Plaza Andorra la Vella

I don't sleep very well my night in Barcelona. Confrontation does that to me. It leaves scars, slow to heal. So do high prices and biting bullets. Then to make matters worse later that night I take a walk around the neighborhood, and in one single block I find: a pension, a 'youth’ hostel, and a hostal over a bar, all after I’d told myself it’s too late to be out searching. Of course there’s no guarantee that ...

we've had some problems getting to this stage, and so haven't been able to keep the blog up to date. So far everything is now working out fine, and we have arrived on site to be able to set up in the light, and the campsite has electricity, so we are ok to get written up today. Hopefully ...

... the watershed and we drop into the Spanish frontier town of Bourg Madame. We continue east across a wide plane undulating over the Col De Llous (1345m) and the Col De la Perche (1570m). From here a unbelievably long descent takes us nearly al the way to our
hotel. Prades has a reassuringly Mediterranean feel about it, with lots of courtyard cafe's and
clay tiled roofs.

WHAT I EXPERIENCED:

... want me to take up a table intended for four people, but it didn't look like many people were flocking to the restaurant. Nothing else around seemed appealing, otherwise I would've walked off, but was tired of dealing with incompetent/rude waitstaff, and just waited to eat and be done with it.

The place didn't look all that great, but the pizza smelled heavenly, reminding me of a night in the Canary Islands (see blog entry entitled "Beautiful ...

... this holy place. There is a profound respect here. Hundreds of volunteers make it all work. I must say, though I was appalled at the commercialism, I was touched by the spirit of this place. My prayers were said and I avoided the push to buy plastic 'Mary' water bottles and 100E candles but I was tempted by the Lourdes corkscrew. Why do we do such things as humans? It is a place where I suspect Jesus would turn over the tables and storm out in a rage ...

... Festa Brava hotel. I seriously considered going snowboarding, but it was just too late in the season and the snow, though plentiful, was just too wet for my tastes. So I wandered about town, dodging the hourly rainfall and taking in the sights. Not too much to be seen here, but nice to look around a place I had no idea even existed!

... on the bus but was subjected to an eclectic range of music from the over-loud radio. Shakira, A-ha, Katy Perry all featured...it was like someone had tried composing a soundtrack to the holocaust. It was a slight improvement on the Albanian buses, where they insisted on playing very loud, very cheesy, Albanian pop at full volume all night with accompanying videos which were somewhere between children's entertainment and amateur porn (two very different genres in any other country).

... know - so we get some nice comfy beds to sleep in. In the morning the children are up early making a fair bit of noise but most of us manage to keep ourselves in bed due to tiredness. When we all wake we find that Sian has been keeping the children occupied for the last hour or so - how nice of her. There is one obvious thing we want to do today, and that is go and play in the snow! Being from England we get minimal snow year round and when it comes ...

... steeper and I decide to go further down the track, as we haven't come to any river, and I tell Yvonne we'll meet back at the car. So I charge down the hill, as I don't want to keep Yvonne waiting too long, but still can't find the river, then turn back and climb fast up the slope. I keep going and going (thinking this is taking longer than I thought), then catch up to Yvonne (who is saying this slope is going to kill me). We eventually decide we have gone far past the point at ...

... que puede hacer. Debe llevarnos a nuestros hotels." (That´s the least he can do. He should give us rides to our hotels in ohis car.) Then, we´re told we have to wait another week to see if we get jobs, and we hitchhike home in the dark. Above all, we wait for it to snow. Many of the ski villages haven´t gotten much snow yet, and the companies won´t start employing people until the slopes get more snow. My Chilean hotel-roommate told me many of the South Americans ...