It turned out to be impossible to write substantively every single day, no matter how much you might want to. So, now it's catch up time, before the next slice of travelling kicks in this afternoon.
It was a busy, so busy day, and very impulsive. It was a day governed by 'Well, do it anyway!" and, with only one secret exception it turned out very well. From early morning at Park Guell to Casa Battló via La Pedrera's gift shop and awful toast, it began as something entirely consumed by the the architecture of Gaudi (and crummy toast). From there a merry stroll ensued, mainly focussed on finding the Meditation Statue, Botero's Cat, and that rarest phenomenon of all known as the postbox. Good grief, finding postboxes abroad is hard! It's not as hard as holding in the gag behind the Meditation Statue, but hard nonetheless.
"Well, do it anyway!" is the definite motto of this part of the trip, and it culminated in the best thing so far, a lovely jazzed up and chilled out catamaran trip out onto the Mediterranean. Thank you catamaran Orsom, for you were awesome. Sailing is a lovely experience once the engine goes off and the sails go up. Truly lovely, and another victory for "Well, do it anyway!", that great dictum. Then when I took a photo of a nice couple for them they flagged me down and asked me to have dinner with them in a busy square. Sadly it was a pretty terrible dinner, introducing the worst of paella the day after the best, but still a very enjoyable experience. Well done, those people, well done! Once again, I have to throw a recommendation out for 'Yes Man' by Danny Wallace, for maybe the thousandth time. My, that's a good simple book. Being approached by a drug peddler was less nice of course, as were the hordes of partiers assembling on the way back to base, but those are petty inconveniences in the long run. Note, however, that cities can be scary very, very often.
Now, however, get backing to today, this second trip to Barcelona is almost at an end or will be in a few hours and the traditional zoo visit is upon me, and indeed all around me at this very moment. It's lovely. They have scary looking Komodo Dragons, and a sad absence of dolphins at the moment. Zoos or safari parks are great ways to finish holidays. I know that some people disagree with them or at least their origins, but once you have tamed animals I don't know if it's ethical to release them into the wild to be slaughtered rather than keep them domestic. In any case, mandatory endings to holidays in zoos should be a law and I'll write to the Prime Minister. Let's start campaigning!
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Much later, and the train has made it back into France. Spain is far behind us and the world is now a narrow - and inexplicably first class - metal cylinder rolling ludicrously quickly on rails eastward, toward Marseille. In my bag there is a gorilla called The Bish, a stingray called Trace, and a provisionally named Tuttle the turtle for the leafdaughter Zsuzsi. My feet hurt abominably. Blast you, wonderful and terrible footwear! Trains truly are wonderful places for writing, the best of the best. Sometimes I wish all of life was comfortable trains, with regular layovers to avert lassitude and corpulence. The in-train movie seems to be French again. Mutter mutter.
Barcelona ended well, with yet another restaurant trip, and this time it was Greek! Gosh, that is one country obsessed with pastry. First there was tyropita, then lamb exohiko, and finally karidopita, and it was all delicious. One can only hope that Marseille has places to compete with such great eating. One can only hope.
The train travels on.
O.
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