The trip was long. Separated seating charts. Broken entertainment system. Only our imaginations and elusive 10 min naps. 22 hours. 3 flights. Lay over in Heathrow... 5 hours in a luxury consumerist prison. My eyes burning in protest. Lots of turbulence.
Despite the travel trials and tribulations we made it here to Barcelona in one peice. Our flat is everything the pictures boasted. A 2 bedroom penthouse apartment along the El Born districts side streets. Our host has vacated for the week on a motorcycle trip across France. His french roommate comes and goes and is as illusive as are the locals. Their conversations brief, light and fragile as if any moment it were to fall apart into pieces.
We sleep a lot. The hours melt away in the hot muggy evening as we listen to the echoing chatter from the paseo...of dogs barking, streets washed clean, scooters, glass bottles rolling along the stone curbs, the young people laughing and singing unfamiliar tunes that pour out of the bars and overflowing into the night sky.
We take breaks from the apartment and walk down the allies they call streets looking for nowhere to go in particular. Trying to avoid the traps set for tourists and stumbling upon bits of ancient history. Our favourite haunt is the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Its impressive construction swallowed by the apartments that surround it. Its cool inside and relatively accessible with looming columns supporting a canopy of stone. The cavernous temple creates a chamber of sound that can move the most hardened cynics.
