Judith's blog

Geoff writes: Judith is obviously getting into shopping, she went for the second time this week, this time with her mother to Barcelona. We clearly need a new category, shopping, for the blog.

I went flying. I was a little late, and didn’t arrive till 2.30. Joan and Luis had been there a while, and had had some good flights, but it was starting to go east. Luis went down, but I launched, flew for a while, and top landed. Roger launched just after I landed and went down, so I went to pick him up. By the time we got back up, it was light and very east, and no sun. So Joan and Luis decided the day was over and went home.

Roger and I sat it out. After about 45 minutes or so, the sun came out, the wind picked up and came more on the hill, so I launched, and went straight up. The sun was quite weak, and not out for long, but it was flyable then until late, with surprisingly strong thermals (though it is February, they should be good here), coupled with ridge lift. It was easy to get 700’+ ATO (with a lot more height to be had if I’d wanted to drift back), and quite difficult to lose height to land. Marc turned up having seen us fly, and had a short, but nice, flight. Just before the hill got in shadow, we all top landed, had our usual beers, and I went to pick up Judith and Liz from Girona, since they’d been so busy shopping they had missed the last bus home from Barcelona.

A really nice day’s flying. Glad I didn’t go shopping….

Judith writes: Well, if that’s what shopping is, I need some more lessons!

My mum and I met up in Barcelona for a day out and decided to go on a bit of a walk down memory lane. We spent two weeks there on an intensive language course in 2000, so instead of going shopping, we walked down the Ramblas for old time’s sake. In those days there were few stag parties and Ryanair refugees, so the place wasn’t packed to the rafters with tourists. Then you could amble down the Ramblas and see jugglers, break dancers, puppeteers, musicians and only the odd living statue. Then the living statues still had some novelty and because they had to compete with a variety of artists had to be pretty good. Today, Barcelona council won’t give busking licenses to anyone other than the statues because the crowds gathering around street performers were causing traffic problems and provided rich pickings for pick-pockets. Maybe a fine bureaucratic decision, but a living statue every 20 meters is pretty boring.

So, off to one of the other highlights of Barcelona: La Boqueria, the indoor market off the Ramblas. It’s a feast for the eye and the stomach. The colours, smells and atmosphere are amazing and I love going each time. Food-wise there is pretty much nothing you can’t get there.

Then off for lunch in an off-the-main-drag tapas bar. After lunch we still didn’t have the inclination to hit shops, so we went to the aquarium instead. I finally managed to identify and learn the names for all the fish we see when snorkeling near Roses. Of course I have forgotten nearly all of them already, but we see a lot of different types of wrasse here.

We were so engrossed in the fish, corals, and amorous iguanas that we forgot the time and had to hot-foot it back up to the Garrotxa Bus, which we missed by a couple of minutes.

All day in Barcelona and we didn’t actually go into a single shop!

See photos of today.

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