Warning – This is a NO cycling post… Yes, not a shred of cycling in it I am afraid (and mildly disgusted with myself), so I apologise in advance. No riding and no Vuelta…
Really?! Bike in bike box… PRO teams leaving town… Can you feel the doom of the Spanish mission coming to the end? There was only one thing to cheer me up. It seems Super Mario the Missile had been out the night before to see his homeboy Sammy Sanchez and was rather pleased with himself when he rocked up with this for me:
Yup… A cap signed by the Olympic Champion and hero of the Spanish people, awesome score! It will be on eBay ASAP.
This morning it was time to say goodbye to the OTR crew and Madrid, to hit the rails back to Barcelona. Learning from my experience last time, I arrived at the Railway station at 10.30am to catch the 11.30am train. So did everyone else:
I therefore ended up getting my 11.30am Train ticket at 11.45am, yip, missed that train like a surprise doping test. Luckily trains are as plentiful as job seekers here in Spain, so not a big drama, just an hour less to look around Barcelona. The train trip provided me with more of that Spanish countryside that I seem to strange love and feel addicted to. Let the scenery reel roll:
Right, with the scenery fix over, it was time to regroup and hit Barcelona for a dirty recon… To be honest, I really wanted to be either asleep or back in the mountains and I am the last person you should take to go and look at old shit, but I have done my best and here are some of my efforts. Glad I went out, I really liked Barcelona and it was as nice as everyone had said.
Remember, if its old and looks semi important, take a photo of it. Off I went. After a few subway rides I found an old street:
I found that a good way to find stuff is to follow old Americans, they seem to be heading to famous spots, they have limited range, so you know you won’t get lost and best of all: They speak faaarking loud, so they point out what everything is. Next I found an important looking building with flags on it:
Old street, tick, important old building, tick. What was next on the list? An old fountain, preferably in a square. BOOM:
This milestone coincided with me getting a hunger on, so I checked the list and realised that I needed to have a Paella before I left Spain of course, oddly hadn’t seen one all week. As such, I hunted out the most overpriced and touristy joint that I could find (english menu a giveaway). Food was surprisingly good… Ok, here we go, break my own food photography rules again:
Last thing on the list (aside from stuffing my face with Lemon Gelato), a church. Had to be big and old, so I started to track some evangelistic yanks through the small back streets… Along the way, I ran into a Dirty Nomad Fan club wanting to get into the new Barcelona HQ:
Finally, I arrived at the final ‘seeing old shit’ milestone. A big Church with lots of people standing around looking at it:
Someone who did classics at school in between machining spliffs can probably tell me what this church is, I have no idea, but it was impressive… For an old building. Not as cool as this though, a fort (sort of) built by the Bad Ass Mofo ROMANS a long time ago. Forts are COOL:
Ok… so, now you can see why I need to ride everyday… I’m not good at blogging about other stuff. Again, my sincere apologies that no bikes were used in the making of this post, I shall try and make sure it never happens again. Tomorrow, back to Asia… Hmmmmm…. I have a full summary run down on Spain and videos to come in the pipeline though, I won’t be easily letting go of the Spanish dream.
I am just wondering how I will fill my coffee breaks when you have to go out and get a “real” job and the posts become less frequent? I will have no one to vicariously live my inner pro through.