Barcelona

Despite my hatred of airports and flying, I just had to do one last trip, before I hung up my backpack…so I had three nights in Barcelona with Olivia and Sue-Ellen! Plans for sun baking were soon dropped, as the weather was drizzly, but it still ended up being a fab weekend.

It was the weekend of the Merca festival, which celebrates the beginning of Autumn. So the city was full of markets, street theatre, music, food and wine tasting, and street parades. It was a fantastic party atmosphere, despite the weather… (which cleared up on Sunday, giving me a few hours of sun baking). The party was still going at 3:30am Monday morning as we drove to the airport. (Not me partying, the city. I was in bed by nine of course).

Now lets discuss my newly found hatred of British Airways. Cut-price airlines all the way for me now. BA delayed me on the way to Barcelona , and on the way back, FORCING me to have Monday off work to relax after my harrowing flight…or at least to go for a late breakfast with Sue and Liv and then eat Brownies and ice cream all afternoon…stupid airline. Easy Jet wouldn’t care if there were engineering problems, they would throw some Clag glue on it and we would be off! BA has to get ‘engineers’ in…as if engineers are good for anything, except wasting my time!

However, back to the positive. As we were wandering around Barcelona on Friday afternoon we saw a big poster advertising a George Michael concert for the very next day. We searched for tickets all over, until eventually we bought some on the day out of some random cash machine. Bit daunting to have my credit card put into a Spanish-only ‘ATM’ and have Sue and Liv experimentally pressing all the random buttons they could find in an effort to bring up George Michael tickets…but I don’t seem to have any scary charges on my card. (That’s right, in Barcelona you can buy tickets to sporting and music events in the cash machines!?)

The concert was in a massive stadium up the top of the hill near the palace in Barcelona , and we had the most excellent seats. Andre the giant was sitting in front of me for a little second, but he was in the wrong seat, so moved before the concert even started. The stage was awesome…a single screen that ran down the back wall and across the floor and down the front, with George dancing all over it. The highlights of the concert being George singing ‘Faith’ in a totally coked up frenzy, and the giant blow up George Bush with a British bulldog performing…well, you know…on him.

The other highlight of Barcelona was the tapas. We went to a restaurant for tapas and paella, which was excellent, but we also went to a tapas bar, where you just point out all the things you want. Yum Cha and Tapas have the right idea…sometimes you want a taste of lots of different things. That is why Sue and I think there should be dessert tapas! Yum yum. With tiny tarts, profiteroles, little waffles, strawberries, brownies, scoops of icecream…mmmm, isn’t that a great idea! More food should come in the tapas/yum cha style. Not All-you-can-eat though, it would be paying individually like yum cha. All you can eat is a terrible idea I think, because most people do NOT know when to stop eating and really we all eat a lot more than we even need (I should know, being one of the worst offenders). Why are meals at restaurants so huge? Why are all the meals at take away places able to be upsized to XXXXL super humongous size with a five gallon coke? I don’t know…we’re all big fat piggies, we are.

In continuation of that theme, the other good food in Barcelona was, not Spanish, but BBQ chicken and chips, like how we have back home. In England it is all deep fried, oily and feral, but the chicken and chips in Barcelona reminded me of Red Rooster, which I really miss.

AND of course, because Sue-Ellen was there, we obviously went for lunch at the Hard Rock Café…Sue is the only person that takes me to Hard Rock Café’s.

End of food discussions.

We were a bit worried about our accommodation, as we booked into a one star hotel…but I am not even sure what those stars mean, because the hotel was fine! It was clean, breakfast included, and our own bathroom, AND airconditioning. Sure there were prostitutes out the front, but it was only a couple of minutes off La Rambla, so you can’t complain.

We also went to see the fantastic fountain out the front of the palace, which is truly the most impressive fountain I have ever seen. It is huge and does all these water and light displays, so the best time to see it is at night. The other cool thing was obviously the Gaudi architecture around Barcelona . In particular, La Famiglia church or chapel or whatever it is.

I also went to the first ever Camper store (you know, Camper shoes), to try and find some boots. Because the only boots I have that aren’t kids boots, are Camper ones, since I am afflicted with the ‘stick in a bucket’ syndrome of skinny, skinny legs. Unfortunately, the first ever Camper store does not seem to have evolved since its beginnings and was terribly lame. However, in the airport I bought some excellent Camper boots. Now I wish had bought them in every colour I could find…because they don’t sell that style in London . Sad times.

Hmmm, what else have I been up to? Well, my family came and visited for 9 days, and I took time off work to do some touristy things with them and see some shows and eat vegan food….bleugh. sorry mand. We celebrated Amanda’s 30th birthday while she was here, and I think it was incredibly lucky/excellent that I didn’t have to miss out on that milestone. We saw the Woman in Black, which is a spooky play, and We Will Rock You, which is a musical based on Queen songs, which I didn’t think I would like but actually it was quite good. It was sad to see them go, but it didn’t make me as homesick as it could possibly have had. It would be nice to be able to go round to mum and Manda’s house like I used to, to chat and watch telly, eat and cook together, but hopefully there is a lot more of that to be done in the future, and not doing it now will not mean I can never do it again.

Then last weekend I went to a gig at Brixton Academy , which is a really cool theatre. The gig was Jurassic 5, which I think is too cool for me, because I could not understand a word they were saying. It was strange that the whole place was packed out with white people, considering it was a) in Brixton and b) a hip hop gig…those white-collar, white people with their hip hop music! I don’t know…