12.00am, Monday 16 August, R's ....sun

Back to old patterns: I got picked up by a Pakistani. Not quite like the Bangladeshis in my younger days travelling in foreign cities, but close enough. Actually, the guy was 30, which is considerably younger than the types who used to pick me up. He talked to me at the beach today and then tried to hold me in the water. So that's it - from now on I turn into a bitch and walk off after saying hello. It would be nice if girls were as chatty to strangers as boys are.

So here's my advice if you want affirmation you are beautiful: travel alone. But if you don't want the men who in their desperation think you are beautiful because you deign to talk to them to touch you, then travel with a companion. Or stay at home.

Today was truly back to travelling - I walked for around three hours in blazing sun - lovely. I went to the park, past the Catalan art museum that looks like a palace, and walked around the waterfalled plaza below Olympic Stadium. It is a vast, mostly empty space, with patchy grass, yellow and black poles, views overlooking the city, a promenade, and the fountains - steps pouring with water. Olympic Stadium looks like a coliseum.

Across the way I saw mysterious black stone constructions on top of the hill. What was it? A fort, a neighbourhood? What? I decided to see if I could get there and find out. I walked on a track through fresh-smelling oleanders and brush until I got to... a cemetery. It is very beautiful and very distinct. The constructions turn out to be kind of graveyards: walls built of small round stones housing rows and rows of boxes. The boxes are covered by a plaque engraved with a family name and most are enclosed within glass, behind which are plastic flowers, vases, statuettes, photographs.

The cemetery is full of these grave monuments, as if it is a ruin of an extensively-walled city. The cemetery itself is enormous, as I discovered. It extends around and down the hillside, and as I walked lower and lower, down staircases leading to more sections of walls, traditional gravestones, mausoleums and statuary appeared. Some mausoleums were like little cathedrals.

I got lost in the cemetery and I didn't want to wind back up the hill, so it took me around 2 hours to finally get down the hill and emerge somewhere that was not train tracks or the port. I finally came to a major road that circles the city. When I finally got back to civilisation, I found myself in a less upscale part of town, with plain though colourful buildings and unglamorous people, like drunken mechanics.

I wandered about, trying to find a street sign, but I finally had to ask someone for help. She pointed to a roundabout on my map and told me I was there. Not too bad, I walked some way back up the mountain. I started my climb on two outdoor escalators, which brought me to a hillside suburb of apartment blocks and local cafes.

I am so tired now, I must to bed. More later.

11.15am, Sunday August 15, Bellapon bakery

I was going to resume no-coffee travelling but the cafe con leche at the tapas bar last night was so good that I refuse to say no. So I am in a bakery, with a chocolate-filled croissant stick and a cafe con leche. Also I buy a loaf of pan gallec. I sit at the first table from the door, not too far from Plaza Espana.

Yesterday I arrived safely at R's place, thanks to a friendly airport worker who spoke English and was getting off at the same stop. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have figured out when to get off the bus despite my map.

Pratt is an interesting suburb, almost like a movie set, with narrow streets, lined with apartment buildings and first-floor shops. There is something about the narrowness of the streets, the level closeness of street to sidewalk, and the colourfulness of boxy buildings that make the neighbourhood look a little unworldly - but cute and welcoming.

Today I aim to walk up a mountain in the Parc de Montjuic and then go to the beach.

?, Sunday August 15, R's kitchen .... easily awake

Oh, being back in the travelling mode in which I get woken up by the morning sounds of other people and get out of bed without regret, without difficulty!

Last night I had to stop writing and jot down notes because I was so tired (so some of this is a little bit of a repeat as I fill in details). I didn't describe the feeling of being on a motor scooter: a little bit scary because my hands were holding on behind rather than in front of me, a little bit moon-like because turning my head in a helmet while moving quickly drags wind, but otherwise great.

The back of a motorbike is an excellent place from which to see a beautiful city speed past without the hindrance of windows and doors, and also an excellent place from which to feel a cool breeze on a warm night.

A motorbike is not the place, however, in which a physically awkward person is to feel graceful. When I do such things as get on and off a motorbike I think about Geena Davis and how she used to make clutziness sexy in her movies.

So tooling down the streets of central Barcelona on a scooter was, obviously, quite divine. We passed the Placa d'Espanya, the two Gaudi buildings, blocks and blocks of old, old apartment buildings with balconies and awnings (awnings!).


Barcelona!

At first the city seemed empty but this was because everyone was in 'the village', massing through the decorated streets.

R and I enjoyed the festival for a bit, wandering in the barely-there gaps between people while drinking beer with lemonade (the fizzy kind) - this allows people to drink more. Eventually we walked to the tapas place for dinner, where we sat at the tapas bar, plates of potato, vegetables and meats encased behind glass above our heads, and ate potatoes and mushrooms and drank more beer. After dinner we continued our slow ramble, conversing mostly in English. R's English is close to intermediate, while I can't understand a word he says in Spanish.

At 11pm a lively band began playing in the Japanese-themed street. There had been other bands playing in various streets throughout the evening but this band located the night party, with mostly young people spilling into the block with beers and talking and dancing.

These young people were good-looking, stylish, a variety of types. I watched girls with dreadlocks in bright summer dresses, girls with bias cut hair or thick square glasses. A cute and smiley girl behind me in a peach sundress, with bright light purple glasses and ahort black hair was jumping, dancing and singing with the joby appropriate to the moment. R only occasionally danced and I made eye contact with the addictive girl. She eventually introduced herself. Marina. Marina's friend was standing against a building, and one can't let a girl dance alone. So we jumped to the music together, the kind of music you can't not help jumping to.

Marina is the type of girl I'd be mimediate friends with, I think, in different circumstances. But R was hot in the pulsing crowd, so we left after 4 or so songs to walk a little more and then go back to R's suburb, Pratt, by way of La Rambla, Barcelona's Champs d'Elysees, a wide stone-paved strip lined with umbrellaed tables.

These sun- and music-drenched cities of the Spanish-speaking peoples are addictive, though of course I am here in Barcelona on an ideal weekend.