Posted 3:19 AM by Paul
April Showers

We had a great holiday in Spain. A few days in Valencia followed by a great time in Sitges. The highlight of the Valencia trips was the City of Arts and Sciences. This is a new arts complex of facilities designed by Calatrava. It is how you imagined the future might look when you were nine years old. Gleaming impossible structures shaped like the insides of a mythical beasts surrounded by azure blue water. On the tourists bus in a women behind us said

“Ooo look, that’s incredible. It puts the Millennium Dome to shame, makes it look second rate.”

I worked at the Dome and defended it to the last but the woman was right. For some reason we don’t seem to quite get this kind of thing right. The complex has a museum of life sciences, an Imax cinema shaped like an upturned brazil nut and massive oceanarium where you can see baby beluga whales and sharks, But the feature which impressed me most was a giant 200 metre long gazebo made from gleaming steel called the The Umbricle. This was free and for years to come Valencians will be able to promenade in the hade of giant palms under a roof of creepers and flowering jungle plants. Even if you don’t have the price of admission to the rest of the complex you will be able to join in the experience.

We ate well on cheap and brilliant paella in at the Tres Cepas an old fashioned restaurant down by the beach next to the docks. It was served by a waiter with a rasping voice probably the results of thousands of Ducados. It was half the price and twice as good as paella we ate in town two nights earlier which had been served from a pan and then warmed up in a micro wave. There should be a law against it.

The only train we could get up to Barcelona left at 8.30 on Easter morning. This was the expensive Euromed train which you have to book in advance. Expensive in as much as it is was a third of the price of a similar train in the UK. It flew down the Mediterranean coast at around 150 kph in brilliant sunshine and past the beach where we took the kids on their first camping trip to Spain. Looking out of the window at the site of the kids’ first trip to Spain I was swept by nostalgia. Time like the train was speeding ahead. They are both growing up as fast as I am inevitably growing old.

We changed in Barcelona and took a crowded double decker train to Sitges. What agreat town. These are a few things you can get in Sitges:

A 10.00 p.m. symposium in a bar about the Fall of the Knights Templar in 13th Century Catalonia

Kanga Boys dancing.

Dolce and Gabana flip flops, a snip at £40 if you are looking for that Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay look.

Great tapas everywhere you go but especially at Bar Novo Estella on the Carrer Major

The best chicken I have ever eaten La Oca, Carrer Parellades
We stayed at a place called Pension Maricel 50 yards from the beach. I found the place on the Internet. I used to scoff at people like my friend Mark Curtis who back in the mid 90s evangelised about the way the Internet would change our everyday lives. Now I virtually live there. Mark, if you are reading this I admit it. I WAS WRONG.

The Marciel is run by Toni. I gay Italian fashion criminal (bald with long hair at the sides, sandals and white socks) in his mid 40s. Friendly and charming Toni sat in the small lobby which doubled as his front room smoking and watching Gladiator in Italian. His Catalan house keeper toiled incessantly keeping the place spotless. We stayed in a two room apartment high on the roof with two sun terraces and a primitive outdoor shower. Slightly run down and with suspect plumbing - it was ideal. 100 Euros a night for 2 adults and 2 kids. You would be hard pressed to get a double room in Blackpool for that.

The funniest thing about theist lovely place was the in house PA system. Each room was fitted with a ceiling imprinted speaker through which Toni piped a mixture of Euro disco and romantic power ballads. You could turn it down or off but after a while we started to enjoy it as an essential part of the Maricel experience. We turned it up particularly when Toni played Kylie or Gwen Stefani. If it wasn’t for the having sex with people of the same sex thing, I think both Heather and I would go gay.

The kids loved the experience and we were in the sea every day. When the temperature hits the high 60s Fahrenheit the Spanish pout on their fur coats and we put on our swimsuits. The most touching part of the holiday was when Alice and Emily asked me about my childhood and I recounted the near death of my older bother Dave from a viral condition in his brain which was followed closely by my fathers death aged 57 of lung disease. IT took me back to what a bleak period we had all lived through but how (dad excepted) had come out the other side. They were understanding and kind and Alice reminded me that as a family we had done all of the kinds of things I would have loved to do with my own father. I told her I used to dream of going to Belgium with him. I had had a few glasses of wine and I started to well up. But seeing the children running down the lane back to the Maricel laughing I felt deliriously happy to be alive.

Toni was there to greet us fag in hand, Gladiator in Italian on the DVD.

We flew back in the evening from Barcelona which allowed us ot spend the last day on the San Sebastian beach in Sitges. Alice sat on a group of rocks looking out to sea. Emily explored a little shingle beach under a restaurant with huge picture windows call El Vivero.

It was a great trip. We got back to London around 8.00 p.m. It was raining