If I look we'll die

So it was goodby to Barcelona. A truly lovely city in many ways and one we probably could easily spend a fortnight in and not get bored. Though we had planned to we did not visit a single of the city's museums, not even the chocolate one.

On our way to pick the car we were again targeted by thieves. This time I spotted them and pulled back to separate and they spotted that I spotted them and bailed. That we will not miss.

Got a little Polo and with a sense of trepidation headed out. GPS was not working as the satellite was lost in the underground car park. That got the heart beating. What really got us going was turning into a street only to find we were going against the traffic. Luckily there was no traffic. I blame the stupid system of roads. If the GPS says turn right and you turn right into the right hand lane, you SHOULD be right. Imagine all those rights being left in Melbourne. Anyway, having calmed down we got onto the major roads and out of town without incident. 

Drove past Montserrat which looked awesome from the road. I told Marjan to look, to which she replied "if I look we'll die". She had obviously calmed down enough to talk. That was a good sign. Had an argument with the GPS about the route. I was right but it was chucking a hissy fit and told me I was going to die.

Pretty uneventful till Ainsa which was our lunch stop. Sometime you just get things right. Ainsa is the old capital of the Sobrearbe kingdom. This was amalgamated into the kingdom of Aragon sometime in the 11th century, and of course as you all know Aragon joined Castilla to drive out the Moors during the Reconquista and hence begin the state that became Spain. As you drive in you see the lovely old town at the top of the hill (a not uncommon sight by the way) then as you get closer it becomes just another town in a beautiful mountain settings but we stopped and headed up the hill to the old medieval town. One of the most beautiful towns I have ever visited. 

Lunch in the plaza mayor, we here we had the €15 tapas special, was pretty much on par with the location. We eschewed the beer to appease Liz and had a white wine and a Jerez respectively. The highlight was that only one of the dishes was not a highlight. Walked around the old town to work off some of the food and climbed the bell tower of the 12th century church. Luckily it was only two when the bells went off and I can still hear Marjan if she screams at me. If we had gone at twelve I would require bionic ears.

It was time to head to Torla and into the pirineos (Pyrenees ) proper. The road was narrow and lots of long weekenders were heading the other way. Marjan's jaw set in a horrified scream position and the only words I got out of her when I pointed out the awesomeness of the view were "if I look we'll die". Anyway suffice to say we survived. Well we had another minor incident when the GPS tried to send me up a narrow street with a 15 degree climb. The locals had fun watching me manoeuvre myself back down without incurring an excess on the damage insurance.

Torla, whilst not quite up to Ainsa standard, is also lovely. It has the advantage that the mountains are screamingly magnificent. . Lovely room, comfy bed, will soon succumb to sleep. The last shot is the view from our room as the last rays of the sun hit the top.

After Marjan takes some of my blood pressure meds we will be walking into the valley bordered by those mountains. Good hey!

We have stopped reading the Aussie papers so we are assuming Abbott hasn't already sold the place off to some mates in fancy suits. Still if he has we may just stay right here.

Crime and punishment prior to tapas

We did not sleep well. We slept in. It was a festivo (holiday) and our normal second breakfast place was closed. The Boqueria was also closed. Well not to worry. We found a place with OK coffee, found something for a lunch sandwich at the supermarket and on our way to the second train to Montserrat we found an amazing vending machine with a universal USB charging kit that allows me to charge up the GPS before we get in the car.

The train out to Montserrat was uneventful. Pretty scrappy dorm suburbs and scatchy market orchards. The young man beside me could have done with a shower. Whilst the trip was uneventful, the lack of sleep meant we were both a little unattentive and got off at the wrong stop. Apparently the telerifico and the cremellera head up the mountain from different places. Oh well.  An extra €13 can solve that rather than have to wait an hour for the next tram. So up the telerifico we went. Lovely looking mountains with some cabras ibericas (goats) clinging to the steep slopes. 

We wanted to head further up on the funicular, but the car was full and rather than wait twenty minutes we thought we would walk....well I did. We discovered that Spaniards, or at least catalanes, have discovered exercise. Also that tight gym pants are the proper gear for a walk in the great outdoors. Beware,  Rafael in walking Lycra cannot be too far away.

 About half way Marjan wanted to head back down....I knew better ( in case you're wondering this bit is the crime). We did make it up to the top of the funicular station, but Marjan was quite tired.  I, being manly and macho and all, walked up to the hermitage of St Joan Baptista and San Ofre. Essentially this is a natural cave on the edge of one of the serrated bits of mountain that give the place it's name. Lovely country, great views. Apparently you can see all of Catalunya from the top and every Catalan child is encouraged to sleep overnight and see the sun rise on the Catalan nation. 

The whole Catalan thing is doing me in. I am all for people having self determination, I just find the insidious and constant propaganda a pain. It strike me as less as confident adult and more as whining, insecure teen who reckons independence is emptying out the dishwasher once a week even if the dishes aren't clean. Sorry for the digression but the stuff is everywhere and eventually you respond.

Rode the furnicular back down after a picnic lunch and checked out the abbey, church and associated buildings and views. What is special is where this is. Must have been a bugger getting the materials up here. That black Virgin de Montserrat is apparently a bit of a pilgrimage site and the queue to touch the statue was very long. We don't queue . So we just enjoyed the building.

Back down on the cremellera train this time and back to Barcelona . Somewhere between the main train and our apartment my phone was either lost or stolen (the punishment).  

After a bit of a mope and rest we headed off once more into the night. We had finally finished eating the slab of tuna we bought the first time in la Boqueria so were free to have someone else cook for us. We had been told the lower Born area around Santa Maria del Mar was good for tapas bars. However we never made it. We found this place that looked like it was an old garage and was being used as the smoking extension for a local place and stopped. Some tourists but also some arty looking locals. A beer for me and a cava for Marjan had us forgetting about the evils of pickpockets. We had a few things, but Marjan loved the eggplant and I was in raptures over the morcilla (black pudding sounds so mundane for something that is heaven in a sausage). In the meantime we watched a young woman at the next table (well I watched and Marjan hissed at me) go through about six roll your owns whilst listening to music and reading a book. 

Suitably sated we headed off to a flamenco show at the Palau de Musica Catalana. Of course the fifteen minute walk meant we needed some sustenance, so a nice chocolate in the Palau cafeteria was in order. Proper Spanish chocolate mind. Awesome show with very talented performers. We were probably a little too tired to get the most out of it, but we did enjoy it.

I have very little memory of making our way home, and I believe I actually fell asleep whilst walking up the stairs to the apartment.

The moral of the story...when Marjan says she is tired she is tired and the gods'll get ya if you don't listen.

So we are now catching up. Today (Saturday) we both woke after a pretty solid sleep. The first time since we arrived. Feeling fine when our second breakfast place and La Boqueria were open as usual. Decided to buy some makings for dinner. We then went on an aimless wander through older parts of town in the general direction of Santa Maria Del Mar. We managed to get some American tourist lost by pointing them in the wrong direction. Good one Rafael. Found Sta M. Eventually in a really beautiful part of town. Born is terrific. The streets are incredibly narrow, the shops are lovely, even if the do sell tea (thanks for the tip Keyne), and the general atmosphere is relaxed. Apart from more wandering around little narrow streets we managed to buy a new phone to replace the old one. Wanted it as I still need to book places as we go and street phones are becoming rarer. On our way to lunch we saw a Bimbo van, neither Marjan nor I knew they delivered. 

Lunch was at La Boqueria, we tried to get into Pinotxo, which is world famous, but it was a little crowded. Four deep around the bar. We managed to get a table at another place and more tapas were ordered. The boquerones (fresh anchovies) in vinaigrette were lovely with a cool beer. We actually had a bit of a siesta after lunch. Very spanish.

Same old after lunch. We wandered through some areas of Raval on our way to the waterfront. I had actually thought of coming down here to get a phone. I had read there are some cheap Pakistani phone shops. If by some they meant dozens then yes. A very interesting street, every second shop is offering to fix and unlock phones. From what I understand my stolen phone was probably sold here hours after I lost it. It was a very interesting part of town with lots of immigrants. Quite a few Senagelese as well as the Pakistanis, who by the way have founded a Pakistani workers of Catalunya union.

Really nothing much else to report. We stopped at Taller de Tapas to have a beer and some grilled calamares as an appetizer with another beer. Yummy...I remember the song about the nips getting bigger. On our holidays I suspect it will be us getting bigger

Now to rest before the stress of our first drive tomorrow.

Signs of the underground

This is a bit of a holding post. We are going out to the theatre tonight..well to a flamenco performance at the Palau De Musica Catalana. We loved the building so much we immediately bought tickets to a performance. It was either the flamenco or a spanish guitar concert. We went for the flamenco as the guitar was being performed by a damned Englishman. Anyway neither Marjan, as if, nor I will have time for a blog session tonight. Assume Monserrat was awesome and photos will follow.

So a couple of observations. The first is how much of Barcelona is happening underground. Every second building we enter has basement levels, whenever we walk we see entry/exits for underground car parks, the metro system seems to have tunnelled out significant proportions of the metropolis and on and on. 

What was most interesting though was that the rubbish collection is also underground. We took our rubbish out for the first time yesterday. On the street is a cross between a bollard and a letter box sized metal thingy. It has a trap door and you slide in your rubbish. It apparently uses suction through a series of underground pipes to get the rubbish to a processing site. No trucks at 3am and a tidier city. Apparently London is also playing with this system. Awesome.

What else is under there...who knows but I'd love to see the plans

And this blog is not complete without some photos. I am loving the signs in Barcelona. Many are the same as others around the world, many, to my chagrin, are in English, or even worse Spanglish, but some are a pure joy. Here are a couple I have managed to capture.

What else for the Erotic Museum. By the way it is across Las Ramblas from La Boqueria. Food and sex, who would have thought it!

Just to keep to the sexual theme, we spotted the condom shop opposite a gothic church in the Placa De Pi, a lovely area. The motto is 'for life's' little pleasures'. No size phobias among the Catalans .

And finally on our walk back through the old town last night, this was quite frightening. They get them young! 

Actually it is perhaps best not to laugh too hard. A little further on our walk, there was a young person on the ground, probably drug affected. We were very glad there appeared to be a local adult assisting.

Sitting on the train to Montserrat and had to add that we found a vending machine at the station that sold a universal USB cable. Saves me a trip to find one for the GPS. The Gods are smiling on us.

Love you all, and we enjoy the comments on the blog.

Of Beds and Socks

Spanish beds, or at least those of my limited experience, seem to have been designed by the Grand Inquisitor. They are less instruments of rest and peace than of the battle against heretical sleepers. The mattress is pretty thin for someone whose weight is in three digits ( and not only when measured in pounds, thank you for the kind thought). The pancake slim mattress nests on a bed of slats. Those slats appear to be connected to the side runners by an ingenious arrangement that broke as I was falling asleep last night. So one slat short, on a rice-paper mattress did not make for a restful night.

To make up for matters of sleep we had a chocolate pastry for second breakfast before catching an early tourist bus. Yes folks, the planning paid off.

Our first stop was the Park Guel. Gaudi and Guell had the idea of setting up an English park like suburb, hence the spelling. Spaniard a have an inherent belief in the English ability to organise. After all they fought off the Armada, and even more impressively can queue, something Spaniards in numbers exceeding one (and sometimes less) find all nigh impossible. The residential plan did not take off and now the place is a park you pay to get into. Some interesting stuff with the gatehouse/shop being very 'ginger bread house'. The place is on the side of a hill leading so a bit of climbing. I think I am over Gaudi, though the park itself was a nice change of pace.

To cleanse the visual palette of any gaudy remnants we decided to stop and check out the Reial Monestir De Santa Maria De Pedralbas. The simple gothic was a pleasant relief. Build in the fourteenth century as a country nunnery, it is now in a Barcelona outer suburb with some very expensive looking neighbours. Still an oasis of rest and peace, unlike the bed. By now the lack of sleep was catching up, as were the hillsides. I was most grateful for a pair of wonderful socks, thank you Laura, that kept the feet feeling fine.

We dropped off at Estacion De Sants to pick up Montserrat tickets and check on the car rental. All good and onto Mont Juic via the Teleferico. The Castell  is there to protect the Port of Barcelona. I can just hear the un-Gaudi like architeural instructions. 'Make it big, make it solid, fill it with dirt, give me places to site big guns.......nah don't care what it looks like'. In a way very un-Barcelona. The city seems to have a passion for decorative buildings. Perhaps it is an antidote to the inability to reserve almost any useful open space in the teeming metropolis. The view from Mt Juic brings home how little space there is.

Though we walked less, we climbed more, so socks were important. The first thing I did when I got back to the apartment was to check the bed. The slat is back, but the mattress remains thin. Still, one out of two is better than I normally do. Salud de sunny Spain. Although we gather Catalunya is not Spain....or won't be soon.....or something.

A failure of planning

So the plan was to have an easy day. We were going to get up late, have a leisurely breakfast and catch one of the tourist buses and let it take us around to a few places, but keep the walking to a minimum. We wanted to go to Santa Maria del Mar. Apparently it is next to a cute tea shop. Don't say a word. Really just don't !

We woke at five! Had breakfast. Tried to go back to bed. Got up again and had a second breakfast at a local bar at seven thirty! The buses started at nine so we thought we'd wander around the barrio gothic. Nice! Pretty streets, easy to get distracted. We ended up at the cathedral. Not the Sagrada Familia, the actual cathedral, in the old part of town. Beautiful, see the piccy below. We thought the geese in the cloister were a nice touch. Lit a candle for Opa. Well three candles for half a euro and they are led lights rather than candles. Ahhhhh the modern world.

After the cathedral we naturally navigated towards food. A converted monastery, Santa Caterina, with a modernist roof. Yummy stuff.....oh the pain of abstinence. We could not work out where to catch the bus or what bus to catch, so we started walking to Plaza Catalunya in the hope of getting some inspiration from St George. On the way we were distracted by the Palau de La Musica Catalana. 

We though it was a Gaudi building. We were wrong but it was wonderful a and well worth the distraction from our plans. We enjoyed it so much we actually did a tour, and booked tickets to a flamenco performance on Friday night. I loved the fact that the owner built himself an apartment above the stage, with a balcony he could look down on shows through. Apparently he'd throw things at the musos when they hit a bum note. Those mad catalanes!

So we were now near a Vodafone store so we dropped in and got a SIM card. An important point as it turns out.

After a brief stop for some sustenance, we noticed we were pretty close to the Casa Batllo. So this time it was Gaudi. Huge queue. Luckily the SIM card was working and whilst others queued we did the techno thing, got tickets online and sauntered in. We are such nerds. Whilst Lluis Domench I Montaner took modernist architecture to its limit at the Palau, Gaudi seemed to like going way beyond the limit. Casa Batllo is actually a wonderful homey and incredible place, but so weird

When we got out, one of those tourist buses drove off. Bastard! Oh well there was another Gaudi house nearby. Casa Mila...an even weirder roof.

Apparently there are still people living in this one. Must drive them mad having folk like us crawling around every day.

No buses visible when we got out. Bugger! So we walked to the Sagrada Familia. Amazing building. Almost as amazing as the look of disgust on Marjan's face as she looked at it. For those of you with a memory, imagine Oma after a risqué joke! We tried the online trick again to get around the hundred metre queue. Managed to stuff it up somehow, so we just walked around it. Thankfully Marjan's look of disgust did not disappear with the disappointment of not going inside. "Visually stunning! But not in a good way" was her verdict. It certainly has an element of insanity about it.

By then it was five and hardly worth buying a bus ticket. Caught a metro instead. Went back to the Mercat Boqueria where we had spotted some nice tuna and lovely looking ready made salads in the morning. That was the plan for dinner. Well the salad bars were all closed and the tuna was not sold in steaks, but rather as a huge slab. We did manage to get the fishmonger to slice it though and we found some less lovely salads at the supermarket. 

Not one of our plans came to fruition. Awesome day! Marjan liked it too.

And to close off, we just spotted a TV ad for the new hot spanish breakfast cereal. Chocolate AllBran. I kid you not. Some stuff is being homogenised by the global village. Cartier, Chanel, Timberland, Footlocker, McDonalds, Subway were all visible on the streets of Barcelona, but where else do you get chocolate Allbran or snakes and lizards decorating a catholic cathedral?

Oh yeah! Forgot to add. We bought a ticket for the bus for tomorrow! And apparently there is this wicked tea shop. We'll keep to plan this time. Ja..ja...ja...ja.

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!

I hate planes

I really hate planes. They are not made for people my size, shape and temperment. Eight hours into the fourteen hour flight and I am sitting on the floor between the toilets and the flight deck to get some positional relief. Marjan has been dozing, so hopefully she will be rested.

It was interesting how nervous we both were before take-off. Missing the Thailand trip got us very jumpy.

An update...we are in Dubai drinking dubious coffee and enjoying a stretch. Big place, even the gold fish could feed a family. The photo is one little section of Dubai airport at 5am.