Monday June 2nd 2008
I wake a little earlier than Claire time and after I shower I walk out to the Placa Urquanoia to find a brunch for us. At least, that's the plan—I manage to delay somehow and Claire comes with me and although this was supposed to be my job she once again does the talking. I need to pull my weight a bit more. We spend the late morning and early afternoon working and reading (oh how nice it is to read, and have the time to read) and then we walk to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece. It's fantastic, and I can't really describe it except to call it unfinished and yet still fantastic. We took the guided tour with two American ladies, one from Indianapolis (A Hoosier! Like Kurt Vonnegut! I forgot the Cathedral-in-progress immediately and studied her, looking for recognisable symptoms of a character from Cat's Cradle) and one from Alaska (and now I think of Chris McCandless and Jon Krakauer...). I'm teased even though I really don't deserve it by everybody because whenever the guide asks a question I answer it. After the tour we waited a while, watching the construction of the Cathedral (three façades: Christmas, Passion, Glory...) while we wait to go up the tours. We go up in a big glass lift and unusually for me I was fucking petrified—literally, I could barely get my legs to do what I wanted them to do—and it took all of my resolve not to scream like a little girl, burst into tears and make Claire take me down and buy me an ice cream. I think it had something to with the crowds on narrow, unfinished walkways high above the earth. I don't know if I fear heights or crowds more. I guess I hate both. But, when I swallowed my stomach and made myself look out, it was lovely. A truly wondrous sight, and Gaudi was a genius (despite having lived on the planet for over 70 years and not learnt to look both ways while crossing a tramline. I mean, seriously: a genius, but there's only so many places a tram can possibly go...)
Once we left the Sagrada familia and I confessed my fear to Claire (she said she could tell. Damn.) we stopped for €3 spaghetti bolognese and a not bad warm white wine (spaghetti bolognese in Spain is made with pork, it seems.) and then we bought some food supplies because we have only one night left in Barcelona before we hit the road. We bought a bottle of wine for €0.69 and it's not bad and we drink it while we do a little more work. Got to pay for this trip somehow.
Tues June 3rd 2008
I get up and e-mail off some stories for the food magazine that are due and then we pack. Barcelona has been wonderful fun, glorious looking and warm and friendly but I want to see more of the country and Claire tells me the same thing. It is time to go, and we shake hands with Xabier and return the keys and leave. We set off and walk from our room to Pl. Urquanoia down (parallel to Las Ramblas) and when we reach the beach we turn left (oh left, oh how many pictures of thee, and we're continuing left for three months!) until the Diagonal Mas Centre Commercial. After much confusion and a couple of wasted Euros in a hot train we take a tram to Sant Andria and from there a train to Blanes. It may seem like a cop out but it was €4 each and all of the stations we pass are beachfront tourism black holes, all of which have seen better days. They remind me a bit of Great Yarmouth, should the sun ever shine there. This way we get out of Barcelona and the suburbs properly. We leave the station at Blanes excited and full of enthusiasm, which turns out to be a mistake. The station is the on the landward side and like most seaside town the approach from landward is grim at best (at worst simply frightening). We are hot, sweaty, our bags are heavy and our clothes and skin coated in the filmy grime of sunscreen. Claire points us in the right direction to the top of a hill and there we realise we are in the ghetto (Pl de Onze Sept. There's a lot of these in Spain) and headed the wrong way to the sea. After a polite discussion, in which views are patiently and cordially expressed (again, see photos) we agree to go my way and within twenty minutes we are at the sea. We rest by the beach and I eat a bit while Claire feeds pigeons and makes me chase seagulls to spook them into making a photo more dramatic (I grew up in the seaside town of Lymington and have been shat on enough by these beasts to make scaring them a purely blissful experience: revenge, as the Spanish say, is a dish best eaten cold). We shoulder our packs and walk up over a headland, through a rich community. It's a long walk, up another long slope (damned undulating Coasta Brava) and the light is fading and we're beginning to realise that our walk up the coast is going to be completely unlike anything we thought. For a start, a lot of people live here. A LOT of people. Third largest country in Europe, Spain, after Russia and France, and with a population of only 48 million. I think they all live in EXACTLY the places Claire and I can walk between in a day. There is nowhere to camp. Nowhere. Then, we come across a vacant lot, covered in trees and thick with undergrowth, invisible from road and neighbouring houses. Naturally I say it's impossible but Claire explores it and declares that we are staying there for the night. She has a talent for this, a natural and perhaps supernatural talent for this and so we pitch the tent and it's a good spot after all and the light is gone by the time we finish inflating the airbeds. It may not be the wilderness of Spain I was hoping for (stop laughing) but we're invisible and not paying anybody for the privilege of sleeping so we're happy and I fall asleep, listening to the sound of the waves on a nearby beach.
Weds, June 4th, 2008
Claire barely slept—either she was too hot or something. I got a few good hours and as the sun gets hotter I am impatient to get going but she won't get up. We knew there is a beach very close and eventually, after we argue and fall out and get down there at gone eleven in the morning Claire reminds me that we're on holiday. We relax at the beach, Claire gets her sleep in her bikini in the sun (again, see photos) and I swim for a bit and read some. I have a fictional memoir by Ernest Hemingway called 'True At First Light'—an unfinished work, and it is a joy to read a rough chunk of work by this favoured author whose novels and stories are so well crafted and honed. We have a cold shower on the beach and then go to the nearby restaurant where we eat tomato bread and Insalate tropical and drink large cold mugs of beer. I draft out an article on asparagus which it is difficult to concentrate on but I enjoy and we watch people come and go on the beach. I even start work on writing up these travel blogs—and I'm sure that eventually I'll even send something off to Gatehouse Press! As the day cools we refill our water bottles and walk along the coast (after numerous wrong turns we find our way to the hiking path that is mainly roads) to Llorett de Mar. There we look around the beach and guiltily decide to partake of a €12 per person buffet in a hotel restaurant. It's crap food and I love everything about it. We gorge ourselves on the stuff and enjoy with gusto the cheap bottle of unlabelled rose wine that´s included in the price.
After we eat it is getting dark fast and we set out to find a camping spot somewhere around the headland of the cove. It's a dead end again, and as we walk back a large man with a grey ponytail and matching moustache is walking the way we came and says "¿Finito?" and we answer, wishing to be polite, "Si, finito" and carry on. We walk around for a while and find the footpath to the main beach of Lloret de Mar and as we are climbing some steps a voice calls out, asking us if this is the way to the main beach. I turn around and see that it is Mr Finito, whose real name is Hans. Hans is from Austria and has little English but his English is better than our Spanish or German or Austrian and all we can really commuinicate is that there are a lot of steps to climb and that we all flew with Ryanair ("Flugen zie Ryanair?"). The signposts to the main beach claim it is 30 minutes away on foot and we lose Hans ("30 minuten? I go back. I try tomorrow!") but it turns out that these estimates are bold-faced lies, they're either grossly exaggerrated, or grossly underestimated. Claire finds us another spot, right next to the footpath but hidden on almost all sides by thick bushes and trees, near the Castel de San Joan. It is, however, very close to the footpath and road. It's a very loud night and we spend much of it awake, hearts thumping and I grip my little pocketknife in my hand lest we are discovered. We hear all sorts of nasty things: a German voice (it's Hans, he's a murderer and he's come for Claire's body and my blood. He's a lot bigger than me, so I must use my brain. I work out my strategy quickly: "Do what you want with the girl, but don't hurt me!"); Mafia hitmen burying bodies (similar strategy, said in pigeon-Italian); drug-dealers executing rivals (no strategy, simply resignation at this point.) I think that the drug-dealing Mafioso are, in fact, the rowing team putting their boat away and returning to the beach party that rages for most of the night but I don't know that at the time and eventually I fall asleep with the simple philosophy that anybody wishing to kill me will probably have the decency to do it without waking me up.
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