Marjan in spain

Well a pretty uneventful trip overall. 

Possibly one of the most frustrating parts of the trip was waiting at Tullamarine to get some GST back on a pre-trip purchase. With a line growing every minute and quite a few people with many items to process, they decided to do a shift change. When the change-over worked well it meant one of the three people out of action for about five minutes. Of course it only worked well once out of three leaving huge gaps and there were a lot of very impatient people wondering how the customs folk could get service so wrong. Still I was on an anticipatory high so just smiled away an extra few minutes in line.

Last we spoke we were in Dubai. Well it was interesting to start seeing Spanish queues at work. The Dubai to Barcelona plane obviously was full of spaniards and their queuing skills have lost nothing since I last observed them. They still rush everything in an imitation of a riot.

Had a chat with a lovely bloke on the plane called Yosef. He is an Arabic spaniard working a lot in Abu Dhabi. He was very worried about the current state of Spain with the economy still moribund, unemployment high and corruption being the main political output. Chatting with him helped while away some time. The Boeing was much more cramped than the big double decker airbus on the long leg, so we were quite 'cozy'.

Anyway arrived half an hour early with a tail wind, caught a bus into the centre of town and managed to walk to our apartment from memory. Not bad considering how little sleep I had had. The apartment is lovely and small. The lift is a scream. I could barely fit in it with the suitcase and back pack. I had to wriggle to let the door close. Have a shot of the view from our little balcony.

We managed to have a shower and head out. The only minor issue is we could not get the SIM card working at Vodafone. They are obviously sharing their expertise internationally. We went to the Boqueria market and Marjan bailed before I did. Wow. Anyway we got some bread,  chorizo, cheese and fruit and that was dinner. 

We are now staring at an appalling historical drama on TVE 2 . Acting this bad is having some strange effects on sleep-deprived minds. Almost better than magic mushrooms. It is 6pm and if we manage to stay awake till 8 I will be very surprised.

Over and out!