Barcelona - Day Two | 23rd April 2013

It’s morning and with full steed, I take to narrow streets of Barcelona to get a sense of what city life is like, but as the Spanish have their siestas between 9 – 5, there’s no one around. There’s is nothing going on, it resembles the livestock of stables near a Findus factory. Horse jokes are still relevant, right?

With lack of entertainment being supplied by the general populace and uninterested by the intriguing architecture, I look to the pavement. There’s something particularly European about it, the arrangement of concrete and ominous stains and its colourful array of varied browns. I’m not disgusted by this, as I know, if I’m ever drugged and dumped in a random location, I could treat the pavement as a barcode and know instantly where I am in the world, within a square mile.

I grow weary of scanning the pavement and look up. I now seem to be on a hill overlooking the city; mountains in the distance guard the medley of sun-baked colourful lowrises with a few buildings poking out to the break the uniforms cityscape as is flows into a very blue Mediterranean sea. It’s all typically picturesque, so much so, I took a photo and descend from the hill to stop off in a café for a quick coffee.

Taking my espresso, I look round to observe the café’s patrons and where to sit. On each table, there was a lonely middle aged women looking forlornly at the table, at least they were until I walked in, like the stallion I am, that’s when their eyes lit up and followed me around the room like the rays that follow your hand from a static electricity plasma lamp.

There was one in particular, an overweight haggard version of Vivienne Westwood. Perusing my attention by subtly adjusting her hair as if she was in a shampoo commercial and pouting her lips as if the bottom half of her face was caught in vacuum cleaner’s hose.

Being the coward of confrontation and awkward moments, I down the espresso right there and then, scalding my throat in the process, place the coffee back on the counter to the owner’s amazement and to put it politely, get the fuck out of there.

After I see a lady being pickpocketed by a man trying to steal her entire belt, which was met with lots of running, shouting, threatening and people not caring too much as they’re glad it wasn’t them, my day became much less exciting.

I was on the verge of returning to the café and hook up with Vivienne Westwood and run away to the hills of Grenada and make sweet, sweet love. I, however, decide against that idea and instead, hunt for graffiti in the Raval.