, but marred ever so slightly by the US dick behind us who was on leave from duty in Iraq. He worked in admin and was talking about how he got to stay in an office all the day whereas your 'stupid, average Jo infantryman had to go out and get shot' and 'if you ask me, we're the ones who do all the real work'.

I had to leave before I hit him and slapped the two mental friends hanging off his every word.

We headed to H3 just across the road from our apartments and indulged in the Estrella and more chorizo and Patatas Bravas......nom!!!

Then we crept back to the apartments in complete and utter obedient silence.

Disclaimer!

I've noticed a few people in Spain visiting the old bloggage since I ranted about the theft of my passport yesterday.

I'd just like to point out that...barring that nasty teenager....everyone I met in Spain was delightful and lovely, from Rebecca at the apartments who offered to lend us her own money for a beer until we could get some more out...to the waiter who took the mick out of Nicki picking dregs of meat off her lamb chops.

Barcelona was wonderful, I shall be returning, and the tits are in the vast minority :)

Thankyouplease

Barcelona Day 2 - The day of Discovery

A large portion of today was taken up in the Easy Internet Café and then in the Policia Station. In the Police station we actually had to take a number and sit and wait to be called to a little room to make a report. Now, I'm not sure how this usually works, as I'm not in the habit of having to visit police stations, but this seems extremely organised....perhaps through necessity with 1 in 10 tourists having stuff nicked every day?

We were sandwiched between a grumpy/hungover looking lady with no shoes, dirty feet and massive scratches down her face to the right, and a rather cute spanish gentleman to the left. We took great pains not to make eye contact with the lady...she seemed slightly agitated. The guy eventually started chatting to us, and I think Nicki was quite shocked at how little english he spoke. I know, surprise surprise...we're in Spain, but I think a lot of English people would be the same, especially those who don't travel around very much. We're far too used to being understood! He went through the phrases he knew:

Hello

Goodbye

I love you (?)

Beautiful (seeing a pattern?)

One, two, three, four, five (number of girlfriends he has?)

My name is (Casanova?)

In all seriousness he seemed quite sweet, but thankfully just as the convo was getting a bit awkward...he was pointing at Nicki's rings and asking about husbands....his number was called up...phew.

I'd have taken some pictures, but I was concerned I'd be genuinely arrested for trying to steal governmental secrets...and spend the rest of my holiday in a different part of the police station.

Later that day we went for our first wander around the city, we investigated Barri Gotic (please forgive the lack of accent..I haven't figured it out on pootah) and the La Seu Cathedral. Some of you may know I don't hold with religion, and cathedrals in general only illustrate the grotesque wealth of Catholicism (surpassed only by good old Benedicts BLING BLING), but one cannot help but be impressed by the sheer scale of the place. The architecture is incredible.

Catholicism is certainly alive and kicking in Barcelona, as was evidenced by the priests hearing confession whilst we were there. We walked past one box where the guy had no current customers, and was sat under a reading light with his hands folded, reading a paper. Everything fibre of my being wanted to ask him if I could take a picture of him....but my polite nature took over and I decided it may be too disrespectful. DAMN!!

After Barri Gotic we wandered back towards home and into a bar just across the road called 'Cerversares Ski Bar' for 'dos cervesa'.

This is when we discovered it.....Estrella. Spanish....cheap....and YUMMY!! We fell in love there and then. Plonked there at the bar we drank our beers, ordered some tapas, and some more beers. Semi-cured spanish snozzage and patatas bravas was the order of the day. Must say I was a little disappointed with the patatas, it was essentially chopped-up chips with tommy sauce on! If that's what genuine patatas bravas is like then La Tasca has been spoiling us!

Nicki was perturbed by the indoor smoking, I was a little too. Amazing how quickly you get used to the status quo, it wasn't so long ago smoking was standard in most places in Britain.

That was the proper Spanish experience, sat at a smoky bar, drinking beer, eating tapas and passive smoking......oh yes. I loved it :)

Barcelona Day 1 - Pickpocket Hell

Barcelona Day 1. When I say Day 1, I mean, we landed in Girona at 9pm, so...Day 1 really consists of 21:00-00:00, and yet, such a lot can happen in such a small space of time.

Everyone knows the sensible advice that's given out whenever you go away, make sure your stuff is insured, keep your money in a few different places, not in one wadge together, take some travellers checks and make a note of the numbers, photocopy your passport and keep the copies separately. Etc etc etc. I've been looking at all this advice seriously in terms of the 3 months I'll be in South East Asia next year, but when it came to a week in Barcelona with my sister it all got forgotten.

I'm not sure why this may be, complacency? An ingrained sense of 'nice white Europeans wouldn't really steal from me' that I didn't even know I had? Laziness? Stupidity? A misplaced assumption that just because you'd zipped your bag shut no one would be able to steal from it? Nicki and I were also damned tired and grumpy from travelling all day.

The bloody annoying thing is that we were warned constantly before we left, by people who had been to Barcelona and knew what the place was like. To the point where we were left wondering why people seemed to be being so negative about the place.

Cut to Nicki and I on the Metro. We were knackered having arrived at the airport assuming that because we had flown into Girona airport, that there would be a transfer. There wasn't, and so we'd been on bus, train and were now on the Metro headed for a station that we thought might be near the apartments.

A group of about 6 teenagers get on, I guess they were about 16. They stood behind Nicki and were jostling about a bit in the boisterous way that slightly drunken teenagers do. One stop from ours Nicki looked down and realised her bag was open, and when she looked inside her travel wallet was missing.

This was the travel wallet which contained....wait for it:

-BOTH our passports

-BOTH our money which was due to pay for our accomodation

-Paperwork containing the number and address of our accomodation....you'd be correct in thinking we hadn't written those details down elsewhere....we're WELL clever like that!!

We've never been pickpocketed before and in that initial panic we lost all sense of reason and jumped off the Metro at our stop. Only then did we realise it must have been those bastard kids..no one else had got close enough since the last time Nicki had seen it to have taken it. She was wearing the bag the whole time and it had been zipped shut, but it had been like taking candy from a baby.

It was a bloody shock, but it had happened and we had to deal with it. We found a hotel with an internet connection we could use to find the phone number of the accomodation, got a taxi with the little money I had in my purse, and went to bed hoping all would look brighter in the morning.

Over the following days we sorted out the mess by spending an hour in a police station filing a report, contacting the consulate to organise appointments to collect emergency passports at €79 each, spending a couple of hours faffing around at and around the consulate whilst waiting for the passports to be processed. We also spent far too much time at an internet café photocopying, faxing and looking for details of various people/places in the internet.

In the end everything turned out ok and we managed to get home on the flights we had booked, but the whole thing was a massive waste of time and money. However! We learned some valuable lessons!

-Keep EVERYTHING separate!

-Never buy a travel wallet unless you plan to strap it to the inside of your thigh like a hooker in a Western movie.

-Spanish police people are very friendly

-Keep your bastard bag in front of you and secure at ALL times!

I'm VERY glad I learned these valuable lessons whilst with my sister in Europe...rather than by myself in Siem Reap next year.

Despite the horrideness of this first experience of Barcelona, we did go on to have a lovely time and I will also blog about that I promise! It's up and coming ladies and genst, I have some lovely pictures (mostly of beer) for you to peruse :).

Love love x