Posted 9:46 AM by Paul
Back in the UK

Sitges was great fun. Apparently it was one of the first package destinations from Britain in the the early 60s, but wisely the locals thought better of it and decided on no further high rise development and cheap flights from Manchester. So, the town - maybe it's a small city - thrives on tourism from families like us travelling independently, clubbers, surfers and older homosexuals. The gay crowd look a little bit long in the tooth and a bit more sedate. Having said that, a few buffed specimens were braving the brisk Easter winds in posing thongs on the promenade. I am not anti-McDonalds (see earlier blog) but it was good that the Golden Arches had not arrived or maybe had been barred from town by the great and good of Sitges.

The Spanish (I think they are a Barcelona outfit) have launched their own take on fast food in the shape of Pans y Company, an outlet specialising in fresh crusty baguettes filled with succulent fillings. Well recommedned if you are looking for someting fresh and quick. Our other fast food outlet of choice was La Oca on the Carrer Parellades - the main drag in the old town where the locals take a constitutional around 6 p.m. The street is jammed with baby buggies. La Oca served up a rotisserie chicken and salad to take away in just enough time for me to down a swift glass of beer at the counter. All at around £6 ( $9). How do they do it? I don't know. Spain is certainly not cheap to rent property, local taxes are often high and their minimum wage is only slightly lower than Britain's. Maybe it is turnopver. Every restaurant in town was packed for most of the week with a mixture of local families and tourists. The bar of the week was L'Estrella an old but spacious place with a tapas list as long as your arm on the Carrer Major in the old town as you walk up to the town hall and the main church high on the city walls overlooking the Playa San Sebastian. The place across the street the Cafe Roy which cleary had a bohemian tradition going back some years was holding a talk on St.George in the work of Cervantes to mark St.Georges Day. Sant Jordi as they call him is the patron saint of Catalonia as well as England.

On Easter Monday we went to Barcelona with the kids. It's about 40 minutes on a delightful train journey that gives you superb views of the Meditteranean. I could handle that as a commute into work. Heather mapped out a day of activities which did not include Las Ramblas but did include a walk through the beautiful Ciutatela Park which houses amongst other institutions the National History Museum. We hired a rowing boat on the lake and Heather took the oars whilst I relaxed in the bows - Heather used to row on the Thames for her school - I am useless. Disaster nearly struck early on when I noticed water flooding in through a crack in the plastic hull. A heated conversation ensued with the guys hiring out the boat as we were about to cast off.

"Oi! Water is coming in the bottom of the boat!"

" Don't worry senor! It's just that you have a lot of weight in the boat!"

What did he expect? Heather to shed a few kilos through the exertion of rowing round the island and the boat to rise? I insisted we get out and change boats despite the exasperated tuts of the boatmen who were - judging by their short stature dark skins and accents - either South American or Andalucian. A lot of the menial jobs in the Barcelona are still done by immigrants from the South of Spain who maintain their own tightly knit community. When I worked a lot in Barcelona in the late 80s it even had its own flamenco radio station and returned an MP from the Andalucian Regioanalist Party to the parliament in Madrid. A bit like Birmingham having a Scots nationalist MP or Edinburgh returning a Cornish nationalist.

We finished the day at the zoo which was a delight and - Spain being Spain they let you get dangerously close to the animals. God bless them. We made for the train back to Sitges and stopped off at at McDonalds which pleased the kids enormously. I think they find the crusty Spanish bread a bit of a challenge. I had a coffee. But this particualrly bit of multi-nationalism did bring peace and harmony at the end of a long and tiring day.