Home to Attleborough

Long day yesterday, all focused on travel. We could have quite happily have got on a plane back to New Zealand, but we still have a month to go in England before we go home. That’s okay, we have all these friendly relatives here who look after us, so we can’t complain!

The plane didn’t go till 16.20 so we had quite a lot of time to fill in. The trouble with travel days is that you tend to do little else except wait around: so we had a coffee and coke in a café around the corner from our apartment, moved up the road and read for a while under a willow, moved further up the road and caught the tram, transferred to the Metro which conveniently took us all the way to the airport, sat around in the airport reading, had more coffee (our own from the famous flask this time), read more, eventually stood in the queue to get on the plane (I stood in the queue – Celia sat and read), sat and read some more, had more coffee, stood in the melee to get on the plane, got on the plane, read on the plane, snoozed on the plane, got off the plane, got on the bus and finally got home. Exciting.

The biggest bonus of the day was that we already had our ticket booked for the National Express and there was no problem getting back with them, and they got us here a quarter of an hour earlier.

The other unusual thing was getting to Stansted and finding that all the passengers, having disembarked from the plane, then got on the airport tram and were shot off to the arrival lounge, which must have been a kilometre or more away. Stansted is huge.

An arty morning

For the first time since we’ve been in Europe, Celia went in one direction this morning and I went in another. We arranged to be home by three o’clock. I had the cellphone, and Celia had the number (and the street address). It felt quite strange, as we’ve hardly been apart for more than half an hour since we arrived in Hamburg at the beginning of the month.
Anyway, Celia went off to the mall/supermarket (I hardly need to remind you that these are her museums), and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts, which is in easy walking distance. And it was free.
What a dream of a place! In the large foyer, there are paintings that would barely fit on the walls of our apartment. As you go in beyond this there are rooms and rooms of wondrous religious art, some of it huge. Upstairs is a mixture of later art works, with more portraits, and then upstairs again are more modern works, though nothing seems to date much beyond the beginning of the twentieth century.
It was exhausting just trying to take it all in, what with Goya and El Greco and various other great Spanish painters on display. And then there were two courtyards: one is a wonderful fresh garden, with palm trees, and green, green plants. The other is bare apart from a statue of Martin de Tours and the beggar. However, around the windows on the first floor is a wondrous blue colour.
It’s interesting how limited the range of subject matter is in religious art. While the Spanish paint St Francis a good deal more than other countries, there are dozens of versions of the Crucifixion and the events surrounding it. Curiously there aren’t many Nativity scenes in this museum. But there is one vital and energetic picture of the Holy Family (plus John the Baptist). Unusually the two boys are grown men in this picture and along with Joseph they’re hammering away at something not very obvious in the centre in a very muscular fashion. Mary is stuck on one side.
St Sebastian comes in for several portraits. [That's him in the picture.] Here in Spain he’s always shown in his dying agony with just one arrow in him. (Usually in other countries there’s a welter of arrows). It’s a puzzle why he’s such a choice subject for artists. I’ve just had a look at the interesting Wikipedia article on him, and seemingly even though he was shot full of arrows he survived, was nursed back to health, and went on to bring more people to Christ. So it’s interesting that the Spanish versions have him with only one arrow, and obviously dead. The other curious thing is that he’s always virtually naked in whatever country he’s painted, and his body is always romanticised as being a fine specimen of young manhood. (The Spanish tend to make him a youth, in fact, which he wasn’t when he was shot.)
In the museum there are few examples of mythical art, though the Rape of the Sabines makes its usual appearance. It’s curious that this is another motif that’s so common in art of this time. Is it because we lean towards certain themes, or is it because of something altogether different? It’d be interesting to know.
After this I made my way into town (which is when I discovered that the Metro is both underground and tram) and finally found a place to post the postcards we’ve been carrying around for days. At the Post Office, of course. Post boxes are a rare thing in Valencia, as far as we can make out.
Celia finally arrived home half an hour after our arranged time, absolutely exhausted, of course, but still fairly cheerful. Her foot had stood up to the pace, apparently.

Quiet Sunday in Valencia

In spite of Celia’s sore foot, we went to High Mass at the Cathedral this morning. Mass seems to happen every hour on the hour there, as well as next door (literally) at the Basilica! Not that the Cathedral was packed, but there were half a dozen priests saying Mass together. It’s the second time we’ve gone to Mass since we’ve been away: in Florence we went to one in an ancient church in the old city. Again it wasn’t far from where we lived. On both occasions I can truly say I had no idea what the priest was preaching about!
Came back from there and decided to get out of the apartment anyway, even though Mrs’ foot was sore. Walked up over what used to be the river. I don’t know quite what happened, but there are notices locally about the Great Flood of 1907 (if I’ve got my facts right) when the historic city (where we’re staying) was flooded badly. The river bed is very wide, so for it to have flooded must have been a considerable achievement.
Equally, for it to be totally dry, as it now is, is another considerable achievement. Again, I don’t know why this is, but presumably any water that used to go through there is now diverted somewhere else. This afternoon the area closest to us was being used as a parade ground for umpteen soccer teams (all dressed in the most colourful uniforms) and when we returned several teams were still playing games. The whole river bed near here at least is one large community recreation area.
We finally discovered, after four days in Valencia, that the Metro here is not an underground train, but the tram system. The trams are very new and tidy, and we caught one down to the beach where we sat and did very little for quite a long time. It was a lovely afternoon, and people were out in full force. That actually meant little, because the beach is so vast, and the promenade area is wide and long, that you didn’t feel crowded in the least.
We watched half a dozen people playing volleyball for a long time, and then later saw a man and a woman flying kites in tandem. They both had the same model kite, one that has two strings attached to it. The strings are connected to a handle that the flyer uses, and because of the shape, the kite can be manipulated very readily. The man was ‘leading’ with his kite, and where he led, the woman would aim to follow with her kite. I think he was coaching her in some way, but my Spanish is a little limited. Anyway, it was a lovely sight to see these two kites echoing each other around the air space.
And so home to the apartment, where we snoozed for an hour or two (it’s daylight saving changeover here today) and then Celia whipped up a perfectly decent meal from the next to nothing we had in the fridge.

The picture is of the Cathedral; just to its left is the Basilica (not shown). Celia missed the step just near the door.

Getting Lost in Barcelona

Our intention today was to go and see the Picasso Museum. Unfortunately a couple of days ago we lost the index booklet that went with our map, and so it proved to be a bit of an issue trying to find the street. Finally I saw on the map that Montcada was served by a Metro station and a bus. But when we got to the Metro station itself there was no sign of Montcada. So we deduced that the bus 96 must take us to it. Twenty minutes later we arrived at a outskirts suburb called Montcada. Celia didn´t want to get off there as it looked as though we might be in the middle of nowhere. And there was no sign of any museum - she said it was unlikely that it would be way out there anyway.
So in the end we gave up on Picasso.
We came back into La Rambla via the Metro planning on walking quietly along the seafront. However, I needed a loo (what´s new?) and there was a boat sitting there waiting to go for a tour round the harbour and beach.....
So on we got, into the loo I went, and we spent an hour and a half on the sea. It was very pleasant actually, although the water was quite rough outside the harbour basin (one woman was sick on the way back). Anyway, we saw Barcelona from the water....
When we got back to shore, we decided to have a cuppa from our faithful flask (the one we bought in Hamburg after our English one broke only a couple of weeks after we bought it. And because we weren´t sure where the train station is in Barcelona, we decided to have a recce and find it, so as to save ourselves hassle tomorrow, when we leave for Valencia.
It was just as well we did. The station at Arc de Triomphe (sorry, can´t remember how the Spaniards spell it) someone had told us served the trains doesn´t. There´s only a very large bus station there. We got back on the Metro and headed for the station called Espana, where the real train station is.
After getting on a suburban train instead of the Metro, and going three or so long stops before we realised something was drastically wrong (none of the stations were named on our Metro map), we got off and went back to where we started - almost. We were able to save one train stop by getting out a stop early. Eventually we found the Metro to Espana only to arrive there and be told that the train is kaput (as one non-English-speaking official told us). It turns out that the line is ´broken´ as another official charmingly put it, and we could either get a bus from Espana to Sants Estacio or get the Metro to it.
I´d read something to this effect in the Metro newspaper, one of the freebie papers that turn up on the underground, but hadn´t quite been able to figure out from the Spanish when the train was going to be kaput. I´m still not sure how long, but hopefully, when we go to Sants Estacio tomorrow, we´ll be able to get the mainline train to Valencia without difficulty. If not, we´re in trouble!

In Barcelona

We weren’t sure how far it was from the ferry to the place where we had to get the key for our ‘loft’ in Barcelona, but a policeman at the port area said La Rambla, the street we were looking for initially, was only ‘past the monument.’ Okay, we thought, we’ll walk to the monument. And then we walked up La Rambla (Barcelona’s most famous street) and then, when we were going to catch a bus to Caller de Portaferrisa, which runs off La Rambla, a woman told us it wasn’t worth getting the bus; only five minutes’ walk. So we walked some more - with our rucksacks on our backs and our heavy smaller backpacks in front. And finally we found Portaferrisa, and then had trouble finding the little lane called Caller de Roca, for which we’d been given precise instructions. It was so little that we missed it altogether. Finally found the office for the people who run the ‘Loft’ system, and then we had to walk for at least another five minutes (rucksacks, backpacks, sore feet) with one of the staff to the apartment we would be sharing with whoever else was staying there. (The Loft is a group that rents out unused loft space - or areas high up in buildings - maintains them and offers them at very cheap rentals.)
Finally got there (rucksacks, backpacks, sore feet and sore backs) and found that we had to climb five flights of stairs! The lift doesn’t work anymore.
At least here we have a kitchen to cook our own meals, and though we’re sharing bathrooms, there are two of them. We had our first ‘home-cooked’ meal since we left Switzerland, and used some Mexican sauce which turned out to be very hot (though not as hot as the next level up apparently).
Anyway, Barcelona seems a pleasant place: the traffic isn’t nearly as frantic as in the Italian cities, and people actually stop at pedestrian crossings. In Italy it’s a challenge as to whether they will. (The motor scooters are the worst culprits for trying to run you down.) Even the Metro doesn’t seem as crowded - though we got literally shoved onto the train tonight by an enthusiastic feller, who laughed at our surprise - along with his friend. You couldn’t get mad at him.
La Rambla is a long pedestrian street with single-lane traffic up either side. There are buskers all over, especially those ones who act as statues, and it’s full of life even late in the evening. Unfortunately, the McDonald’s doesn’t sell milkshakes, which is the only disturbing thing we’ve discovered about Barcelona so far.
The place we’re staying in is only a few minutes from La Rambla, and there are little shops everywhere, plus clothes hanging from the balconies, tv aerials covering the roofs, dogs barking, people relaxed and pleasant (apart from a bit of fisticuffs we saw about to happen this morning), and at least two internet shops within spitting distance. On the ferry we’d had to pay 7.50 for half an hour for the privilege of using their internet; in the street near here it’s one euro an hour.
And this morning, as I was going to pay the bill for the room we’ve got, I got caught up in the making of a movie. A man ran out of a building and handed a bag to a guy on a motor scooter. This fellow had horns on his helmet (!) As he drove off, another scooter with a driver and a cameraman raced behind him. There were the usual twenty or thirty crew scattered about, and one person who looked like an actor but didn’t actually do anything. I might have been in the shot of the scooter taking off, but they looked as though they were going to shoot it again, so I might not get into a Spanish movie after all.

Sleeping in Rome

Neither of us slept well last night, so we finished up having breakfast in the hotel this morning (part of the package, for once) and going back to bed for a snooze. It had been increasingly humid during the day, and stuffy during the night. Celia even got up at one point and leaned out the window to get some cool air. We may just have to get used to it: Barcelona, our next stop, probably won’t be any cooler. Seems there’s been very little rain in Italy generally over the last while, although it rained during the night a little. The riverbeds throughout Italy - the ones we’ve seen - are very dry.
After we’d booked this hotel, which, for a change, was supposed to be an improvement over some of the places we’ve stayed, we realised that it was quite some distance from the centre of things. So the night before last we’d sat down with a Roma timetable and map and worked out how we would get here. Mumma mia! what a trip!
We would get on the Metro at the Roma Termini (where our train would come into), travel some eight or nine stops to Cornelia, hop on the bus to Villa Cartegna, get off, get on an 881 bus and come to the hotel. The actuality was somewhat different: we got the Metro part right, sweating all the way, got onto the bus (the 791) to Villa Cartegna, with the help of some non-English speaking people (!), got off at the right stop, and then proceeded to go in the wrong direction on the 881. Saw the street number of the hotel as we passed by, got off, had a conversation with a woman who only spoke Italian as to where we should be going - lontano (a long way) - had another conversation with a rather blunt woman in a street front office who told me it was Pisana, not Pasana, as I was saying it, but who at least told me that if we went the way we were going we would land back up in San Pietro (a Metro station we’d already been through). Went back to the bus stop, smiled at the old lady who’d told us lontano, and discovered that it really was a long way to Via Pisana. But another older woman on the bus knew the hotel, and helped us arrive at it - in due course.
When the Italians are smiling and friendly, they’re lovely. When they don’t want to know, they seem very cold. Fortunately there are plenty of friendly ones!
Getting a meal last night proved to be a bit of a mission too, as there are no restaurants around our area - in fact, it’s a bit of a semi-industrial area mixed with residential. (Which isn’t uncommon in Europe.) We got on the 881 one again, went back to Villa Carpegna, because it had seemed that there was more life up there, and found that while there were some restaurants, they weren’t the most economic. In the end settled for a ‘first course’ of pasta each, which was plenty. The restaurant was very busy, the food was fine, we had a quattro litre of red wine between us (which is also plenty) and came home on the famous 881 (in the right direction) and tried to sleep.

The traveller’s worst nightmare

13th Oct, 2007

Well, maybe a worse nightmare would be to fall down the Spanish Steps and break your neck. Okay, this wasn’t as bad as that, but it certainly pained us considerably. We’d managed to find our way around the Metro here, and were starting to get confident. (Plus we managed a long ride on the 33 tram, which was a bit scary, but not impossible. Plus we didn’t pay, because we didn’t realise we were supposed to have a ticket before we got on.)
Anyway, about seven we got on at the Central Railway Station underground stop where there was a real crush, with people pushing and shoving to get in the door. That meant that everyone was bang up against everyone else as well, and we all travelled that way for the two stops that Celia and I were going. We got off the train at Loreto, and I suddenly realised there was a lightness in my left trouser pocket - the place I keep my wallet. Someone had nicked it, presumably during all the hustle. Consternation.
All sorts of thoughts of not being able to travel because we had no money came to mind, though in fact Celia had quite a bit of cash in her wallet (which she didn’t fail to remind me was around her waist and secure), and she still had her debit card and credit card. But I lost both my debit card and three credit cards, two of them from New Zealand, plus maybe a couple hundred euros, and my driver‘s licence.
We told the guard at the Metro exit, and he said we needed to go back to Polizei at another one of the stations (I’ve now forgotten which, but I think it was Duomo). So we did, feeling increasingly stressed, got there and found the police, who very helpfully pushed us onto the main police station near Turati Metro Station. And even though they gave us instructions how to find the Police station, it took us something like half an hour of wandering to track it down. People twice sent us in the wrong direction, which didn’t much help!Eventually we got there and while they weren’t offhand about it, they weren’t greatly concerned either. Which isn’t surprising, probably, as both they and we knew that’s unlikely we’ll see the wallet and its contents again.
Celia was feeling very low about it all, and even more, was concerned about our contacting the banks to stop the cards. And of course, I’d left my cellphone back at the hotel, so we couldn’t do anything about that until we got there. Finally we dragged ourselves home, very dispirited, and I eventually managed to get hold of someone in the UK about the HSBC cards. Fortunately that didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might, but I won’t have any cards of my own for the rest of the trip. Celia’s cards remain valid, which is a major relief, and certainly left us feeling better. Eventually.

Where it started

I'm debating putting an abridged version of my journal online here; testing out how I feel about doing that yet, though, and whether it's worth the effort. Oh, the effort!

Somehow in my efforts to get the last entry on, I've managed to put it on twice. I thought I could edit the additional version out, but can't seem to. Ce la vie - more clogging on the blog.

Celia’s present, for my birthday, was an all-weather hat, which turned out to be slightly too small – we can get a bigger one, but that was a disappointment for her, as well as me. Stef and Doug gave me a black jersey with white stripes across the chest that I’ve been wearing all day, and Abby and Steve turned up with a little bonsai – a tiny one – as well as bringing Steve’s Mum, Dawn, for tea. So it was crowded Crowl house again. Ben had the bright idea of going to see the film Memento – Dominic had been last night – and so he and I went. Celia wasn’t keen on it – we’d discussed the possibility a couple of weeks ago – and anyway was too tired to do anything else, like sitting through a movie that tests the brain somewhat!

Memento will be well known by now as the movie in which the story is told backwards, scene by scene, the beginning of each scene proving to be the end of the next one we see. And in the middle of it we have the Guy Pierce character, Leonard, talking on the phone in a rather disjointed fashion, telling us about the past, which is all he remembers, because he has some rare disorder, as the result of an ‘incident’, which causes him continually to lose all his short term memory, like the latest ‘scene’ he’s just been involved in. The result is a jigsaw for the audience as we have to figure out whether Leonard is telling the truth, or the detective, Teddy, who keeps popping up (and whose photo has on the back that he always tells lies), or whether the girl who appears about a third of the way through is as honest as she first ap-pears – it’s all mind-boggling, and though I don’t imagine it’s anything like the mental problem that the character is supposed to have, dramatically it makes for a most interesting movie.

It’s set in a sleazy area of California (I think!) and drugs and murders are fairly com-monplace. To talk about the plot would only annoy anyone who might read this (and who hasn't seen it) because it’s almost impossible to talk about it without giving something away. Suffice to say, you’ll come out of the theatre with your head buzzing, and discussing with whoever your with what they think happened and what you think happened. Ben caught the trick of the ending fairly well, which I didn’t, but Dominic seemed, when I got home and talked to him about it, to have a slightly different view of things. I’d enjoy watching it again on video some time, and seeing what more I pick up than I did at the first viewing.

We went and saw it at the Metro, that tiny cinema next to, and overwhelmed by, the Town Hall. It’s almost a nothing place, with only about fifty seats, and the screen in a sense is rather like a large home tv – naw, it’s actually larger than that! While we were waiting for it to start, Ben and I went over to the Pool House and had a quick couple of games of pool. He won one, and amazingly, I won one. Perhaps I play better under such speed conditions (less than ten minutes all up) than when I have time to consider what I’m doing. I certainly played better than that night the men from church went and played – then all I could seem to do was pot the occasional ball, or judder the cue in such a way that the ball dribbled off a few inches with an insolent sort of sneer.