Sagrada Familia

Just ... wow. Will write more when I can get my head round it.

It was Chris

Columbus, that is, on the column. From yesterday. Because after discovering the East by sailing West - or so he thought - in 1492, he came back and landed at Barcelona the next year. Only he knows why, having done a return journey across the Atlantic, he sailed three-quarters of the way round Spain before putting in to port, but hey.

Watched over by Mars

After a slow wander up a warm and packed Rambla - and a few diversions into shoe shops (and Massimo Dutti) - we found somewhere very pleasant to eat, and watch people, near the scaffolding-clad Cathedral. 

Mars rose slowly above a Gaudi gallery, in-line skaters raced by, cyclists wound between the ubiquitous sellers of illuminated blue rubber-band-propelled flying sycamore-seed-inspired thingamabobs, while we ate what seemed the equivalent of dinner, breakfast and lunch. 

Hola from Barcelona!

Up at a silly time: taxi+train to a dark, cold and foggy Gatwick. Smoothly through and on board the Airbus A319 to Barcelona.

Hot!

Easy airport coach with one change onto the Metro brought us to within a couple of hundred metres of our hotel, at the bottom sea end of La Rambla. We got a good deal on an upgrade and we're now just waiting to get into our room.

We've been for a wander, mind, down around the impressive statue (of whom we don't know, but we're guessing a navigator) above, and round a bit of the marina.

Quick guide to Europe

Netherlands: laid back.

Belgium: dirty.

France: armed soldiers on the platform.

UK: officialdom* and prohibition signs on everything.

*Why, when we've all been through UK Border Agency checks in Brussels, do we need our passports AND train tickets checked again at St Pancras? In Gare du Nord you just walk off the train onto a French street...

Well, I'm home. That was fun!

Your A Star

Geddit??

Pulling away from Bruxelles-Midi. Or is it Brussels-Zuid? Only in Belgium can a station have two completely different names. Or Wales (probably).

Boorish-Brit-deadening earphones in, bliss.

Travelling backwards. Again. Grrrr.

Flat, flat, flat

Why does it take the best part of three hours to travel by train between Amsterdam and Brussels? It doesn't look that far on the map.

Mind you, this Intercity train does a lot more stopping and travelling sedately than I was expecting. I probably could have paid extra for the high-speed Thalys train, but actually it's quite nice to see some countryside. Not to mention occasional train-set style sidings and marshalling yards, with locos and wagons waiting to head off across Europe to who-knows-where.

Flat wagons, open wagons, covered wagons, car transporter wagons, gravel hopper wagons, wagons of every colour and marking, graffiti-covered passenger cars, strange Dutch passenger trains with curious 747-type cockpit-bulges in the roof. It's the whole Hornby, and then some.

Fields, dykes, polders, other railway lines, bridges, highways and byways, rivers, container barges, gas barges, Friesian cows, football stadiums, churches, level crossings. You get to see everything when the country is so flat. There's an occasional gradient on the track, but that's to take us over a bridge or causeway, not because the land is hilly. All through Holland and Belgium.

Oh, and I'm particularly excited* to be on a corridor train, in a compartment. Just like when I was Interrailing back years ago. In fact, I might well have taken this line, thinking about it.

*Not that you'd notice. You might wonder why I'm guffawing frequently, but that's because I'm reading Paul O'Grady's At My Mother's Knee.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Once in a while I find it necessary to visit a museum of modern art, just to remind myself how some of my fellow humans are pretentious wankers.

This afternoon I went to the Stedelijk Museum, or more exactly "temporary stedelijk 2" (note the lower cas, because the main museum is undergoing major enlargement. Actually the plans for the new building look rather good.

There were the usual exhibits you expect, such as piles of coal, inexplicable video installations, and distorted bronzes. I really dislike having to read the caption to understand what I am seeing. Give me classical art any day, which, with a moderately standard education, I can 'read'.

My eye was genuinely only caught by a few things. The best was an old Super 8 projector which had been ingeniously modified, DIY-style, to show a continous loop of film. (The film was of some naked women standing, and occasionally walking, on a hillside. It was of _no_ interest.) Others, I noticed, were intrigued more by the projector too.

The best video installation was called "Mastering Bambi". Two artist had visited the American forests which had inspired the Walt Disney background animators of the classic film. They had photographed and shot video, then produced this moving montage, devoid of animals, and featuring a menacing soundtrack also inspired by the film. All in HD on a giant screen. Yes, and I had to read the csption to get all that, but it was good.

Having said everything I've just said, it was lovely to see a number of original Mondrians, and be introduced to the similar, Ukranian, Malevich. There was some Pop Art, including at least two enormous original Warhols.

And nice to note the gift shop was just part of the museum, you weren't forced through it. It was mainly a selection of art and design books, and some postcards, anyway.

€10. Regrets? No, not really.

Check-out Blues

Always get 'em. You know? You've handed your room key in, left your bag behind the desk (complete with mild theft anxiety), and wandered out for the two or three hours before your journey home starts. Not enough time to _do_ anything meaningful, yet you don't want to waste time, nor think about leaving quite yet.

Time to reflect and assess.

Love the 'dam. Could happily live here. The city's easy to get the hang of, and around; it's friendly; the boys are pretty; everyone speaks English, but Dutch is easy to listen to, and not too hard to translate, at least when written.

Missed Steve, here more than in Berlin. Berlin is _my_ city, but we have shared memories of Amsterdam, and there's lots I want to show him next time we come here together.

Barely thought about the school reunion thing yesterday, and not at all last night, which was partly the point. Good.

By the way, apropos nothing, sorry there are no pictures in this blog, but I haven't got the facilities. Travelling light, you see. Next time away I'll have my new MacBook Air - which I know is waiting for me at home.

Right. Coffee drunk, time for precisely two hours' meandering. Take a few more photos; only taken 78 so far - and three of those are of a cat.

Dammit - I mean Dam-it

Last night involved drinking etc. And choosing the wrong nightbus back, the one where you have to pay €4 instead of being able to use your tram multi-day card (hint: don't take a nightbus that has a number starting N - this ain't London). Dammit number 1.

This morning, breakfast, that meal where you get to see what your fellow guests look like. Uh-oh. Then wish you hadn't.

A planned meander with photo opps everywhere (there will be an album of the best sometime after I'm home), and a coffee outside the main theatre, people-watching, ended at what I now like to call "my coffee shop" (this is my second visit) to make a purchase for later.

Then a tram back to the hotel (no. 2 is better than no. 16, I find). After a short break, a wander into Vondelpark, very close to where I am staying. Heaving isn't the word. Well, ok, it is the word. Found a spot to sit and read and smoke. Would have loved Steve to be with me.

For some reason I then needed a nap.

After which I caught a tram again and visited a couple of bars. Very much like last night.

Except tonight, it started to rain. A few drops, then suddenly a full-blown storm, thunder, lightning, wind, the works. I'm wearing a t-shirt because it's been like 25 degrees all day, including when I went out for the evening.

I had bought a cheese and salami roll and a chocolate muffin on the way to the bus-stop, because I had forgotten to eat earlier (I have a habit of doing this on my solo holidays). I had researched the bus nunbering this time, and despite arriving at the bus shelter (and it was a shelter from the storm) just after a bus had passed so I had nearly half an hour to wait, I got myself outside my baguette, and listened to a bizarre conversation between two young Moroccan/Dutch girls who were sheltering with their bikes, and an extended Spanish family waiting for a bus. All in broken English. Hilarious.

Then, on cue, the 358 nightbus comes tanking down the road in the tram lane through the puddles. Hand out. Bus sails past into the storm. Bastard.

That was a 25 minute wait, and now I have another 30 minute wait. Bugger this. So I dash and find a taxi. That's €13 including the tip. So my 3-day tram card is working out quite expensive, all in all. Dammit number 2.

You may have remembered there was a muffin in the story earlier. I've just eaten it writing this.

Good night.