Thursday, August 12, 2010

Basque, Catelan, Spanish...

Hola!
We are surviving in Barcelona. We haven't been relieved of all our prized posessions yet.

We have three days here. Yesterday we spent the day riding the hop'on hop off tourist bus around the city. We saw heaps of Gaudi' designed buildings, gates and Parc Guell, a huge public park with buildings, mosaics and hard landscaping all designed by him. So cool, and hopefully a closer look tomorrow.

San Sebastian was a little disappointing in the end. We didn't manage to get a surf. The banks were just nonexistent and the swell was all over the place. Scary to see where some people were surfing. It was not pretty and looked downright dangerous! After wandering around trying to get pinxtos in tiny, smoke filled, sweaty pubs til 11pm, we thought a home cooked meal in the hostel kitchen would be the go for Sunday night. But nothing opens on Sunday! Not a single deli or fruit and veg shop. So we got by with possibly the worst ham and cheese toasty ever made. I'm not proud of it.
Monday brought rain. We did a lot of walking and it is a beautiful city, hugging a river with a beach on either side. Unlike Barcelona though, once you've seen the old town and the "Jesus Statue" there wasn't a lot to do!

Today we took a tour out to Girona and to Figueres. It was a great day, made even more entertaining by the dude behind us on the bus who was from Ottowa. He spoke just like Johnny Depp in Willy Wonka and was the master of the obvious. He and his wife, Debbie *he used her name most sentences* provided me with some fascinating dialogue.

Girona is a medieval city with some beautiful buildings and Figueres is home of the Salvador Dali' museum. More an experience than a museum with paintings as well as sculpture, installations and jewellery. Visited by about 1million people a year it is the second busiest museum in Spain, even though Figueres is otherwise forgettable. A real eyeopener. We visited a cool little Museu del Cinema in Girona and Oo!! We also saw the Pyrenees!

Some zany punctuation today as the keyboard isn't producing the symbols shown on it.
Also no photos. "( We did try, believe me. The maccas across the road is meant to have free wifi, but we had to have some very average burgers to find out that its not working. They will follow soon.

The train trip out from San Seb was pretty nice. A good way to get a sense of the landscape. It played tricks on you with buildings closer than they appeared, dwarfed by the mounain range. We travelled through mists up into the hills before crossing the plain. I saw some tumbled down ruins as well as a fleet of solar panels and more wind turbines than I could count.

The language has been a huge barrier here, and after Greek, French, Basque, Catelan and Spanish, we are well and truly ready to head off to America-land for some 'English'! Not a great many people speak English here so we've been pretty self-reliant, saving our appalling Spanish for ordering food.

Alright. Enough for now. The next time you hear from us may just be from the hallowed walls of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

2 comments:

  1. Hello! Finally a blog!! This week was a looong week of hopeful checking for a new update :) How funny about Mr Debbie! I THINK MGM is where there are Lions and you can walk underneath their lair and look up and their massive paws, and if you're lucky, stand under them when they are snoring!! So cute!!
    Safe flying!! Buena Suerte!

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  2. HOLA!
    Yes! You are right! Haven't seen the lions yet, but that's the place! We are in a different tower, because we're staying somewhere swish-er! Off for a walk in a mo!
    Sorry about the blog absence. Its annoying when it's that hard. I even tried uploading from a thumb drive in the hostel. Buh bow. Just succeeded in copying photos on their hard drive then not being able to delete them or access them because I didn't admin privileges. FAIL!

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