Mon 11 Sep 2006
Living in Barcelona has its advantages but like most relatively large cities, you end up running from place to place and there just isn’t much opportunity to relax. Yes there’s a beach beside the city, but unless you’re a guiri or have never been to a beach in your life, it sucks. Apart from the contaminated water, the strange stains that the sands seems to leave and the occasional infestation of jellyfish, it’s always overflowing with sun-worshippers so finding a peaceful spot normally takes half a day.
That’s why we took advantage of the long weekend to get out of town and travel up the Costa Brava a little. Roses or Rosas used to be a charming seaside village until the seventies, which saw an influx of tourists, hotels and apartment blocks. That said, the change of pace was worth the trip and I took a few snaps that I’ll post in the coming days.
September 27th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
[…] I’ve just about gotten the sand out of my ears after the trip to Roses and it’s time to pack the bags again for what’s sure to be an interesting trip to Pamplona. Pretty much everyone’s heard of the place or at the very least, the main fiesta of the Pamplona calander - San Fermin. Anyone still in the dark should know that I’m talking about the bull run that goes on every morning for eight days of July each year. As the popularity has grown among Italian, American and other tourists, so has the dread of the locals, to see what used to be a relatively enjoyable week turn in to a beer guzzling, pintxo munching, bull teasing infestation. In recent years, a usual sight would be drunken idiots sleeping in the locals’ gardens or on the very high murals where they could (and have) fall to their peril. To cheer themselves up, the owners of the houses like to get up at dawn and spray as many of these lost souls with cold water as they can to see if they’ll wake up and do something typically stupid! […]