Mexico, cycling Britain, then Barcelona

days 12 - 13

http://www.gurneysjourneys.com/barthelona.htm

As promised I made the trip to Carcassonne in France to visit some University friends. The gite was rustic, the old village of Penne, with it’s castle perched on a rock face, was beautiful, and the hiking took us past an enormous  (I mean 30 by 100 metres!!) cave. The food and travel cost a little bit more than I had hoped for, but we did have about six courses. It was the perfect way to use a gite - cooking, eating cheese, drinking wine , with playing cards and music for entertainment.

day 14

My best friend really is amazing. While I was swanning around in France, ignoring my worries (such as being homeless) she found a holiday flat in Barceloneta that is available from today for a week. The cost is a mere 25 euros each per night, and when I arrived this evening I very much appreciated having my own room with a window and a clean Ikea kitchen. You can see the sea if you lean over the windowsill in the right direction. This little taste of luxury is mostly because her boyfriend is arriving tomorrow, but it doesn’t half make me feel better about the bastard Miguel who breaks his promises.

day 5

http://www.gurneysjourneys.com/barthelona.htm

After rising early to send applications for “conference sales person” and “AVIS reservation agent”, including such terrible, desperate phrases as “I believe I would be a valuable addition to your team” the day was mostly spent wandering around Barceloneta.

At the Marina the tourists were milling around. Occasionally they would wander into the “100 years of Barcelona Buses” exhibition, but they would soon realize it was all in Catalan and not meant for them. At makeshift stalls black guys were selling  fake designer bags and sunglasses in between being chased off by the police. It is quite a spectacle watching how quickly they swoop up all the handbags, throw the sack over their shoulder and run off, only to spread them out on the ground again a few hundred meters down the road. If you are bargaining with them as the cops close in you can get a pretty good price.

The beach was filled with foreigners; gangs of English lads singing Happy Birthday and waving family sized bottles of beer, leachy, hairy men in small trunks chasing women, and loads of people were braving the apparently very polluted sea . We ate chorizo and bread and trawled through the rooms for rent in a classifieds paper. I have stepped up the search, I am now only going to see flats of genuine interest and I have a list of key questions to ask before viewing. Unfortunately no one is answering their phones today.

This is my last night in Ian’s flat, tomorrow I start paying 20 euros a night. We spent it watching the first half hour of “Y tu Mama Tambien” without subtitles. It does nothing for my confidence when I realize that although I claim to be an “advanced” Spanish speaker, I would only understand the dialogue if I sat inches away from the screen and had regular dictionary breaks and chances to regain concentration. That’s nowhere near fluent. Damn.