Barcelona ..spent and burnt

I couldn’t have picked a better place for a sunny holiday, my self-spurred popular vacation of the season.

We, I and Olga were in Barcelona last week. It was all in all nice 4 days of fun.. 4 days of scorching sun and beach. I just loved the trip.

I am so well out of tune with the undisturbed way of travelling, it is a wonder now if anything isn’t amiss. My flight was at 7:25 in the morning to Barcelona. At 6:15 when my father called I was still sleeping. Usually I am too stirred up to sleep tight the previous night before traveling. What followed was a miracle play. We managed everything, got a taxi and checked in 10 min before the departure. I thought about checking in online the previous evening but didn’t do it. Glad they did let us board!

When we landed in Barcelona the temperature was an easy 38 degrees. We didn’t go about doing much on the first day. We took a walk through the city center and La Rambla, gazing around all the beautifully set up road side shops. It was only a weekday and the city was animated with tourists. We checked into our hotel late in the afternoon and didn’t mind staying in the hotel after the long walk. The evening was more endurable despite the heat. We went to the beach and helped ourselves to some striking Catalan dishes and its sparkling wine.

The next day was more fun. We were at the beach early in the morning. The cool ocean was a welcome to the baking heat. We did some amazing snorkeling. True to what I was told it was mostly sand. There were so few rocks. We could only see small fishes. Whatever I didn’t want to miss the beautiful ocean.

Afternoons were best spent in the hotel snoozing. We were more than willing to explore Barcelona in the evening. Everything was so alive, the vibes kept us bustling until 3 in the morning. All the European architecture, churches, monuments seem so much in agreement to each other, I rather preferred walking to visiting each one of them.

It was more or less the same every day ..snorkeling in the morning and thumping the streets in the evening. I also met up with JJ and others briefly. Didn’t do anything particular.. just curled up chatting. We tried paella and tapas. With eyes bigger than our hunger for all the delicacies, we ended up ordering a helping or two extra only to have a nice fat bill and strove to finish. In any case it was absolutely divine eating only seafood the four days.

I should get away like this more often than I think I should from the work-worn-thin routine of mine.

In the end I couldn’t manage to see their bull sport La Corrida ..ok I had planed on doing too many things in 4 days.

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Saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this week. Was planning to right from the day it opened in Cinema. I liked the movie, proving otherwise to the disappointments of the earlier movies. Thankfully the movie isn’t swallowed up in darkness as typical with the older ones. Apparently, HP also makes a movie in the theatre in a long time. The film is slow moving given there isn’t much action to this part. But all that budding adolescent attraction doesn’t go unnoticed. The characters have grown which kind of takes away the topping. The younger trio was lot more fun.

I am somehow taken in by this book, not because of the story but it is Dumbledore. I was almost tearful with the ending yesterday. Otherwise too I wasn’t in very high spirits yesterday which rightly did the undoing. It wouldn’t be surprising if I did say a funeral prayer…

Public Enemies is in the list next. Possibly I can manage it next week or the week after.