Madrid & Barcelona

Madrid and Barcelona were way too rushed. I spent too much time messing about making arrangements for trains and flights to and from places and too little time just enjoying the places themselves. Anyway, I did get to see some of the wonderful architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona: Park Guell, Casa Batllo, and the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia - still under construction.

I got lost in Madrid trying to reach the Prada Museum via the back streets and instead found, in short order, the red-light district, some very up-market apartments, and the financial district where I stumbled into an art gallery just opening an exhibition of neo-realist photography spanning the fascist periods of Spain and Italy through to the late'50s.

I should have slept on the train from Madrid to Barcelona but instead spent most of the night in the dining car with a Peruvian family man with a US green card who takes a class in Madrid every Friday for his accounting qualification, a Canadian IT specialist on his way to the PARTY island of Ibiza, and a Tennessee grad-student here to improve his Spanish. The Canadian was trying very hard to persuade one or all three of a group of 20-something purty young thangs (all business/marketing grads, so I shut up) to join him in his rented apartment on Ibiza.

In the Barcelona streets I found the markets where all manner of seafood that I've never seen before were on sale, butcher shops offered beef and lamb and pork, with detailed descriptions of each animal's feeding, age, and location of their farms, and of course so many varieties of fruit and vegetables. Street performers included a troupe of Ecuadorian singers and dancers, and a quartet of tango dancers, all fabulous. I sat in one of the dozens of outdoor cafes in the warm evening air of the boulevard La Rambla for real Paella washed down with about a litre or so of sangria, which has the delightful effect of having no effect, until you stand up. All the bars were packed with tourists and locals watching the futbol game between FCBarcelona and the other Barcelona team that no-one supported.

Less than a block from my hostel, hidden at the end of an alley I found a lovely old cathedral, the Basilica del Pi, in which that night there was a concert of Spanish guitar masterpieces by Manuel Gonzales "considered the leading guitarist of Spanish music". It was great, technically perfect, but I prefered some of the same pieces in the tougher rural Spanish/ Italian manner of Joe Petane, a wonderful old friend of my father, who still plays despite failing health.

So now I've just arrived in Braga, Portugal, to attend a conference. It's only been a couple of hours so I can't report much, but you can't say anything bad about a country where a bottle of beer costs less than a can of softdrink.