Today, I will be mostly...

...drawing things with pencil and paper.

Using the right-hand rule (remember that one, kids?)

I think...

...we may have had weevils. Either rice or grain. Not sure which. But they seem to be dwindling now, which is nice :o)

Barça becomes Belgium (Part 1)

And who knew that there were TWO "Louvain"s in Belgium??

So, it's been a long time, there. But with good reason!
Barcelona was funny -- and good craic. Some good heart-to-heart drunk chats, starting on the first night (let's not forget the HiThisIsWes bottles of Magners at �2.49 in the Gatwick before we even left!).

Went something along the lines of this:

• Sunday: arrive at hotel, Neil extremely pleased with the central location, then we head for an Irish pub and get ratted#
• Monday: Aquarium, beer in Pla�a de Catalunya, more beer in another Irish bar, bought supplies in the Corte Ingles, then dinner in the Attic (yah yah yah AND HTI Wes in price!), then CASINO! The Spanish like their gambling, it seems. I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped, but we still got free entry 'cos of where we were staying ? ya-ho!
• Tuesday: Port Aventura! Where we were basically half-cut all day. The morning struck with quite a lot of hangdog, so beers were mandatory as soon as we got to the old train station, there. At about 10 o'clock... However, things picked up en route, and we decided to pay the extra 18 Euro and get the Gold Express armbands which got us past all the other poor folks who were waiting in the slow queues. Tee hee :o) Which also meant that we could get off and then straight back onto the BEST ROLLER COASTER.... EVER! The Dragon Khan is a fantastic thing. I'd heartily recommend it. As my wee sister had to me, as it happens! Anti-craic was in the coming back, though, as the train never arrived. Nor did the one after that. Took us ages to get back home, and Neil ended up asleep on a concrete bench with holes in it. Occasionally piping up to say that the very energetic ten-year-old kid near us was "good craic" :o) When we did get back to Barça, I think we went straight to the room ? via the Supermercado (get me) to get some beers ? and just had a few before calling it a night. I famously declared that it was the first night I would remember going to sleep. I don't remember it.
• Wednesday: was designated tourist day. And not a particularly mirthful start to the morning, either. Everything was off... Everything. But I'd decided we should go to the Sagrada Fam�lia. Neilo is not ? as he reminded me on the extremely high vertical-drop ride at Fort Aventura ? a fan of heights. So he did not enjoy the climb up one of the spires. Or, indeed, really look outside at any stage. I was still half-cut, so the climb didn't bother me much at all. The walk down the steps was much more off-putting, though. Could see feck-all, as it was always darker. The place is bizarre: they say it's basically a building site, but that doesn't do it justice. It's actually a building site! With all the associated noises and smells. There's a feckin wall missing, for crying out loud! Quite windy high up there, too...
  
• (speaking of Wednesdays, I've just been reminded that this is when the lab tests their fire alarms. Brilliant. Glad I woke up at 6:00 a.m. for this)
• Wednesday (continued): So, after the descent with a particularly not-happy-faced Neilo, we decided to attempt some nutrition. Well, Pizza Hutt Express, anyway. One slice each, and that was enough. I don't think it ever sat well until the following 147, but it probably helped settle the chemical chaos that my body was in. Still wasn't even lunchtime, so we went back to the hotel to pick up the trusty Lonely Planet Spain. I fancied a trip up to Tibidabo to get a good look over the city. For this, we had a three-stage journey:
  1. Local train to the north of the city ? was nice to get out of the centre and see some suburban stuff, I initially thought...
  
  
  2. Tram (which we just missed but didn't have to wait long for) up the hill to the Funicular(se) stop
  
  
  3. The Funicularse, as it was renamed. Timetables seemed as scatty as the trains back from Fort Aventura, so we ended up sitting in this really wonky looking carriage for ages until some middle-class English people (Neilo's favourite) and some middle-aged clueless Germans (my favourite) joined us. And eventually, the bored-looking eejit in charge of "driving" the machine came out of the money-collecting booth and into the funicular-driving booth at the front of said contraption.


• Stages 2 & 4 took a while on the way up. But the real dampener ? quite lidderally ? was the feckin rain which set in that day (and didn't ever really leave) (to say nothing of the tornados!). So, the view from the top of Tibidabo consisted of the top of Tibidabo. Where there's another church, which is apparently one church on top of another church. I didn't care. It was dry. Drier, certainly, than the amusement park which people were fleeing in droves... being highly unamused by the torrential rain. (I've some pictures on my now-fecked phone, so I'll see if I can ever get them off it before it dies completely.) So, the sight-seeing was a wash-out. But the journey down was excruciating. When the return funicularse finally got going, we got down to the bottom just in time to not be allowed onto the downward tram, because it was full of people that were fleeing the rain. Much like ourselves. So we waited, just sheltered from the rain, for about 45 minutes, generally shivering and sporadically cursing. The tram eventually arrived, and we stood for some old ladies to have our seats, feeling slightly self-righteous about it...
• When we got back down to base camp, I don't remember exactly what we did, but the fixed point in the plan was the now-legendary Norn Iron vs England game! Not easy to find anywhere showing it, though, as all the Irish pubs were showing the Republic game. All, that is, except one which eagle-eyed Neilo spied from La Rambla as we were heading north along it. Can't quite remember the place's name, but it seemed to be an English pub. I've a receipt from it somewhere... Anyway, I've never laughed so quietly in all my life. The North-African bouncer mentioned there were some seats and a big TV down the back basement, so we sat down beside some German middle-aged tourists who didn't stay for much of the game. Eventually, two girls, a floppy-haired English lad, and a Canadian couple sat around the bend from us and started watching. The girls were clearly Geordie, the couple were Tom (a geophysicist who I geek-bonded with) and Teresa (a PR exec) and were really cool. Teresa was quite taken with the floppy-haired lad, who introduced himself as Alex when NI beat the English, congratulated us, and turned out to be a model living in Chelsea, claiming to have been in Vogue. Possible, but the Geordie girls clearly thought it unlikely. The craic was good for a while, but Alex blatantly fancied himself and was starting to do some heads in, so we decided to move on, sadly abandoning Tom and Teresa.
• Next stop was the girdles hotel, where we waited and Neilo was sure we'd pulled. Wouldn't have been a problem ordinarily, apart from the fact that they were the wrong gender for my interest to be piqued. But they were good craic, and we decamped to the Irish bar off of the first night in Bar�a, for our last night in Barca. Very random, but very good fun.
• Thursday (leaving day): Eurghh.... hangdog special, this one. Eventually managed to get up and packed. Slowly. Left the luggage with the nice man at the hotel, and wandered off to do some shappin and a beer in Pla�a de Catalunya. Well, I would have shapped, except my feckin card wouldn't work in the machines, so I contented myself with enjoying Neilo ordering trainers in Spanish and planning a return shopping trip at some stage. One place had particularly nice t-shirts, and I'm going back. Fact. Then it started pissing it down (rather than just the scattered showers we'd been putting up with since Tibidabo). We just had time to squeeze in a dinner at Pizza Express, with rose wine naturally, before collecting the suitcases, rolling back up to Catalunya and getting a taxi to the airport with a driver who clearly thought he was hilarious. I was in no position to judge</lo siento pero no hablo mucho espa�ol>
• Airport: By now, quite cut again. Well done everyone. The rather fit local fella at the BA check-in desk assured us that, although two tornados had turned two cargo planes round 180 degrees, and given a passenger plane a bit of an upward dunt the previous day, today's thunder, lightning, and torrential rain shouldn't be a problem. Good... We head for the air-side, and Neilo goes off to do some reconciliatory shopping for the missus, disappearing for quite some time, but retrieving beer en route. This only puts off the inevitable five-day compound hangover which is by now gallopping towards us like an over-enthusiastic hound.
• I ask for tea on the plane on the way home. It's that bad.
• Lord Simon, bless his cotton socks, picks me up from the aerophort and we head into town for litterally one drink and bit of a shared perv.
• I go to bed. Desperately thankful to be home.

TBContinued...

Long time ago now...

bridge_far_away____or_small
Originally uploaded by finassy.

...but I decided to put some of Thanassis' Victoria Falls pictures on.

I wish I could take credit for these, but I only digitised them from slide film.

My head's a mess today. Was out with Lord Simon lastnight, while the Aussie and H were doing Body Pump (TM) at the oul' Spectrum. Got about five hours' sleep, then drove the two lords to Heathrow. I've been awake since 4:45. I don't like it.

Drink off tonight, despite earlier plans to do so. Need a quiet night. Possibly cinema tomorrow, ahead of the Barça trip. Feel rubbish.

Holiday!

Bar--seh--LOOOOO-NAAAAAAAAAAAA

Yaaaaaaaaay!

Neilo saw to the flights last week, and now the last piece of the organisational jigsaw is in place. I've just booked the Hotel Rivoli Ramblas in Barcelona. It's official — we're off on holiday!

Cannot

wait.

It's been ages since I had a proper sunshine holiday. The last time I was away was St Paddy's Day, and that was great craic. But I haven't had a sunshine holiday since the last Dewbye trip in 2003! Feck!

But we're right beside Las Ramblas for this and I'm now VERY excited.

Hats off to Lord Newby for giving it the lord seal of approval, too:

"oh come on!!!

anything with the phrases 'gothic quarter' and 'spa with a view' are always
going to get the gay excited!!!"

Ha haa!