The Trip That Wouldn't End

We left Madrid on the night train to Barcelona--in a lucky turn of events, all coach seats were sold out and Robyn and I were forced to splurge on a couchette (a cot instead of a seat) to earn a spot on the train. More importantly, we had a place to get horizontal, finally!

It wasn't much, actually it was reminscent of my nights at Castle Irwell, but it was far better than trying to fall asleep while sitting up, or folded awkwardly or on the shoulder of the stranger next to you.

We were sharing a "cabin" with a Spanish lady (presumably, because she didn't speak a word to anyone else) and two lesbians on the tail-end of their 8-month backpacking tour of all over. Not that any of these people were particularly noteworthy room mates..but, once we were off the train I think my and Robyn's first spoken words were:

How about our room mates being a lesbian couple?
Yeah...interesting. Coffee?
Yes (said in the style of Almost Famous' Russell Hammond, for you, Robyn).

We decided to treat ourselves to a "relaxing end," meaning a place to stay and minimal walking in Barcelona. Though we were seriously considering ditching mainland Europe for Ireland one last time (our Madrid hosts were that bad), giving Barcelona one last chance was a good idea.

There is a lot to offer in that city, being thousands of years old, with a history that far outdoes Madrid's and other more contemporary attractions as well. La Rambla is Barcelona's"main drag," like a tourist promenade with all the shopping, eating and other randomn things you could ask for.

Randomn things like: vendors selling pigeons, roosters, other various birds, rabbits, fish, reptiles and more. Not to mention the status quo t-shirts, fridge magnets and post cards.

Street performers--my favourite being the golden man with the giant clock enrusted into his chest. He didn't do anything, but he had the biggest crowd. Hoards of people would stand and watch him, and his clock, ticking away.

It got entertaining when frustrated bystanders would stomp off:

"he doesn't do ANYthing!" leaving their fifty cents or couple euros in his open bag. For not doing anything, I would say he made the most monely soley on the fact that everyone thought their donation would certainly be the one to stir him into action. And for some reason, he so compelled me I was considering letting everyone else in on the secret I swear only he and I understood:

Don't you see!? It's a clock, and you're watching it! The joke is on you...he's Time, you're watching Time, fly ...by ..or something!!!!

You know it's time for your trip to end when you think you're making special connections with the street performers.

Barcelona is tourist friendly, in fact La Rambla is entirely dedicated to tourists. Neither Robyn nor I speak a word of Spanish and we were completely fine; okay, that's an exaggeration. Day 1 of my journal read:

Attempts to speak Spanish: 4
Attempts to speak Spanish words other than Hola, Per favor, Gracias and Adios: 0

By Day 11 we had imroved immensely with two important additions to our developing mono-lingual-and-a-quarter selves:

1. cafe con leche (very important to know because washrooms are indicated with signs, cheques and reciepts have numbers and a good map will go a long way; but starting your morning out of your backpack without coffee the way you like it just makes the day so much more difficult than it has to be).

In fact, the trip confirmed for both of us that there is a direct correlation between caffeine in your bloodstream and your mood--yes, the epiphanies do not come often, but when they do they come boldy.

And the second addition to our grasp of the Spanish language:
2. guapa: ...people--more accurately the guys working the doors of every resturant on La Rambla--kept on saying it to us. But like this, guaaaapppaahhhh

Finally we asked. Guapa means pretty. But remember, I said we were hearing it from all the Spanish guys working the doors. In other words, they were being paid to call us pretty. We still giggled like little school girls every time we heard it, but I personally subscribe to the "I'm a tourist, might as well soak it up" line of thinking.

In my opinion, when you're a tourist you should take advantage of a few things:

a. the chance to admit that you don't know something and it's pefectly okay, or embarassingly okay
- oh, I didn't know that in Spain the toilets don't have seats and the toilet paper is located outside of the stalls. Squat and wag. Sometimes, you just have to get over yourself.

b. the chance to look completely out of place and be able to chalk it up to another culture's "style"
- oh, sure. In Canada, coordinating orange with pink, green, red and flourescent deflective strips is all the rage.

c. the chance to climb all over national monuments (that are lions more often than not) as though you were a child again, or as though you had never seen a giant statue before
- since this trip, "take my picture with the lion" has been a regular request

We left Barcelona that morning, but thanks to a roundabout wrong-way incident, our bus on leg 3 of the the journey was delayed so that leg 3 was soon styled like Microsoft Windows and developed a 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and all the way to probably about 3.7 version of leg 3. Eventually, we ended up in Lincoln, Robyn's home and place of employment.

In an occurance of miraculous travelling-together-fate, Robyn and I probably were getting along better by the end of the trip than at the beginning. Not that we weren't getting along well to begin with, but who extends their nine-day backpacking whirlwind tri-city tour by two more days...

well we did, for:
- the most amazing shower I've ever been in
- a lot of food
- a real bed
- a Sex & the City marathon
- and three kids, a dog that snores and a 16-week-old puppy that acted as though their favourite au pair had been gone for months...

Ah, but like all good things....eventually the trip did end. Robyn dropped me off at the train station today and I made my way back to Manchester, where I will take a flight back to Canada tomorrow morning.

See you soon.