Veo-Design.com

First, in case you don't know me, let me introduce ourselves. I am Miro (yes, the one on the home page) and my girlfriend is called Carmen. She is going to study at the University of Essex, and I'm going to spend my time working and so on.

15/07/2008

We packed all our stuff in... well, a lot of boxes, which went on top of the motorhome, on the roof-rack. Good thing my father helped us. Then we put a plastic cover on top and around it and fixed everything. Sadly, the plastic was very shitty, and during the trip holes developed, and I had to climb to the roof every now and then to fix them with tape. Some more stuff went into the shower (yes, there was a shower, but I don't know if it worked) and into the drawers, and we were ready. We met a friend and stayed at his house that night. --Bye bye, flat in Madrid--

16/07/08

On the next morning we left Madrid, headed to Barcelona, where we arrived at night. After one whole day driving (that monster doesn't do more than 90-100 km/h) at the tune of ZZ Top and other rock cassettes we found, we searched for a nice place to stay, near the coast. Tired, but highly motivated. I discovered that my left arm was red like a crab, because I had it exposed to the sun all day long, while driving, and now I had a pretty strong sunburn.

17/07/08

We hadn't finished putting all the food and dishes into the drawers, so it was the first thing we did that morning. Then we went on the road again, this time to the south, to a town near Tarragona, called Reus, where we were going to meet a friend of mine, who I hadn't seen for many years. After a couple of hours, we arrived, but since I didn't know the town, it got pretty hard to find a place to meet. But after getting lost several times, breaking a glass that fell down because of a bump in the road, and asking people for directions, we finally got near where my friend was and parked the car.

Our next problem was that the mobile phone ran out battery. We had bought a nice looking 12V to 230V converter, but it didn't work. And I still don't have a clue why. I found a car adapter which seemed to be for the phone, but it didn't work either. Again, no clue why it didn't work. So we had to go to a phone booth and call our friend from there. Finally, we met him, but it was a little bit later than we had expected, and he had eaten already. We hadn't, so we went to a bar.

After a couple hours of remembering the good old school years and putting ourselves up-to-date, we went to a drugstore to buy a cream or something that possibly could repair my left arm's skin. Carmen had discovered some insect bites, so she also bought an afterbite, which is no more than ammoniac in a tube, and it stinks. We then decided we would go to Salou, a small touristic town nearby, where coincidentally a friend of Carmen, from Madrid, was staying. We met her and her boyfriend, and spent some hours at her apartment until late at night. We used this opportunity to charge the phone.

Then, we left headed to Barcelona again, and drove some hours north. Unfortunately, just before our goal for that day, there were some line painting going on, and we were stuck on the road. We wanted to find a neat place to sleep soon, since it had been a long day, and so we entered a small coast town just south of Barcelona called Castell de Fells and looked for a place to stay.

We found one good looking place with views to the Mediterranean sea, but soon we discovered that we parked just next to a Pub, or something similar, and the music drove us crazy. So we tried to find another place, and we found something similar, where the small road led to what we thought was a dirt track or earthy road, again to the sea. Stupid me! It was very loose and fine grained sand, and the car immediately got stuck in it. No way forward, no way backward. What an awkward sensation! I started digging like crazy around the wheels, but it seemed to be no way. After digging, digging, digging, and trying a lot of times, finally it moved, and I almost crashed against a parked car while driving backwards out of the sand. Now I was covered with sand and tired like never before. We said good bye to the nice views and searched for a place more in-town. We tried to wash ourselves a little bit with a big bowl we had. Man, I felt hippie!

18/07/08

We started the day bathing in the sea, it really helped as the "bath" from last night didn't do that great job in getting rid of the sweat and the dirt, and it really made us feeling better. It was a huge (really, really huge) beach, and since it was pretty early in the morning, there was almost nobody except us. We then used the beach's public showers to clean ourselves. Actually it wasn't allowed to use shower gel, but we cheated a little. Hey, we were a little bit hippie at the time, after all. Off we went, to Barcelona.

The next challenge was awaiting us. Finding a parking space in a big city should be easy, right? Wrong! All those parking houses have a very low ceiling, and we couldn't get our monster-camping-car inside any of them. After driving for two hours around in the city, and almost getting crazy because of the dense traffic (it's not easy to drive this 25 year old monster, after all), we found a parking area at the Zoo, where we barely fit into one of the spaces. Good thing that it was a guarded parking, so we didn't have to worry about our stuff on the roof. But that came at a price, too, and it wasn't all that cheap.

We were hungry, and so we went to a small restaurant to eat something. None of the things on the menu sounded familiar to me, and so I tried "butiffarra", which resulted being a big sausage. Carmen had "huevos al plato" which aren't much more than just fried eggs. The sausage felt very heavy in my stomach, and for several hours I didn't feel that great. But hey, I don't happen to be every day in Barcelona, so I stayed motivated.

We started our tour de Barna by walking from the Zoo park to the Arc de Triomf (no, not the Paris's one), which honestly didn't impress us that much. The next thing was the Rambla, one of the most famous streets of the city. Once on it, we eventually went into an optician's, because Carmen had lost one screw on her glasses, and one lens had fallen off.

Once that was fixed, we decided to let the Rambla for later, because we were at the top end of that street, and we wanted to see one of Gaudí's works. We walked at the Passeig de Gràcia and thought we found La Pedrera, but instead it was the Casa Battlló, also from Gaudí. Really beautiful house, but we passed on having a peek inside, so amazingly expensive it was to enter. 

Then, we got to La Pedrera, another very beautiful piece of art from Gaudí (I will stop to say that each time now, because I feel like a freakin' parrot). Again, full of people and camera flashes everywhere. At this point, I was feeling very bad, and was cursing the Butifarra, so we decided to stop and have a refreshment. Unfortunately, the underground metro line we needed was closed at that entrance of the station due to refurbishment, and we had to walk around all the entire block to get to the other one, although the physical distance was no more than, say, crossing the street. Could you explain me that?

We went to La Sagrada Familia, a big cathedral made by... can you guess it? Yes, Gaudí. And there was a nice looking kiosk where we sat down for a while, had some Cokes and Carmen wrote some postcards. Eventually, we had to change tables, because there were pigeons on a branch over us, and funny as they are, sometimes they let their shit rain over the people.

The view was nice, but sadly there were constructions going on, and I wonder how many years they have been working already (I bet, a lot), and how many it will take them to complete. It seems like it will never be finished. The next stop, Hospital Sant Pau, made by... I don't want to say it again. Then we returned to the Rambla, where we entered the biggest superstore you can imagine (really, really huge), to buy insect spray (I'll talk about that later) and stamps. On the top floor there was a really nice cafe and the views from there were amazing.

We then walked down the Rambla, visited a amazingly beautiful bar called Bosc de les Fades (Fairy Woods) and went to the port. We wanted to take the Teleféric, but it was closed already. Then, we returned to the car, just in time before the parking closed and continued our trip, to the north.

... to be continued (in another post).