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.
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