She has gone.

The Mediterranean!
Finally!

Alicante was quite commercialised - the immaculately paved esplanade presented McDonalds, Burger Kings as well as tiny ice cream boutiques to the beachside walkers, and the cranes of a port hunkered over the horizon to the south of the main town.

We walked around the back of the rock outcrop and wound our way up to Castillo Santa Barbara, taking about three hours. From the top the view of the city was dusty and hazy, the sounds of the many construction sites a few blocks behind the seafront wafted up to the battlements.
The castle was ruined, and quick to explore apart from a few fallen arches and shallow dungeons which broke the place up a bit - there was a visitors' centre but it was closed. We wandered back down into the town and bought some food for the evening's meal, wanting to take advantage of the kitchen in the pensíon.

31st May 1999, 2302hrs, Monday, Night. Dark-duh. On Alicante pension roof. Alicante is like a tourist island town. It’s the gateway to the Costa Blanca, and whilst comparatively quiet now, is still a bit of a hectic building site/crumbling building/demolition zone 3mins walk away from the beach. We took the un-logo-ed option on the screen from Barcelona, which turned out to be worthy of a logo. 2200 peseta supplements ahoy. The train was really comfortable, and we got given headphones for the ‘in-flight’ films they were showing! Today we climbed the hill/mountain to ‘El Castillo de Santa Barbara’ above the town, went to the beach, put together a package to send home, made a pasta, tuna and sweetcorn dinner and enjoyed a couple of San Miguels each on top of the pension, looking up at El Castillo and the huge rock outcrop it rests on, brilliantly illuminated.

I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain

John Masefield, 'Beauty'

30th May 1999, Sunday 1502hrs. Bright. Still Barcelona! I'm writing on a bench in Barcelona-Sants – one of the city's principal stations as people queue for tickets, hurry for trains, wait for trains and generally make geographical progress. Which is just what we're not doing. I got the train times for Valencia yesterday (which just happened to be the last day of that timetable being valid). Our Interrail ticket says supplement fares have to be paid on IC (Intercity high-speed trains) and Talgo (v. posh intercity).

Everyone here says supplements are payable on just about everything, including non IC or Talgo trains, and to top it all off, IC and Talgo make up 99.9% of trains that cover any kind of distance at all. The atmosphere between Gemma and I is terrible. We feel trapped. I expect an inspector to come along in a second and denounce me for not having paid the bench supplement. We can't afford to start paying supplements for travel – that’s why we bought the Interrail ticket in the first place. I haven't got enough money for this! There's a train in about two hours (we've been here since midday) to Alicante which is on the monitors as a regular train but stops in Valencia. If you get off in Valencia, you have to pay a supplement. If you don't, you don't. I think.

Hardly anyone speaks English, and everyone who works here that I've asked, "Hablas Espanol?" of has replied "No.". We’re IN SPAIN! MY comprehension of Catalan and their comprehension of my Spanish, AND my vocabulary and ability to actually speak Spanish in the first place are all being stretched to the limit.

Anyway, we’re going to (try to get to) Alicante.

Yesterday was a really enjoyable day. We had a bit of a lie-in after being severely sleep-deprived at 'Camping Cala Gogo', got up, breakfasted and walked to Gaudi's masterpiece and ongoing 100 years in construction, 'La Sagrada Familia'. Only eight of the designed 18 towers are standing so far, and construction started in 1887. It was breathtaking, and awe inspiring to imagine the finished spectacle. We then caught the metro to 'Parc Guell' and Gaudi's house. It was fantastic and I got a bit snap-happy! A new film was about £2.20 so no worries there! From there we went back to the Pension to get changed for the evening.

Barcelona, the night before the Grand Prix, on Saturday night. Oh yes.

We went down to the 'Telefonica' F1 tent and a band called the Azucarillo Kings were playing – they were mad. English and American songs with Spanish lyrics – Blur's 'Girls and Boys' (Un hombre sexual), REM's 'Losing My Religion'...

Met a great looking ½ Italian, ½ Swiss Spanish student – danced, walked...cool. Got to bed at about 2:30am.

We descended the grey marble steps of the station and caught the train, full of uncertainty as to our destination and the supplements we might have to pay.

We had to pay. The train was incredibly smooth and fast, racing along the coastline which danced back and forth as we travelled. Sun through trees which lined the track and the glinting of blue water in the distance is my overwhelming memory of the journey.

The colour of the country was changing. France had been lush green paling as we moved south, and the hills of Spain were a bleached tan brown, with rocky protrusions from the crests of the land. The heat was in the air now, not just from the sun in the sky. The warmth of it surrounded you, flowing around bare limbs in breezes and rising from the earth or the tarmac of the cities.

We arrived in Alicante and emerged from the train station in the early evening onto a wide boulevard packed with flowers, and we caught a bus into the town centre to the pension we had booked. After that nightmarish night in Barcelona trying to find somewhere to stay without calling ahead, we weren't taking any chances. Our second floor room had rich red terracotta tiles on the floor, white walls, and the orange pine framed windows opened above a central courtyard in the middle of the building.

The best thing though, was the roof terrace. The pension was about three blocks back from the seafront esplanade, and towering above the town on a bulging sandy coloured rock outcrop, was a castle.

The heat and our exhaustion from the previous spent night under canvas in the landing path of Boeing 747s meant we slept late.

We emerged from our pensíon with its dark inlaid wooden decor into the clean-feeling cobbled streets of old Barcelona which had that coolness you get in the morning shade of things when the day is going to be hot.

We grabbed a bread and cheese breakfast and caught the metro to La Sagrada Familia. It is Barcelona's most distinctive landmark, the one which adorns postcards and paintings of the city - Gaudi's cathedral - designed to have 18 spires... It was enormous. It was expensive to go up the spires or go into the cathedral, so we decided that we would gawp from outside for a while and enjoy the outside views of the place, from the front which was built in Gaudi's timeand looks a little like it was made by dribbling wet sand into pointy piles, and the back - the more recent facade which is made of a brighter...more concrete-looking stone, where the sculptures are more angular.

We descended into the metro system again to head towards another Gaudi landmark - Parc Guell. Less well known than the cathedral, Parc Guell was another area where the people of Barcelona appear to have allowed their resident architectural enfant terrible run riot. And it was marvellous.

Everywhere was tiled - sculpture, buildings...with glazed coloured tiles and rough clay or earthy colours, but everything looked crazed and fractured. The landscaping was brilliant, hiding the works of art and of environment away behind lines of trees or the lie of the land so that you happened upon them all at once. The park was on a number of different levels and one curling overhang of land rose back away from the path that ran underneath it and broke overhead like a wave, supported by pillars in the forms of female figures, horses, spirals and strange shapes...all in tiny brown earthy tiles and stones.

Another wide flat open space near the top of the park was lined with seats in white glazed tile and the undulating rim of the seating area was decorated in thousands of colours. Underneath it, giant pillars continued the theme and the arched ceiling enclaves of the tiles met in between them in round bosses, set with broken bottle glass and more colour. I laid down on the floor underneath it all and exhausted my film.

We ate a lunch of baguette and small sausages called Snackis on a bench underneath the shade of trees on a dusty path near Gaudi's house, attracting a huge number of feral cats.

We walked back into the old town from the park, enjoying the atmosphere of a city that was preparing for a Saturday night party. We were feeling good, and the evening was looking even better than we felt.

28th May 1999, Friday, 1905hrs, Sunny! Barcelona! I write in ‘El Cafe de Internet’ while Gemma replies to her mail. I’ve done mine. Yesterday when we arrived was a complete disaster. Not only were the two pensiones that Gemma and I discussed completely full, but every other place in the Lonely Planet and a few that weren’t were full as well. A manic 45 minutes ensued to find this out, with me trying them all and getting the same answer – "Estamos Completo". NOT good for the old travelling confidence. Still, we hadn’t checked the campsites, so we did. There was room, but the Lonely Planet put the nearest one at the end of a 9 kilometre bus ride. The buses were running, so we caught one. Some of the inhabitants of Barcelona don’t speak Spanish as I learned it – they speak Catalan, which as far as I can gather is a fusion of Spanish and French with something else thrown in for good measure. So I couldn’t understand the bus driver when he kept miming some bizarre act and saying ‘Dos kilometros’ all the time. We found out.

The campsite was two kilometres from the closest bus stop. Two very long kilometres, to boot. Near the international airport. In mosquito hell. And it wasn’t particularly cheap, either.

We’ve got a nice pension now – 4000pesetas a night. Tomorrow we’re going to do the touristy bit and see the Gaudi Cathedral.

As Gemma so eloquently put it, "You can only take so much culture before you need a piss-up." – we had a piss-up at Carcassonne, so we’re going to stock up on culture...

I’m sitting here looking at the clocks for Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney and Barcelona, and I feel a lot better. There's a world out there that I haven’t seen any of – I’m seeing this bit and I don't feel so vulnerable. It's weird, but talking to the 'folks' (many American tourists' influence, sorry) earths me in a personal way, but the clocks earth me in another – they comfort me that life goes on – the world is turning and people out there are living their lives.

I'm hungry.

We spent the day recovering from a terrible nights' sleep at Camping Cala Gogo, and as the day wore on I was getting increasingly worried about my left forearm. As we put up the tent the night before, we had taken very great care not to admit any more mosquitos than we could manage. This entailed one of us poised on the door zips until the other was ready to throw a bag, and then opening and closing the zip with lightning speed. The same procedure was follwoed for our own rather ballistic entrances. But some of the little buggers got in. We spent ten or fifteen minutes armed with our torches and cans of mosquito-cryogenifying deodorant trying to clear the tent, and we settled down to sleep exhausted, uncomfortable, and bothered. I think I slept with my left arm out of the sleeping bag.

The next morning it was raised in a shocking series of bobbles from my wrist all the way to the elbow, a rash or something. If it had been the mossies, and, if after our extermination exercise there had been, say, ten of them left, they should have been large enough to spot waddling throught the tent flaps. As it was it brought an element of unease to the start of the day.

We caught the bus back into the city and nabbed a spot in a great pension (or guest house) just off the main promenade of old Barcelona - La Rambla. Barcelona was packed out with football supporters - FC Barcelona were playing Manchester United that night. La Rambla was a wide boulevard lined with stalls selling tourist nicknacks, animals - dogs, cats, exotic birds, paintings, caricature artists, playing music, portrait artists, photographers, jugglers...all lined with lively bars and cafés in tall balconied buildings, as La Rambla itself sloped gently down to the harbour and the statue of Columbus, pointing, as far as I could gather, at Algeria.

A large glass-roofed arcade with light pink and green fretwork in the glass sprouted off of the boulevard, leading to an enormous fruit and fish market, where Gemma and I bought a huge slice of watermelon and got the woman at the stall to cut into two for us. We were walking amidst the thronging stalls as Gemma took a bite from her slice before handing me mine, one piece in each hand, and a group of men in Manchester United shirts went by.

"Cor! Lovely Melons!"
Gemma cracked up still eating the fruit and the rest of the group of football supporters burst out laughing because the guy who called out suddenly looked serious, and as they dragged him off I could hear him protesting over the others' laughter.
"Sorry! I didn't know you were English, really!"

We siesta'd - and really needed it, and found to my relief that the Spanish for 'Calamine' was the none-too-difficult to guess 'Kalamina', so I had some cream for my arm. I dressed in my only long-sleeved shirt so as to cover it.

We ate frugally in the heat in our white-walled room on the tiny linen covered bed, and fell asleep in thanks for civilised accommodation.

Oh, lovely Spain! Renown'd romantic land!

Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

27th May 1999, Thursday 1305hrs. Cloudy but Windy. (Somewhere between Narbonne and Port Bou – the Spanish/French border)
Camping de la Cite took a while to find, but it was worth it and then some. Practically deserted and pleasantly hot and sunny, with – a swimming pool which we took FULL advantage of in the afternoon for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, in order to use the swimming pool, I had to change into one of the pairs of trunks provided by the campsite. Gemma swanned past in her own costume, and I disappeared into the changing rooms after selecting the least stained pair that looked anywhere near my size. The pool was worth it. I don’t think I’ve contracted anything. We met an English couple from Southampton, who invited us over for a drink in the evening. We took the tour of La Cite, sadly in French. The guide mistook my frowning concentration for rapt and total interest, rather than the confused loss of any understanding that it actually was. He kept gesturing at me, and instead of telling him, I opted for the wimp’s way out, and nodded, looking interested occasionally as thought something surprised me. I didn’t want to get caught out, so I slunk near the back of the tour group, hoping like hell he wouldn’t ask me anything. We walked the half-hour bus ride to the train station in twenty minutes, bought some very cheap Kronenbourg 1664 for 26F and went back to the campsite for a convivial drink and chat till about 1am. As it was our last night in France for a while, we had a great, freshly made and baked before our eyes pizza each, which was a bargain for 50F seeing as it was about 14” across, was covered in cheese, bacon and hams with an egg in the middle and tasted divine. Today we woke up in good time for our train to Barcelona, discovered our luxurious campsite cost half what we thought, and headed into Carcassonne to get some pesetas. Which, we found, was impossible. We’re heading into Barcelona, in fact the whole of Spain, without a single peseta. Should be interesting... 1230: Gemma and I have sighted the Mediterranean! We’re also in the shadow of some mountains high enough to have snow on them, if not exactly snow-capped. The journey so far has been great fun, and I’m really looking forward to Spain.

Right.

I'm pootling off to Heathrow in a matter of hours.
Krissa is already preparing to go to JFK.

I have a knot of pure glee nestling somewhere near my stomach - it's not quite butterflies...but it's close. The only thing missing is the negative aspect of all that goes with nervousness....

...and I have to go to sleep like this.

Er...nah.

So the plans for the weekend have come together nicely - Gemma of gap year travelling fame, has returned from a long trip to New Zealand, and will be attending the mammoth barbecue on Sunday, along with Dave, James and Sharon (no link - in her own words, she's sensible)..as well as a supporting cast of tens.

I really cannot wait to show Krissa the Island. I know I berate it mercilessly, but it really is a place apart, and a time apart as well if you submit to my theory that the Isle of Wight is at least 20 years behind the rest of the country.

Anyway, enough typing.
Time to try and sleep.