?, 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.