Barcelona was pretty great. To be honest I didn’t know much about Gaudi, other than he made a giant mosaic lizard that Erin affectionately had pet names for. So arriving in Spain with Zac and seeing the Parc Guell on the top of the hill was pretty awesome. Basically this guy was an architect with out there ideas of what he’d design. His Sagrada Familia, the giant church was apparently hated by George Orwell; loads of people find it tacky as it doesn’t really fit in with the usual Catalan architecture. This was pretty stunning though, so much detail and work has gone into it, it reminded me a little of Dr Seuss. The Sagrada Familia itself was weird, I’m still not sure what I think about it- there were weird pillars that looked like they were covered in soccer balls, heaps of what seemed random arches and columns. There was loads of religious stuff which was fun to look at; trying to figure out what was going on in each scene was fun. We planned to go inside the SF one night when it was quieter, but lost track of time and missed it, which I regret a little. Looked stunning.
We walked down Los Ramblas laughing at all of the tourist crap, drinking Moritz beer and enjoying the many people dressed up for money. The thing at the moment (or probably for the next few years) are these stupid little whistles that sound sort of like birds. They had guys stationed about 250m apart all blowing them, then the tourist kids blowing them, was pretty ready to smash the place up by the end of the walk. We walked down to the waterfront with an icecream, checked out the old city and enjoyed the warm weather. That evening we decided to go for a picnic dinner so followed google maps to a patch of grass on the map, which turned out to be a dusty little park with sparse trees through it. Not quite the nice picnic we imagined, but we enjoyed watching the dogs run through it while on our park bench, drinking beer and eating bread, cheese and olives.
I’d bought awesome hot togs in London and was keen to go for a swim, so we headed to the beach, sat on some chairs and umbrellas with a big, ice-cold jug of sangria and relaxed. It was super hot yet barely anyone was swimming, I think they were too busy being cool and tanning. Not like Zac, who was wearing shoes and socks for some of the time. Just saying. We sat near a topless girl and I decided to go for it and go topless as well, to tick it off the list (along with riding on the back of a bicycle, which I later ticked off in Sweden). Not so exciting, bit it did make these annoying women who kept trying to massage me go away, instead of before when they would actually grab my feet until I was rude. Zac kept winding me up; I’d pretend to be asleep so they would go away, he just yelled “Catherine! Wake up! Do you want a Massage!? Which would then mean they stayed for a good 10 minutes trying”. Dick.
Turns out I’m pretty bad at applying sunblock evenly and had a burnt patch on my hip (yes, just one of them) and streaks I’d missed on one leg. WIN. I didn’t really swim, more stood in the ocean on my own. Pretty cool huh?
I decided that Zac needed to try proper tapas (before this he was eating microwaved potatoes and Chorizo which he thought was yum) so we found this awesome restaurant that I would absolutely make my hangout if it was in Sydney. It took us a while to find a proper tapas bar as it’s not really the area for Tapas, think that’s further Northwest maybe? But it was worth the wait. We had mixed cured meats, cheeses, olives, breads, potatoes, Croquettes the dessert. Such a good way to eat. We stayed in the Gracia district which turned out to be a really good location, kind of like a Newtown/Erko vibe with loads of cafes and young hip people, so we fitted in pretty well.
The next day Zac wanted to exercise AGAIN (not sure what his problem is) and he made me walk up a giant hill and I almost died. Yes, the view was good, but not worth my almost death. It was around 30degrees much of the time, very different from the London weather I’d been experiencing.
The next night we heard there was a big free concert happening at the Arc de Triomphe as a promotion for a big music festival. We’d only heard of the Black Lips so showed up to see them with thousands of other people, all in shorts and singlets, drinking beer, smoking and dancing. It was such a cool experience. We walked home, bought a kebab that tasted way better than it actually was because we were hungry and enjoyed the night commotion. The Black Lips were okay, trying pretty hard to be like an old school rock and roll band, but at one stage they threw toilet paper into the crowd, which got thrown around and it looked pretty awesome. One of those bands who pour beer on themselves and headbutt cans into the crowd. Cooool.
From there we headed to back to London where I experienced my very first Chav. It was horrifying, this awful little girl, maybe 13 years, thought that someone had pushed in front of her at the local off-licence. She starts yelling at the guy working there, being racists and saying “do you even speak English?” and “suck my fanny”, which, writing this in hindsight, sounds really funny. In reality it really wasn’t, this girl was so horribly rude and I wanted to say something but I knew I’d make it worse. I spoke to the guy afterwards when she left and he said she does this all the time and has grown up coming there. It was just so funny when Vicky Pollard did it.
I talkedf with Zac about what could be done, he said that if the guy banned the girl, she”d probably have brothers who would come and smash up the shop or threaten the owner, or that the girl herself might have a knife and use it, trying to be tough. I talked about police watching the area but he said there just aren’t enough. It made me really sad, especially that this guy coukdnt do anything until this girl turns 16 and can be tried in court.
We saw a guy on the train yell at someone else, think he was unwell, just shotyed at everyone, clearly thinking he was helping everyone out by yelling at the drive3r and anyone who walked past. The cliché was there though, he was a boganm who yelled at an Indian guy who said “no you shuttup!”. We started watching this show Misfits (which is brilliant, by the way) and it’s about a group of London kids doing community service; Zac said it isn’t that far off from what it’s like. Excet the supoerpowers bit.
Coming back early meant we were there for the jubilee- huzzah! I wanted to go into town, depite knowing it would probably be awful with the crowdsm I Figured that you don’t get many chanes to see the Queen floating down the river so we gave it as go…and as you guessed…saw nothing and went home. It was totally worth going into town though- we went for a coffee at a great little café called “The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs” (such a good name). We walked up to it and I commented to Zac that there were an awful lot of deaf people out today. We turned the corner to find a huge street party with about 200 people, all deaf. They had a DJ, (which I personally found pointless) that had a song saying “lemme hear you say yeeeah!” at which the people stood there and didn’t say anything. Pretty funny.
They were all in the café and in the street, so fascinating to be a party with very little noise and speeches done by hand motions. Zac googled it and found out that at 2pm, they had a very special surprise, which happened to be when we were there, sitting against the window, seeing everything outside. It turned out to be THE QUEEN AND KATE MIDDLETON …imitators. Kate Middleton was just a pretty girl with long dark hair, but the Queen was pretty cool. She did a speech in sign language, probably about me being awesome but I wasn’t quite sure. I did an 8 week course in sign language but couldn’t really use it because all I remembered was how to ask names and how to say orange juice. But I was awesome at that.
The next day Erin had organised a Jubilee picnic with bunting and Pimms, which was fun. We made up a game called ‘cool frisbee’ where you have to look like you didn’t even mean to catch the Frisbee, then casually take a sip of beer before throwing it casually. Super fun, I think Thomas did quite well at it, Erin and I just weren’t quite cool enough.
We had Jamie’s Italian (again, so yum) and Erin organised another little Jubliee party, totally making the most of her bunting, we had Pimms and Scotch eggs, along with cute little red, white and blue cupcakes.
Since our trip was cut short, Zac and I decided to rent a campervan and do a Scotland road trip. It was awesome just looking at a mpa and deciding where we we wanted to go. We decided to do the highlands since we had our own transport, and stopped everywhere else along the way. We stopped in Wales on the first night, primarily so I could order and Bacardi and Coke and laugh at the reference. Zac gave up on these references, he later said that going to Leeds just so I could quote the Spice World movie wasn’t a good enough reason. Heathen.
I liked Wales, actually, the people were very friendly. We went to a haunted pub and I found a pub to ask for a "Bacardi and Coke please"...Myffanwy.
...and that's all I wrote. Now it's been ages and I can't remember anything! Except that Scotland was amazing, even though we couldnt understand the accents sometimes (actually couldn't understand...there's only so many times you can ask them to repeat themselves). It was amazing and beautiful and a little like NZ. Everyone should go there. The end.
