Travel Tales #2 A spiritual haven for the New Age Traveller

Every so often the traveller stumbles upon a location that almost leaps out at him (or her) and such it was with this peaceful cobbled street in Antibes.


It was a hot day and had seemed a long one, not helped by a discourse with a passenger on a bus on the “merits” (he said) of the Revolutionary Calendar, this “supreme monument to human folly and stupidity” (I said) from the French Revolution.


The Revolutionary Calendar was a part of the Metric System which decided that everything should be divisible by ten. It therefore decreed that each year would be composed of ten months, each week of ten days and each day of ten hours. 


“Clearly the citizens behind this foolery had never heard of the Laws of Nature and the cyclical movements of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth”, I told my fellow traveller.


He laughed amiably, but already I was in full flow.


“We can only be grateful”, I told him, “that your revolution occurred in the eighteenth century and not at the dawn of human civilisation, otherwise Hercules would have had Ten Labours to perform; there would be Ten Deadly Sins; Ten Wonders of the Ancient World; Jesus would have had Ten Disciples; and Shakespeare would have had to redraft his play as The Ten Gentlemen of Verona.”


We moved on to discuss Globalization. 


“Is it a plot? A conspiracy? Some sinister design to rid every community of each last vestige of its culture and its uniqueness and replace it with a bland one-size-fits-all monoculture? Or is it a mere marketing ploy to allow global multi-nationals get their grubby little hands on the contents of your wallet?”


This was me. Clearly I was unstoppable. Almost New Age. He disagreed, said it was helping to lift poor people out of their poverty. I disagreed, said that was “Bollocks!”


He got off the bus before me and I continued to Antibes and came upon this picturesque café where Revolutionary Calendars and Globalization seemed light years away, and where it was more congenial, almost spiritual even, to watch people than to dispute with them.

Travel Tales #1 Charles de Gaulle Airport

We’ve all met them, on planes or on trains, maybe at train stations or airport departure lounges, bores who insist on telling you every boring detail of their boring lives.

I remember one at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport while waiting for a plane that was around five hours late. He droned on in his Estuary English, which is the fashion these days, and told me his life had once been routine and predictable, without any purpose or meaning, until one day he discovered what was missing from it.
“You’re probably wondering what it was that was missing from my life, aren’t you? he asked me.
“No”. I replied.
“Yes, you are”, he persisted. “Go on, ask me what was missing from my life”.
I breathed heavily and then with as much disinterest as I could muster said: “What was missing from your life?”
“MONEY!” he screamed and burst out laughing.


He showed me a photo of his wife who was absolutely stunning. 
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he said.
“She is”, I said. “Did you win her in a competition?”


He wasn’t insulted by my sarcastic impertinence, he just laughed again, the kind of laugh that told me that in his mind at least we were now old friends. 


We talked some more, by which I mean he talked some more, and told me among other things that he was on his way back home from a trip to Italy where he’d been to Rome, Venice, Florence, Verona, Milan, the full Monty in fact. 


“It must have been marvellous”, I said with obvious irony, but he was deficient in that particular commodity and took me at my word and proceeded to show me some photographs on his digital camera of just how marvellous Italy had been.


As it happens Verona is one of those places I have always wanted to visit but never have, though of course I didn‘t tell him that. But I’d heard they have a Shakespeare festival every year in recognition of the plays that the lad set in Verona, including Romeo and Juliet.  It is even possible to see Juliet’s balcony, even though she never existed and Shakespeare doesn’t mention a balcony anywhere in the play. I once saw a production in which she was on a step ladder and her star-crossed teenage beloved was standing on a table.  

Juliet's balcony, Verona, But did she ever stand on it?

Apropos of Shakespeare, what kind of a man was he, after all? The professors’ write volumes in their unreadable university jargon trying to address this question when it’s obvious that they no more know a hawk from a handsaw about it than the rest of us.  I once asked the curator of Hall Croft, the house of Shakespeare’s son-in-law in Stratford-upon-Avon, what he thought. “A bit of a boy”, he replied, without hesitation. It sounded good to me.


After we’d looked at his photos for about half an hour my new friend asked me: “So what do you do for a living?”
“Well”, I said, “do you know those official forms you get to fill in with a box on them with the words ‘DO NOT WRITE HERE’? Well my job is to rub candle wax over the box on the grounds that if I can’t write there nobody else can either”.
“Did you need a lot training for the job?” he asked me.
“Not a lot”, I replied.


A short while later the airline decided that we could all have a cup of coffee free, gratis and for nothing, and told us to make our way to the café. 
“You coming?” my friend asked me.
“I have a caffeine intolerance”, I lied, and as soon as he had walked away I looked for refuge in another part of the departure lounge where I skulked for a couple of hours behind a party from Glasgow. Then I saw him going through the boarding gate for a flight to God knows where, but not back to his gorgeous wife who he told me he was separated from (did I mention it?), and not where I was going, and that was all that mattered.


Two or three hours later my flight was called and they bussed us to the plane out on the apron. And no, I still haven’t ticked Verona off my list of places to go. Not that I ever tick places off my list of places to go. Not that I even have a list of places to go.

London: the city of kites and crows

It is 10 a.m. on the eve of St Bartholomew’s Day, Tuesday 24th August 1604, as William Shakespeare leaves the house of Mountjoy, his Huguenot landlord, on Silver street, and sets off eastwards along Cheapside.


The day is warm and sunny, and the streets are full of the cries of traders and the rumble of carts bringing the day’s provisions from the surrounding countryside. 


Arriving at Bishopsgate, Shakespeare glances at the tiny church of St. Helen’s where he worshipped when he first came to the metropolis, then continues his journey towards the Bridge, the pride of all Londoners. It is a large and animated structure with shops and residences, and even a tiny chapel. Shakespeare pays his toll and quickens his step, for he has an important meeting to attend.


He looks to the left, to the Tower of London, the mighty edifice in which Sir Walter Raleigh languishes in his cell in the Bloody Tower, perhaps working on his Historie of the World, or reminiscing on the heady days of the School of Night not long past. Cries of the wherry boatmen, the river taxi-drivers, rise up from the river. Shakespeare stops briefly to buy a herring pie, then continues onward, through Bridge Gate and into Southwick.


Above the gate, impaled on grisly pikes, are the severed heads of traitors. Birds perch on the heads and try to tear the flesh off them. But the birds are useful, cleansing the city of its dead animal carcasses. The people even identify themselves with them….


- Where dwell’st thou?
- Under the canopy.
- Under the canopy?
- Ay.
- Where’s that?
- I’th’ city of kites and crows.          [Coriolanus 4.5]


Southwick is the entertainment hub of London, though technically not in London at all, but under the jurisdiction of the county of Surrey. It exists as a thorn in the side of the puritans who control London on the other side of the river. The entertainments on offer are three-fold: theatres, animal bating arenas, and brothels. And the most celebrated venue is Paris Garden, a brothel and a bear bating pit rolled into one.


Shakespeare continues past St Mary Overie where his brother Edmund was buried a year earlier to the sound of the great bell being tolled; then past Winchester House, the residence of the Bishop of Winchester. Prostitutes are frequently seen entering and leaving the house and have been awarded the charming sobriquet of ‘Winchester Geese’. They are also known as punks, and usually called Doll. [Doll Tearsheet, 2 Henry IV] But beware, for a Winchester Goose can also give you ‘goose bumps’, slang for the symptoms of venereal disease.


And then he is there, his theatre, his destination, a stone’s throw from the Clink prison in the Liberty of the Clink, the Wooden O, the Globe.

Many things have changed, of course, since Shakespeare walked the streets of London, though some things have also remained the same. The Tower is still there, as are St. Helen’s and St. Mary Overie, now Southwick Cathedral. The coney-catchers and cutpurses are there, too, only now called conmen and pickpockets. And also there is the Globe. Not the original structure, of course, that was destroyed by fire in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, but a magnificent reconstruction and the inspiration of Sam Wannamaker, an American actor, director, film producer, and lifelong Shakespearean.


The Globe was a large, open-air theatre with a yard in front of the stage and a two-tier terrace. It was constructed entirely from wood and during the reconstruction they remained as faithful as possible to the original. The same type of wood was used, the same carpentry methods and the same kind of tools were employed. It even has a straw roof, the first building in London to do so since the Great Fire of 1666, albeit with sprinklers to comply with fire regulations.


The plans of the original theatre were not, of course, available, but based on excavations of the old Globe, and of the nearby Rose Theatre, it was possible to obtain important information on the dimensions and the position of the stage.


But they had to compromise on audience capacity. The original theatre accommodated 3,000 spectators - 2,000 seated in the terraces, and 1,000 groundlings standing in the yard. But the new theatre only has half this amount, firstly to comply with health and safety regulations, and secondly for reasons of comfort, as people are physically larger today than they were 400 years ago.


Even before the building was finally completed it mounted its first production, on 21 August 1996, a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Back in 1604 Shakespeare goes into the theatre and heads straight to the tiring room where a sharers’ meeting is planned. The company’s last production, Troilus and Cressida, had not pleased the masses, so this time Shakespeare, the original ’snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’ had turned to Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi for a tale from his Gli Ecatammite (The Hundred Tales) about a Moorish commander.  Shakespeare named his character Othello and is excited about the work.


In the tiring room the sharers are all present, among them Richard Burbage, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, William Sly and Henry Condell. Dick Burbage wastes no time in asking the question.
“So what have you got for us, Will?”
“Well, lads, I think you’ll like it. It’s the story of a man who in a rage of sexual jealousy murders his wife”.
“He’d been cuckolded by the wench, eh Will? Yes, I do like it!”
“Oh no, she is the most pure, virtuous and innocent of women”.
“Then it must villainy of his part, eh? I‘ll dust off my Machiavellian costume.”
“You won’t need that, Dick. You see, he’s the noblest hero of them all”.
“A noble gentleman killing his virtuous wife? Are you sure you’ve got this one right, Will? ”
“And we’ll need to get some African costumes, too”.
“African costumes? Why the devil do we need African costumes?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention it? He’s also black”.


There is no recorded date for the first performance of Othello, but it was given before King James I on 1 November 1604 at Banqueting House at Whitehall and has now become one of the world’s most popular and enduring plays and Othello himself part of our mythology.


As for the new Globe, it is now one of London’s most visited tourist destinations. But you won’t see the kites and the crows unless you close your eyes. For the theatre, never forget, and especially the theatre of Shakespeare, is a place of the imagination. And with imagination you can see anything.

When in France do as the French do: Don't!

Boulevard des Batignolles, Paris

As an avowed and unashamed people watcher, I once observed a Japanese tourist in a Paris bookshop, his hand clutching a book, his face twisted with confusion and misery, as he struggled in desperation to understand the fiendishly foreign system operated in the bookshop to allow him to make his purchase.


The French have a mania for bureaucracy, a legacy of the Napoleonic era, and this bookshop seemed to embrace it with a patriotic fervour. To make your purchase, you took the book to a assistant standing at a pod. She kept the book and gave you a receipt which you took to the cashier. You paid the money, the cashier stamped your receipt, and you took it back to the assistant to exchange for your book. 


My poor hapless Japanese tourist was completely at sea. He wandered first to the cashier who waved him away, then to a floor assistant, who pointed in the direction of the pod, then to another customer, and so on in ever decreasing circles, until finally, I have no reason to disbelieve, disappearing up his own fundament.


Back in Japan, in his own culture and with a language that he’s fluent in, he may well have been a fierce protagonist, not the kind of man you’d want to get into an argument with. But take a man out of the milieu in which he’s at home, drop him down in a new one, surround him with a language that he doesn’t understand, and he’s about as imposing as a broiler chicken in a battery farm, wired-up, de-beaked, gazing blankly at the world through infra-red spectacles. 


So why didn’t I do something to help my poor brother in humanity? What a low, sneaky question to ask. But the reason I did nothing is because I believe in respecting the cultures and practices of the country that I happen to be in. And as the French customers in the shop did nothing I simply did as they did: I didn’t! 


Et voilà tout !

Forward the creative spirit!

Houses of Parliament by Monet

On the tour itinerary of every visitor to London is the Westminster Debating Society, or as it also known, the Houses of Parliament, a gothic block on the banks of the Thames comprising two houses - the House of Commons (lower house) and the House of Lords (upper house). Each house refers to the other as ‘the other place’.


One or two historic and memorable speeches have doubtless been made within its chambers, but no more visionary and moralistic speech than that delivered to the Lords at 9 p.m. on the 18th day of the month of July in the year 1978 by John, Viscount Amberley, Earl Russell.


In parliamentary jargon, his speech is described as a ‘response to an unstarred question during a debate on Victims of Crime’. He began by addressing the question of what a modern society should be:


‘A modern nation looks after everybody and never punishes them. If it has a police force at all, the police force is the Salvation Army and gives hungry and thirsty people cups of tea. If a man takes diamonds from a shop in Hatton Garden you simply give him another bag of diamonds to take with him. I am not joking’.


     He turned to the question of work:


‘Trade Union thinking on this subject is wrong. Leisure is the point and working is wrong, being in any case the curse visited by God on Adam and not blessed. ……….. Automation in the factories and universal leisure for all and a standing wage sufficient to provide life without working ought to be supplied for all. So everyone becomes a leisured aristocrat. ……. Shops ought to supply goods without payment, the funds to pay for the goods being paid by the State, so that all motive for stealing vanishes.’


     It followed that there should be a redistribution of the nation’s wealth:


‘And in a completely reorganised Modern society Women’s Lib would be realised by girls being given a house of their own at the age of twelve, with three-quarters of the wealth of the State being given to the girls in houses of their own, to support them, so that marriage would be abolished and a girl could have as many husbands as she likes. ………. The men receive the remaining quarter of the national wealth to support them, and can, if they like, live in communal huts.


     He focused on a how a caring nation can modernise and how to end the Cold War:


‘….for instance, lunatics could be looked after individually, and it could be found out what world is missing from them and the world which is missing from them could be restored. The madness of the Cold War could also be removed by the whole human race, since it is quite evident that neither Communist nor American exists, only persons. What makes it abundantly clear is the saying of Little Audrey; who laughed and laughed because she knew that only God could make a tree. Mr Brezhnev and Mr Carter are really the same person: one lunatic certifiable, or in American terms one nation indivisible, with imprisonment and lunacy for all. In a word, the whole Human Race can banish the Cold War, with one word, by simply saying “You do not exist.” 


‘The total abolition of law and order is needed, and the Police turn into the Salvation Army as already observed and always help people. There are no prisons or punishments.’


     He went on to say that our societies are spiritually dead with a ‘craven fear of nature’. 


‘Forward the creative spirit! Leave people as nature made them, not indoor products of ersatz suffocation. …………….. Naked bathing on beaches or in rivers ought to be universal.’ 


Around this point his speech was interrupted by Lord Wells-Pestell, who, according to one observer at the time, only ever spoke on the privatisation of model railways. Lord Russell then left the chamber and was prevented from returning by the ushers. 


Had he been allowed to continue his speech (which was later published in full), the House would have heard his vision of a society in which the older generation hand over the reins of power to the new generation of young persons. But first he rebuked the older generation for its treatment of the young.


‘ ………do not cause the older person, or the police, in the name of the older person, to prostitute the younger person out of unforgiveness. The punishment for such conduct is the guillotine. Cause this murder of young people to cease: abolish all institutions or spirits which cause such things. What is not granted at present is the gift of life. The older person is not grafted the gift to be generous, kind, forgiving, or merciful to the younger person, and the younger person is forced in self-defence to defend himself against the older person. ……… A relationship of extreme cruelty results, delightful to all those who relish the experience of sadism. 


‘ ………. This spirit or happening is confined to England. It does not happen to Free Americans who are not subject to the powers of envy engrained in the British Class System, which gives such spirits power. Free Americans banish this spirit, and when Americans complain of the British Royal Family for being pampered, decadent and snobbish, are they not right? The Police Doll which prostitutes people is probably the responsible author of these evils: the Doll of Love which says to the person: You are exile from Love: you must prostitute yourself. …………. This unpleasant, cruel and disgusting machine ought to be stopped. Will you give the young people of England a better chance, please?


‘This machine has given a lot of trouble to a great many people in the last twenty five years, and the British people…….should invoke the spirit of Free America and banish the spirit in question. Get up British Lion: restore your free spirit……and the spirit which works damage and has power or control over the person, vanishes. ……….. Young people ought to be free to go on with their lives and pursue the gaining of their livelihoods free of such molestation. It is not safe for the human race to be thus menaced. 


‘ ………… Can we have some action please? Lend a hand, stop cursing and start blessing. Speak well of people and not with malevolence and leave this bosom of usury of yours. This British spirit is so contemptible that no one could ever attempt to stoop to hearing it. It is the heavenly virtues, faith, hope, charity, lovingkindness, compassion and mercy which people hear: they hear Joy and Happiness, they do not hear the HIDEOUS virtues. God has not been let into Britain because the only divine authority which Britain accepts is the Temporal Anglican Authority, which NEVER repents.


‘ …….. The official rating of the human race in the Northern Hemisphere is TOAD. Until you have prayed for some better grace and found and produced some better repentance by their deed, they will not deserve a better world. Turn from your old, cruel, usurious ways to defend the young man and his lady; choose their kindness, their happiness, their peace, their rejoicing, their mercy. There is no point to you at all unless you put merciful young persons under the age of thirty in charge of your affairs; you will not get anywhere until you do.


‘Go where mercy is, not where it is not; young and merciful people have a stake in the future, which is greater than yours; yield all authority to them and cause State Ministers to accede to their requests. ………… Consequently you will let the young people pass without let or hindrance to the fullest power of the State. Cabinet Ministers can just receive their advice, and agree to anything that they request. The wisdom and guidance of the old are there to assist the young: not to impede them. Guillotine on earth; thunderbolts in Heaven are the punishment for any attempt to impede young people.’ 


     The earl ended his speech with the following simple remark:


‘It may be expected that most people will support these proposals, because they are, after all, in everybody’s own interest.’

Eze and the Earth Goddesses

Earth Goddess Isis

In France they talk of the 'thousand peaceful cities', 'les mille villes tranquilles'. Not because there are a thousand peaceful cities, simply that 'mille', 'ville' and 'tranquille' are the only substantive nouns in the language ending in ille in which the L is pronounced.

However, if there are 1000 peaceful locations in France, the beautiful village of Eze will not be one of them, as it carries the distinction of being the highest perched village in Provence, and therefore a magnet for tourists, as I was to discover when I visited the village on a hot day in June 2008.

I took the short train ride from Nice to Eze-sur-Mer, from where there is a bus to Eze Village. I am not usually lucky with buses, in fact I have a recurring dream waiting for them, but on this occasion no sooner had I left the station that one arrived.

There were just four of us on the bus as it made its way up the mountain road and I had hopes that we would have the village all to ourselves. But no sooner had the bus rounded the last curve in the road than I saw the coaches disgorging their tourist cargoes from the four corners of the globe.

We all disembarked and the bus continued its journey. The village was perched above us, just as a perched village should be, and that was the direction in which I headed. 

I followed the Avenue du Jardin Exotique, until I reached the single road that winds its way up through the village, hardly more than a few yards wide, mercifully too narrow for motorised traffic. Beautiful stone buildings lined the alley, no longer residential but converted into souvenir shops and restaurants. 

I joined the patient game of waiting for a gap in the flow of tourists to take a snap with my camera. Tourism book photographers must do the same thing, whether in villages or on beaches, in order to give the illusion that you (the visitor) will have the whole place to yourself.

The splendour of Eze, the jewel in the crown if you like metaphors, is the botanical garden at the very top, le Jardin exotique. The garden was opened in 1949 and is home to over 400 exotic plants from Africa and the Americas. It is protected by several Earth Goddesses, whose statues are scattered around the garden. Among them is Justin or Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility. Each statue is accompanied by a poem, that to Isis as follows:

You have recognized me…

I am the same

And yet different.

Is that a paradox? Or an oxymoron? 

The garden also affords magnificent and panoramic views of the Mediterranean 1400 ft below, as well as air which is almost fit to breath. At the summit there is a ruin which is apparently haunted by living bats.

I stayed about half an hour and then decided to leave the garden and the village to the tourists and the bats. I caught another empty bus to Eze-sur-Mer, where the driver wished me 'Good morning' as I got off. I took the first train back to Nice after one of the best excursions I'd had in Provence. 

Las Ramblas, Barcelona (& the rest)

A couple of years ago I tried to learn Spanish but quickly gave it up. It wasn’t that the language was difficult, just impossible to pronounce. But I wanted to learn as I was planning to make my first ever visit to Spain. Then I thought what the hell. After all, doesn’t everyone speak English? And if they don’t understand what I’m saying I’ll do what all people throughout the English-speaking world do in such circumstances: I’ll talk louder. 


I don’t know why it had taken me so long to visit Spain. In fact, the country had always had a kind of fascination for me, partly because of its recent history, its civil war, but also its topography, the plains, the mountains, and the intense summer heat. Its cities, too, particularly Madrid, but as the budget airlines from my town only went to Barcelona, this is where it would have to be. Besides, everyone told me that it was a wonderful city, so I was almost excited about going, and almost excited is about as excited as I ever get.


I flew out on 17th March 2008 to the unfortunately named El Prat Airport. (‘Prat’ is English slang for ‘idiot’). I’d checked the airport website for transport into Barcelona. By taxi, the website informed us, ‘the taxi station central is in the exit of the terminals’. Clearly it hadn't been one of the translator’s better days. There was also a train service, which I decided to use, assuming, of course, that the trains weren’t on strike or the line wasn’t closed for ‘essential engineering works’. Well, the trains weren’t on strike, and the line was fully operational. However, in order to get to the train station you had to cross a busy dual-carriageway, which you do through a tunnel over the road, and this tunnel was closed for ‘essential renovation work’. So the bus it would have to be.


I joined the queue at the unique bus ticket machine and got as far as two people from the front when we discovered that the machine had ran out of change. I dug out my Visa card, and when my turn came I bought my ticket. I then discovered as I boarded the bus that you could buy your ticket from the driver.


The journey into Barcelona was not the most memorable. The landscape was brown and dusty and everywhere there were building works going on. Maybe this all spoke of prosperity, though, as we now know, the economic bubble was about to burst, big time.


We arrived at Plaça de Catalunya in the centre of the city, where my hotel was located. I’d seen the square in a tourist guide and it was quite impressive. Need I say that half the square was closed off for maintenance work?

Cable car to Montjuic

I checked into my hotel, deposited my bag in my room, and went down to the reception. I asked the receptionist, a young woman of about twenty, who mispronounced her English in a sweet and charming manner, which was the best way to get to Montjuic, ‘the Hill of the Jews‘, which overlooks the city. She told me that I should take the metro to Parellel station, and then the funicular to the cable car station. And she warned me, in a grave and caring tone, to watch out for pickpockets. I gave her my word that I would do. She gave me a booklet with some tokens in it, and I thanked her for her assistance and turned to go.
“You will remember to watch for the pickpockets?” she called out after me.
“Yes, I will do”, I said meekly.


I got to Parallel and took the funicular to the telefèric station. Already we were quite high up with fine views of the city. I saw Gaudi’s masterpiece La Sagrada Familia for the first time. Also prominent was a modern building which resembled the London ‘gherkin’ building. Then I went to the cable car station where cabs were leaving production-line fashion.


I have never liked heights and was glad when we made firm ground at Montjuic. I walked up to the castle and then looked out across Barcelona. The sunshine was hazy, which restricted visibility, but the commercial port could clearly be seen, also the monument of Christopher Columbus, the last man to discover America.


I pottered around for a while, checked out some huge canons, then hopped on a cable car, then into the funicular, and was soon back at Parellel and heading for Plaça de Catalunya.

La Rambla

Leading from the square to the Columbus monument is a wonderful thoroughfare called La Rambla. It was far and away the highlight of my visit. It is, in fact, a number of ‘ramblas’, called collectively Las Ramblas. It runs from Plaça de Catalunya at the north end to the Columbus monument at the south end, a distance of just over 1 kilometre. Running down the centre is the Rambla Boulevard, a tree-lined, pedestrian zone, dotted with newsstands and café tables where you can stop for a drink or a meal. The atmosphere is lively and at the same time relaxing. There were buskers to serenade you, and, while I was there, human waxworks. If I lived in Barcelona I’d walk up and down it all day long.    


As it was St. Paddy’s Day I hunted out an Irish pub and had a plate of Irish stew with the specific gravity of soup, but it filled a gap. I went down as far as the statue of Columbus atop his high column. A friend of mine once told that he is pointing the wrong way, east instead of west. I pottered around some more (I‘m a good potter-arounder), then went back up the boulevard and found an indoor market selling fruit and vegetables, what they used to call costermongers, about 200 years ago. I took a photograph of one of the stalls, and here it is….

Barcelona costermonger

Back up the square the sun was beginning to set with the light suspended between day and night. It is the nicest time of the day. I took my camera out to try and capture the moment for posterity. As I was standing there a small, seedy looking man with a face like a wizened beetroot sidled up alongside me and began at once talking to me in English. He told me he was a student from Tunisia and that he also spoke Spanish, French and Italian. “I speak very good English, yes?” he said. It wasn’t bad, but neither was it fantastic, but unfortunately (for him) he irritated me from the word go, so I said I hoped that his affirmation of his polyglot excellence wasn’t a case of rhetorical hyperbole, if he would forgive the tautology as all hyperbole is, of course, rhetorical.
It had the desired effect as he obviously didn’t understand a word I said.
“What?” he said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Say?” I said.
“What?” he said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“What did you say?” he repeated.
“Say?” I said.
“What?” he said.
“What?” I said.
“What?” he said.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
I would have preferred, of course, to have knocked him to the ground and got the boot in a couple of times, but as I didn't want to spend my first night in Spain in a Spain police cell, I contented myself with this infantile gibberish and then wandered off. 


I spent a sleepless night in my not-too-comfortable hotel, and the next morning went down to the reception where my new receptionist friend was on duty once more. I asked her the best way to get to the Sagrada Familia. She told me which metro to take, and again cautioned me about those nasty pickpockets.
“Are they still out there?” I wanted to ask her, but that would have been too cynical, and it wasn’t the place for that.


La Sagrada Familia is probably the longest running ecclesiastical work-in-progress in the world today. Construction began in 1882 and was only one quarter complete at the time of Gaudi’s death in 1926. By 2010 about half the work was completed, when the cathedral was also sanctified during a visit by the Pope. But it remains highly controversial, with claims that the work is not respecting Gaudi’s intentions, and that the stone is being machine-shaped and not carved by hand by artisans. 

Sagrada Familia

Funding for the cathedral is mainly from Japan, which may (or may not) have accounted for the large numbers of Japanese tourists when I was there. I took the regulation photos, did a bit more pottering around, then headed off back to La Rambla.


I went to the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, but they were closed for the day. The approach to the museum had a sloping ramp which was very good for wheelchairs and fantastic for skate-boarders. There were considerably more of the latter. Unable to see any modern paintings, I decided to go to one of Gaudi’s houses, just off La Rambla. I’d read somewhere that there were some magnificent sculptures on the roof. Is it necessary for me to say that the roof was closed for renovation? But they did let us have a look at the empty basement, and didn’t charge either. So that was a bit of good luck.


Among the tokens that my receptionist friend at the hotel had given me was one for a self-service restaurant where you could eat as much as you like for about 8 euros. I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant, but the food was excellent, both hot and cold, and literally all you stuff inside you. And you don’t have to leave a tip, either!


I spent the rest of the day wandering up and down La Rambla, looking at the human waxworks, taking some snaps, and was pretty worn out when I got back to the hotel.


Another awful night, but the next morning I was leaving. My receptionist friend was still on duty and wished me a safe journey. I walked over to Plaça de Catalunya, half of which was still closed off, though the workmen had yet to make an appearance. A few dossers were still sleeping on the benches as I walked towards the bus stop. They probably had a better night than I did.


As I was boarding the bus I gave a beggar lady 5 euros and she said something to me in Spanish which I didn’t understand but seemed to catch the word Dios (God). The bus pulled out and as we rounded the square I saw a municipal worker emptying a litter bin. It was the last thing I remember of Barcelona.