Day Three

This morning my leg feels much better, though still aching. Last night I worked out that I’ve walked 58 miles over the last few days so it’s perhaps not surprising – though it does underline how unfit I am 😦 I give it a test by walking down the stairs to breakfast, It’s not happy about that but I think that as long as I’m careful it will be fine. If not, I just have to get through today and I’m back home tomorrow.

Which makes me realise that this is the last full day of my holiday. It’s managed to rocket by and at the same time feels like I’ve been away for ages. Berlin feels like weeks ago. Definitely a stupid holiday to do, but (Barcelona notwithstanding) I’m really glad I did it.

Today’s plan is as follows: Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triomphe. I then have a Catacombs tour booked for the slightly strange time of 16:46. I can afford to take it slow this morning with no need to rush off – so, naturally, I still head out earlier than most people would countenance. The weather is still sunny but has cooled down a bit – the forecast says it will get up to 18 a bit later. I’ll try and avoid using the self-heating hat again!

I head up to Pigalle and onto the Metro. It’s just before 09:00 so all the trains are quite crowded. I let one go and then realise that despite their frequency, it’s going to be much the same for the next hour or so, so I get onto the next one and head for Concorde.

By the time I get to Place de la Concorde, I’m in blazing sunshine.

For some reason, I thought it would be easy to spot the Champs Elysee from here, but the Place de la Concord is huge and, disconcertingly, full of traffic which seems to head in every conceivable direction at once. I was going to head for the centre, but the thought of trying to get through the traffic just to have to work my way back across puts me off. Instead, I work my way around the outside because once I’ve worked it out, it turns out that I’m on the opposite side to where I want to be.

I then start walking up the Champs Elysee, where I can see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance.

At first, the walk is really pleasant. The pavements are wide enough to be able to stay away from the traffic and there are quiet gardens on either side that I meander through quite happily. I’m definitely walking a lot slower today – but I don’t push it as my leg is definitely feeling the strain and I don’t want to do anything silly.

Unfortunately, the closer I get to the Arc de Triomphe, the less pleasant the walk becomes. There are now buildings close on both sides and it’s crammed with name brands ranging from McDonalds to Adidas to Dior (at least the last one is vaguely French!) There are still a few uniquely Parisian buildings, but it feels more like the Kurfurstendamm than anything else. Bleh.

Anyway, the Champs Elysee soon gets completely eclipsed by the edifice at the end.

The Arc de Triomphe is huge and conveniently placed in the middle of a massive roundabout with about 4000 lanes of traffic whizzing past. I sensibly head into the pedestrian tunnel to see about getting access to the top. But the queue is as huge as the Arc de Triomphe, so I decide to skip this – probably just as well to skip all those extra stairs! I come out on the other side and head around to Avenue Kleber to head towards the Trocadero.

The journey to Les Jardins du Trocadero is uneventful. They are quite crowded as this is a great place to get photos of the Eiffel Tower.

So if you want the same photos as everyone else, come here!

There are lots of tourists here and also a large number of people selling crappy plastic Eiffel Towers. I walk past carefully not making contact and one yells “English or Dutch?” Dutch? DUTCH? That’s a new one. Temporarily confused, I reply and get “My family has lived in England for 10 years. Liverpool.” I brace myself for a sales pitch, but he turns to someone who looks more financially solvent. Clearly 9 days of not shaving has its’ advantages.

There are some great buildings here, but I am left with a decision on what to do now.

Quick, move on before the residents of Florida put pants on the statue!

It’s not lunch time yet, so I decide to spend some time doing something that every visitor to Paris does – I go and visit the Aquarium Paris. My reasons are twofold. (1) It’s likely to be cooler; and (2) They’re likely to have lots of seats. I’m half right.

It’s actually a pretty good aquarium, although it is infested with children (not unexpected really). Most are being herded around by increasingly frustrated teachers. Some are great – one teacher is getting really stressed every time her kids try to crowd me away from a display. So I let them go past as I consider the fact that they have a surprisingly large number of jellyfish – and I don’t recall seeing many in other aquariums.

And, by the way, some of artwork is downright creepy:

Of course, not all the school groups could be as well run and in front of the big viewing tank I find a teacher trying to take a picture of her colleague and the children. By the third attempt, it’s clear that the picture wasn’t showing their faces. Not surprising, really as the tank was beautifully backlighting them. (Oh, btw, did you know that French children also say “cheeese” when being photographed?)

(If you’re wondering where they are, they’re not here. This is the photo I smugly took afterwards for use in this blog.)

Anyway, she then decides to ignore the numerous signs and use a flash. It still takes her 5 goes to get a photo, by which time the kids are bored, two are having tantrums and her colleagues clearly wishes she’d taken up alligator wrestling. Eventually they wander off – the wrong way. I’ve seen a couple of school groups walking the wrong way around and wonder if they do this deliberately to avoid log jams.

I take a few shots (without flash) to astound you all with my amazing underwater photography (how does he get so close?) before heading back to the blinding sunshine outside.

I had planned to wander around for the next few hours, but my leg, while not complaining, is clearly getting ready to have a serious moan. I decide to grab some lunch and then head back to the hotel for a couple of hours before my descent into the catacombs.

I find a brasserie confusingly called Le Boissiere. As I’m ambling past, I see that they serve Croque Monsieur. I’ve never had one and having seen Marcus make one on Masterchef the Professionals last year, I’m up for the experience. I settle down with a nice glass of Chardonnay. When it arrives, it does not disappoint – it’s like a cheese on toast on steroids. The waitress then tricks me into having a Creme Brulee and I finish the meal with an espresso. (I now have to admit that I never realised that Creme Brulee was served cold!)

It’s a lovely brasserie and the meal is great – but it’s spoiled by one thing: the man fronting it. He is continually running around like a madman. Every time he dashes past with some plates, I’m waiting for him to trip and fall. He is clearly stressed out all the time and he actually spoils the dining experience. His colleagues are considerably more chilled out, but seem to get the same amount of work done.

When I head up to the till to pay, I speak to the waitress and tell her “le petit homme avec le chevaus gris … il droit ralentir”. Having trusted myself to Google translate, I wonder if I’ve just said something awful. But she bursts out laughing and says “I know – but he will not listen.” It’s a shame as the food is great – but this guy just kept me on edge. That doesn’t stop me giving her a decent tip though.

The rest has not done the legs any good and they have registered a formal complaint with the brain. I take a leisurely stroll to the Metro at Victor Hugo and return to the hotel where I stretch out for a couple of hours.

By then, my nerves at the thought of being late are starting to aggravate me, so I head back to the Metro and make the long journey to the south of the Seine, finishing at a strangely named station (Denfert-Rochereau). The Catacombs are clearly sign-posted and I can see a queue outside. That’s ok because I have a “jump the queue” ticket … and so, it turns out, does everyone else in what we now call a line rather than a queue. Because those are the only tickets that you can buy.

The inevitable security scan is just inside the building. This has happened everywhere else in Paris – which is why it comes as such a total shock to everyone else in the “line”. After the resultant delays and grumbling we get in and are given our audio guides. They tell us to hold them to our ear rather than use headphones. I can see what’s going to happen here as one woman walks around with it on full volume so that both she and her friend can hear it. And, naturally, they are never playing the right bit for where they are.

The Catacombs are a fascinating bit of history and a little intimidating.

The Catacombs contain the remains of thousands of people, so there is a natural reverence and respect. Or so you would think. The woman broadcasting her audio guide at full volume doesn’t help the ambience. Nor does the delightful group of three American women in front of me all of whom have their personal volume controls stuck at “fog-horn”. They have their first issue as they descend the spiral staircase as one of them “always has to see the horizon”. “That’s OK,” her friend declaims, “It’s impossible to trip going downstairs.” My snort of derision is clearly louder than I anticipated and they go quiet until we get to the bottom. There they play a thoroughly entertaining game of jumping out at each other, seeing who can make the loudest shriek followed by all three cackling like the hyenas from the Lion King.

One of them, after the fifteenth repetition of this comedic tour-de-force, then comes out with “it’s better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.” This is a phrase I particularly loathe as it tends to be used by the sort of arrogant bastard who knows they’re about to do the wrong thing and then does it anyway. I start to look for extremely deep pits to accidentally inter them in.

I can’t find a pit deep enough, and manage to get ahead but can still hear their voices echoing away behind me as the magnitude of the ossuary is completely lost on them. Partly this is because they were too mean to pay for the audio guide, so they cover for it by making a series of increasingly dumbarse statements. This includes an argument about skulls where one is adamant that hers is different. Yes dear, yours looks decidedly less evolved.

Luckily they get bored – turns out that there aren’t any rides down here – and with a final “I don’t want to look at every goddamn skull!” they head for the exit.

Unfortunately, not fast enough and I end up behind them on the stairs which all three are insisting on counting out loud. (By the way, in case you think they were teenagers, two are in their 50s!)

When we get outside, they have no idea which way to go, so I slip away to avoid being saddled with them any longer.

There’s only one thing left to do today: the Bouillon Pigale. Tonight, I have mackerel pate, basque sausage and rum baba. And Chardonnay, of course. As it’s my last day, I finish off with coffee and brandy.

This is the least impressive meal that I’ve had here, but still delicious. I leave a hefty tip, and head back to the hotel.

Day Four

I have a relatively crappy night sleep which includes about an hour and a half of being wide awake. It looks like my normal sleep patterns are resuming! This does mean that I finish Emile and get started on The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I set my alarm for 06:00. My train is at the rather strange time of 09:12, so I want to get to Gare du Nord by 08:00 – partially because friends have told me that the Eurostar can be a bit tricky to find. I sort myself out, pack and check my watch – still only 06:15. Wait – bloody watch has stopped, and it’s actually 06:50! I reset my watch, only for it to play the same trick during breakfast.

Breakfast is the same as before – simple but very good. I settle the bill and thank the proprietor. It’s not a flash hotel, but it was what I needed – and they recommended the Bouillon Pigale!

I head off for the walk to Gare du Nord. It’s a nice walk through sunny Paris streets, retracing my steps from three days ago. I get to the station just before 08:00 and start the hunt for Eurostar. By chance rather than design, I’ve walked in right beside the lift to the first floor which is clearly labelled Eurostar. I head upstairs and join the queue. And what a queue it is.

In part this is because we have to go through the following before they will let us get into the departure area:

1. Ticket Check
   
2. French Passport Control
   
3. English Passport Control
   
4. Customs

This gives ample opportunity for things to fuck up – and they do. The ticket check is relatively straight-forwards. There are two choices: the automated gate, or the actual live person armed with a scanner. I choose the latter and skip past lots of people who are struggling with the simplicity of the automated gate.

French passport control has two lines – one for the biometric passport and one for the normal one. Is mine biometric? How can I tell? I show it to a random staff member who tells me it is. Excellent. I join the queue behind a guy laden down with bags, whose (as it transpires) grandparents are in the queue ahead of him. We all learn this as the queue judders to a halt because grandpa can’t get through. Helpful advice is shouted in French (at least, I assume it’s helpful). It’s just a shame that grandpa doesn’t speak French. The guy in front of me yells “Grandpa, take your glasses off.” Excellent advice. Shame that grandpa is also somewhat deaf so it ends up with several of us bellowing “TAKE YOUR GLASSES OFF”.

We finally move on, and as I walk up to the scanner all the lights go red. Which I assume is a bad thing. It is now 08:15 and the staff have worked out that some of the people in the queue should be on the 08:31. Seemingly, they decided to ignore the advice on the tickets to arrive 45-60 minutes early and are now in danger of missing their train. They are ushered to the front of the queue.

Finally they are sorted out and my gate goes green and I put my passport in – which the machine does not like. The long suffering bloke stood by the machine grabs it and presses it down firmly. This seems to work and I head into the gate where I stare at a screen until my unsightly, unshaven mug appears. To my surprise I get through.

Now we have English passport control, which uses slightly different machines that do exactly the same thing. I know this is clearly some dumbarse requirement made necessary by Brexit, but REALLY? The two machines are about 40ft apart. Surely someone could be sensible? Clearly not!

Customs next. We’re told to remove everything metal from our pockets and put it in a bag — no trays provided here. I grab wallet, malfunctioning watch, phone, Fitbit and am stuffing them into a bag when a French woman tries to elbow me out of the way as she is clearly too important to wait for 10 seconds. Needless to say, she fails and does not appreciate it when I tell her to “bloody well calm down”. My mood is not helped by the fact that I’m having the same reaction here that I’ve had in the airports and am sweating like I’m in a sauna.

I put my bags on the conveyor belt and stride away from Madame Impaciente and towards the metal detector. I remember my belt at the last minute and hand it to the woman at the gate with an apology. She asks if I have any other metal on me and I point to my boots. Expecting the alarms to be set off I walk through. Nothing happens. She shrugs and laughs and now I worry about how good their damn metal detectors are.

I head into the departure lounge, where I settle down and start to write all this up. At about 08:35 they announce that boarding for the 09:12 is about to begin. I join what could charitably be described as a queue but would more accurately be a shambles. I look up at the sign which states that boarding will start 20-30 minutes prior to departure. There’s clearly going to be a wait – and so there is. They eventually open the doors a half hour late, with the 08:30 still not having departed. There are a couple of families having problems with their children – not surprising really. I feel sorry for the woman behind as she is trying to stop her son and daughter fighting while her husband does something best described as “chewing the cud”.

By now there have been several calls for the 10:30 train – clearly something is amiss. But finally the lone woman at the gate opens it and yells “I have to see your tickets”. This is somewhat like Canute trying to hold the tide back and I feel sorry for her as I wander past and wave my phone in her direction. (Not for a photo, you wally, my ticket is on the phone.) I head down the ramp to find that my carriage is the closest one – nice!

I get on and find my seat. It turns out that I’m lucky as large numbers of people have problems finding their seats. Eurostar, it transpires, has used an arcane and complex approach called “numerical order” which apparently no-one understands. The long-suffering attendant spends a lot of time directing people who do not seem to grasp this fairly basic concept. This includes the family who were stood behind me who walk in, take their seats and then ask where their seats are. Both the attendant and I point at the seats they are already sat in and he raises his eyebrows at me as he walks off. Maybe shame keeps them so blessedly quiet.

It’s now 09:19 and we’re officially late – though the app smugly informs me that we are “on time”. Hah! Eventually a train leaves at 09:26 – but not this one: the 08:31.

It occurs to me (not for the first time this holiday) that everything would have been materially easier for the staff if someone bothered to tell us what the fuck is going on. At 09:34 we are told that a corpse has been discovered on the tracks between here and Calais and they do not know how long the delay will be. Merde. But at least we know!

The shame-filled silence across the aisle lasts until 09:45. Mum (I’m guessing here) has attached some music to a bit of video from their holiday. It hasn’t come out right, so she wants to remove the soundtrack. She gives it to her son (I’m still guessing), clearly telling him not to delete the video. Which he immediately does.

Mum gets upset. Dad (a very laid back Irish fellow) helpfully interjects “there’s no need to cry about it”. That helps hugely and makes her cry. Eventually (after much wailing, gnashing of teeth and general angst) Dad smugly points out she can just recover it from the Deleted Items folder. Despite this solution, Mum won’t let it go and starts down a clearly well-trodden path about her sons (presumably) lack of respect. The bickering keeps them happy for about 10 minutes, until they relapse back into their own worlds – 3 on their phones, Dad on his laptop.

At 09:55 we get the announcement that we are about to depart. Son has now recovered Mum’s video and added music to it. So she tests it. And tests it. And tests it. And test it again. Mum is keenly aware that this repetitively annoying music may have some deleterious affect on their travelling companions and so she starts to nervously ask how she turns the sound off. I begin to think that she is not qualified to be operating this clearly advanced and dangerous technology.

They then go back to their individual electronic worlds until breakfast arrives. Second breakfast – how very hobbit of me! The tiny croissant and poor quality coffee make it clear that the French are not running the catering. My current entertainment (“The Family Opposite” – soon to be an 8 part series on Netflix) all want to play on their own phones/laptops but cannot resist talking to each other, when none of them actually want to be disturbed. This results in a fascinating argument between Mum and Dad about whether Son should be revising this weekend. Mum think he should. Dad disagrees – and I get the feeling that Dad does this a lot. Daughter hides behind the low-tech book she has dug out from somewhere and Son goes back to his phone. The whispered argument continues until Dad stops it by taking out his own phone and ignores Mum. I’m actually starting to feel quite sorry for her.

We arrive just over an hour late at 11:35.. Now to brave the tube and the final train to Slough. But wait, what joy is this? Yes, once again I visit the delights of St Pancras INTERNATIONAL. Now I know what it feels like to be one of the elite group of travellers vouchsafed the many and glorious delights of the INTERNATIONAL arrivals platform. Bizarrely, it feels like the way I imagine sheep feel as they head into the abattoir. We head for the signs saying Border Force and we all start grabbing passports and tickets. I’m fairly convinced that being stopped is unusual and I’m right. There are a few people scanning the crowd with a look akin to the one I get while waiting for paint to dry. One is clearly very serious and has an excellent resting bitch face. I can tell that he thinks he is the new Idris Elba. They all ignore me and I enter the Emporium of the Vastly Wealthy.

I ignore the temptation to descend into further debt and head for the underground where I join the immense queue for tickets. I know I’ve paid, but fuck it, I want to get home. So I use my credit card to get through onto the Tube and save myself about twenty minutes. The Spiral Line is as inspirational as ever – it’s oddly jarring to be able to actually understand all the announcements! Off at Paddington, just in time for the train to SLough.

And that’s it! All over again. It’s been an amazing holiday and I’m walking home from the station with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and some amazing memories. I’m glad I’ve got nearly 2 weeks before I go back to work!

Once again, thanks for putting up with my inane drivel. My next holiday is in about 5 weeks time, so you might get another few chapters later in the year!

I have a fitful night’s sleep – though my Fitbit tells me that I’ve had a really good one. It didn’t feel that way, as I seemed to have woken up several times. The streets are really narrow and they magnify all the sounds from the street below. I dread to think what it’s like closer to the ground floor. However, it’s a comfy bed and (in contrast to Barcelona) I take my time getting up.

No hotel room is complete without a fight with the shower. For once, the controls are simple but the shower head can’t be adjusted and I turn the water on and get blasted directly in the face. If I was shorter, I guess the water would arc gently overhead but as it is, it makes the whole process a little tricky. But the water is hot and strong … hold on, isn’t that the coffee?

The petit dejeuner is simple – and very French.

There are several of us sat around watching news programmes, most of which seem to be about some kick-ball game last weekend where the Liverpool football fans covered themselves with glory. (History has since then shown that they might not have been completely at fault – but generally it’s a good idea not to piss off gendarmes who have a low level of tolerance in a city that has had several terrorist incidents targeting them in the last few years.) It’s a proud day to be English, so I try to eat with a French accent. The coffee is amazing – strong but without a bitter after taste. It genuinely feels that this is the first time I’ve relaxed for four days, so I revel in it.

Revelling done, it’s time to head out into Paris. It’s a hot, sunny day and the plan is to walk down to the Metro at Le Pelletier, get a 2 day ticket and then go down to Ile de la Citie. It’s a great day for a walk, so I decide to just walk all the way and take in the atmosphere of this beautiful city.

The route takes me through the Louvre. I toy with going in just so that I can say I’ve seen the Mona Lisa, but decide to press on to the Seine.

I turn my back on the Eiffel Tower (which is clearly trying to hide and doing a bad job of it) and head down the Seine to the Pont Neuf.

I cross the Pont Neuf and then find that the southern half of Ile de La Citie has been cordoned off. So I head to the south bank and work my way down there. I start to be a bit concerned that I won’t be able to get to Notre Dame, but the Rue de la Citie bridge is open and I manage to get back across.

Although the front seems undamaged, the renovation work is still going on and I can’t get close to the building. As I walk down the side, I can see that the roof is still missing and there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done.

It’s such a shame to see this incredible building like this. There are signs everywhere saying that they want to get all the restoration work complete in time for the 2024 Olympics – but they have a huge job ahead of them.

I head on down the Seine, walk along the Ile Saint-Louis and then head inland to the Place de la Bastille.

At this point, I decide to finally give in and take the Metro. Mainly because my right leg is really hurting, with a persistent pain in the calf. I’ve tried to ignore it, but it isn’t going away – typical, this is meant to be the good leg! I ride the Metro as far as Les Invalides (ironic, no?) and then slowly head for the Eiffel Tower – very slowly as I have a guided tour booked for three hours time. I could get some lunch, but I don’t want to pig out twice in a day and I’m looking forward to revisiting the Bouillon Pigale tonight. I find a little patisserie called La Trinquelinette and have a hot single serve quiche lorraine and a cup of scalding coffee.

The calm is broken by the arrival of an American family (or, at least, the female members of one). The youngest wants a strawberry tart for her breakfast (seriously, it’s nearly mid-day!). One panics when her friend orders something that may have almonds in it. They then sit down and continue conversing as though they were sat at the opposite ends of a concert hall. Ok, I may be exaggerating a tad…. but only a tad.

A Scottish lady comes in with a little girl in a pushchair. She gets her daughter to order her own baguette in French and the staff are amazing with her. In fact, they are clearly using the same skills they used when I was trying to order. I finish my lunch off with a tiny slice of opera cake which is sweet, bitter, chocolatey and very rich. Yum.

I then head off to the Eiffel Tower and get stuck behind a group of American tourists (for some reason, there are a lot of them around here). One seems to be petrified of pigeons, so one of her friends helps by scaring them in such a way that they fly up into her face. It looks so much fun that I’m tempted to join in, but I suspect it’s a game that she’s not enjoying judging by her regular and ear-splitting shrieks.

Finally, I get to the Eiffel Tower – which as expected is huge and eiffely.

It’s impressively big – but I knew that as I could see it from the airplane as we arrived yesterday. It towers over the city even more than the Sagrada Familia does in Barcelona. I am very tempted to turn to the Americans and ask if they know where the Eiffel Tower is, but I suspect they wouldn’t get the joke. I still have some time before I can be impolitely early to meet my tour guide, so I grab a seat, recharge my phone, have a drink and re-apply the sun block.

The sun goes in while I’m doing that, so I skip the sun block – I suspect I might regret that later. I head past the Eiffel Tower to the Seine. This whole area is crowded and there are lots of people doing street art and selling what can be politely described as “complete tat”. I choke down the temptation to buy a day-glo green Eiffel Tower for the people who gave me a lift to the airport – I figure they have already suffered enough.

My leg seems to be getting better, so I wander down towards the meeting point for the guided tour. I am still obscenely early, but I have a chat with a very nice lady who doesn’t mind me settling down in their comfortable seating area. I buy a bottle of water, plug my phone and sundry other electrical items into their bank of chargers and relax.

The time for the tour finally comes around, by which time there are about twenty of us. I get given a purple circle to wear – that means I’m only going to the second floor rather than all the way to the top. Our guide Mauro introduces himself and makes sure we’re clear on the procedures. There are some items we are not allowed to take into the tower: knives & scissors (all very sensible), padlocks and flags. “Padlocks” is clearly to stop this “love padlock” fad extending to the tower. “Flags” is a little stranger.

Mauro is a great guide and keeps up a constant stream of information – some of which I find interesting and will regurgitate for your “benefit”. The Eiffel Tower is currently being re-painted gold for 2024. A team of 25 people is working on it – which, given the size, doesn’t seem anywhere near enough. As we go up, I can see ropes and harnesses everywhere.

Mauro makes us all feel better by pointing out that you don’t get a much better view from the top – the majority of Paris is laid out in such a way that you can see everything from the second floor. He points out the sights, including the “second ugliest building in the world”. (It’s in the third photo below. Can you work out which one he means?) He admits that it’s not actually THAT ugly – it’s just that it’s so intrusive.

He tells us that there will be some changes prior to 2024 – the whole area between the tower and the Trocadero (last of the above photos) is going to be pedestrianised.

Mauro also talks about Notre Dame. Like me, he doesn’t think they will finish in time. He says that while the decision to use traditional building methods to renovate it is a good one, there are only a handful of people in the country who still have those skills. As a result work is way behind schedule. He also tells us about some alternative plans that were put forward for the rebuilding. One suggested putting in a rooftop swimming pool. Another proposed replacing the roof with a glass one that tourists could walk around on. Mauro pointed out that neither was totally appropriate for a place of worship – especially given the view that worshippers would get up the skirts of female tourists.

Mauro is a great guide, but he eventually leaves us to our own devices. I have a good wander around, and then head down. I decide to take the stairs – presumably, because I am a moron. Predictably, by the time I get down to ground level my right leg is absolutely killing me.

I limp down to the Metro at the Ecole Militaire and head straight back to Pigalle. After successfully negotiating the maze of exits using a ball of string and a remarkably helpful Cretan woman, I head straight to the Bouillon Pigalle.

Today’s meal is farmhouse pate, skate wing with capers and a really excellent lemon tart. I have a very slow and relaxing meal and then limp back to the hotel. I hope my leg will be better after a night’s rest. If not, I’ll have to re-think my plan for tomorrow.

And I’m off – again. My final night in the shithole is complete and I’m heading for El Prat for a 09:55 flight to Paris. With great relief I pack my bags and leave this place. It’s early morning, but it’s still bloody hot.

I finished Interesting People last night. There’s one word for this book: bleak. There’s a quote on the front from Annie Proulx saying that this is “funny, clever and sardonic”. She needed to add “bleak”. It’s good, but don’t read it if you like any form of happy ending. I’m now on Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau. I’ve been reading this on and off for quite some time and it will be good to finally finish it. It’s a treatise on the ideal way to raise a child. Some interesting ideas, but they are clearly “of their time” and would not be condoned in our 21st century world.

I get to El Prat nice and early via a packed Aerobus. I gird my loins for the usual grapple with security. This time, they don’t care about my toiletries, but I have to take my boots off to put them through the scanner. As usual with every Departure lounge so far, I’m absolutely dripping with sweat by the time I get through. I’ve decided I’m definitely allergic to them.

I have an hour to go before the gate is announced. I head to the cafe and have their Iberian Menu breakfast: coffee, orange juice and an iberico ham sandwich. While there I see they have empanadas and, as I haven’t tried them, I get one of them as well. I settle myself down for a leisurely breakfast – which is probably the most authentically Spanish one I’ve had so far.

When the gate is announced, boarding is a whole different type of fun. I’m dreading the trip as I have the same seat as I did on the flight from Berlin. If there’s anyone sat beside me, it will be very uncomfortable. So when they announce the gate, I nervously head over to find two very efficient women who are already behind the desk and getting everyone in line with nearly an hour to go before departure. Nevertheless, I get in line.

By 09:00, there is quite a line and the two women have disappeared along it as they check boarding passes. I spot a potential flaw in their plan as boarding is scheduled to being at 09:10 – but there is quite clearly no plane there. The plane turns up at 09:20 and the passengers amble out. No sign of the women running the desk. If they don’t turn up, I can see this will turn into a massive scrum. Luckily (if being painfully early counts as “luck”), I’m near the front of the queue and I fancy my chances. Just as the last passenger exits, one of the women ambles towards the desk with the same enthusiasm that French royalty showed for the walk to the guillotine and she starts to check boarding passes again – apparently the first time was just to get us into the right queue.

I head on board and to my delight find that there is significantly more leg room than last time – so I stop cursing EasyJet. It’ll still be snug should I get anyone beside me. When the inevitable person turns up, it’s not too bad as he’s quite small and his attention is all on the person in the aisle seat. (I can’t actually work out the relationship of my two fellow travellers, but after they spend sometime stroking each others knees, they share airbuds to watch some awful looking cartoon on their phone. I suspect they’re “intimate” rather than related.) I should point out at this stage that the seats in front of me that have the really good leg room are filled with three really short people,. who clearly do not need the room. I have a mental grumble about that and consider starting some kind of charity for the plight of tall people on airplanes.

Despite the best efforts of the staff, we’re still boarding at 09:55 when we should have been taking off. I worry this will be another debacle, but they close the doors at 10:00. There is then a delay when someone insists on taking their child to the toilet …. that earns them a damn stern glare, I can tell you! There are interminable safety announcements in three languages and then we do the usual tour of the airport before lurching into the air at 10:30.

We land without incident an hour and a half later. And “incident” includes being offered any refreshments! They get the trolley out, deal with the row in front of and behind me, then change their minds and take the trolley away. To be fair, I’d only have been eating out of greed – but that is often my most powerful motivator.

When we land, I expect to be delayed in getting off the plane. The couple beside me (because that’s what I’ve decided they are), arrived late and had to stow their luggage some way down the cabin. So I expect to be sat here until they can get to it. To my surprise, as soon as the tiny people in front of me leave, the couple moves to those seats and allow me to make a rapid exit before the majority of the passengers. Very good of them.

Charles de Gaulle is exactly what you would expect from a big airport – nothing special at all. I head out to the bus stop and wait for about 10 minutes before giving up and heading for the train station instead. I get my ticket out of a vending machine which spews a little cardboard ticket about 3cms long and 1cm wide. It looks so little like any ticket I’ve ever used that I check with an attendant to make sure this is actually a ticket. I get my first incredulous look of the day – 12: 30; much later than usual.

I head down to the platform and find the insanely long train and grab a double seat in a virtually empty carriage. We are joined by a pigeon that it very keen on heading into the centre of Paris, and has to be herded out twice by the only other occupant of the carriage. The one thing that stands out here is that no masks are required, so mine gets stowed and won’t be needed for the rest of the trip.

I get out at Gare du Nord and walk across to my hotel The weather is still sunny and while it’s not as hot as Barcelona, it’s still very warm. It’s great to be listening to a language that I almost understand and the whole atmosphere here is far nicer than Barcelona. The streets I’m walking down are narrow and busy, but I find myself relaxing.

My hotel is the Hotel De Paris Saint Georges, in Rue Jean Baptiste Pigalle. This isn’t the best area of Paris, but it’s close to Montmartre and about half a mile from Sacre Coeur. It’s online reviews are highly variable and after my experience in Barcelona, I’m understandably concerned. Check in isn’t until 15:00, but I decided to head across and see if I can leave my bag there while I go out and get some food. The exterior does not allay my concerns. I’m also still worried about the financial situation and want to ask if I can use a different card to pay.

I head in and use my extremely poor French to explain all of the above. The guy at reception is great – he tolerates my extremely poor French, he doesn’t want to be paid until I leave and my room is ready now, so I can head up immediately. The relief is like a weight off my shoulders. He takes my up to my 7th floor room in a very small and extremely creaky lift. The room is small, but has its’ own bathroom and is nicely decorated and HAS A WINDOW!! I get a vertiginous view down to the street far below and a view over the Paris rooftops. If I look up to the left, I can see Sacre Coeur. Like a muppet, I didn’t keep any photographs of either of these things – so I stole these photos from their Tripadvisor page.

Feeling much better than I have for the last three days, I head down and ask if they can recommend a restaurant. He is very happy to assist me and recommends the Bouillon Pigalle which is about two hundred yards away. I head up, carefully negotiate the roped off queuing area outside and head in to the busy restaurant. Bouillon Pigalle is a bistro with very fast service and strikes me a bit like Wagamama’s – except that the waiting staff are polite and friendly and the food is exceptional. (One caveat here, I had to change my mind on Wagamama’s after a visit to one in Hammersmith last month – quite turned me round on them). The menu is a mouthwatering list of French classics.

They are very efficient and there is a QR code on the table, so you can access the menu in several different languages. I stick with French, but with the occasional sneaky glance at the English menu to make sure I knew what I was ordering. I end up with escargots and beef cheeks washed down with a half bottle of Chardonnay.

It is all fantastic, so it would be rude not to have a dessert. I order Isle Flottante which is washed down with a tiny cup of strong savoury coffee which manages to be bitter without being unpleasant.

You can pay using the QR code, which I do and add a hefty tip. They’re on the ball and knew that I’d paid as I head for the door. Only 200 yards from the hotel? Traveller, we will meet again!

Before I left, one of my friends (let’s be honest, it was Roz), was banging on about me visiting Sacre Coeur. As it happens, I wanted to see it anyway as I remember it from a junior school project I’d done about Paris. So, at least one (and maybe two) sheets to the wind, I head for Sacre Coeur. It’s nearby and, after all, how hard can it be?

As it turns out, bloody hard! You see, the streets get steep and at the top of them are steps – which are also steep. And beyond the steps are more steps. And the other side of those steps are even more steps, until finally I start to believe that Sacre Coeur doesn’t actually exist and I’m stuck in some kind of Escher-style nightmare.

It’s worth the trip though. I stagger to top of the 22,000 stairs (ok, maybe 100 or so) and find that approximately half of the population of Paris has had the same idea. Sacre Coeur is a beautiful edifice and there is a stunning view of the city from here.

The metal fences up here are all covered with these bloody ubiquitous “love” padlocks and I wonder where people get them from. Almost immediately, two people try to sell me some. Seriously, I’m clearly here on my own, so who would I be buying one of these dumbass things for? My invisible friend, Herve? Also, surely it would be more meaningful if they were bought elsewhere rather than being a spur of the moment purchase. Add that to the list of mysteries about relationships.

I slowly head down the hill and find that Paris isn’t scared of advertising its’ problems, while still giving me some excellent views.

I consider heading over to the Moulin Rouge to get some photos, but I’m knackered and I head back to the hotel for a quiet evening

I sleep surprisingly well – probably something to do with the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of walking over the last 6 days and my food intake has been remarkably low. The day starts pretty well and I manage to negotiate the shower without touching anything except me and I head out before 08:00. It’s 18 degrees but feels much hotter. I’ve had a long debate (partially with myself, partially with people online) about what to do today. A popular choice seems to be to head to Montserrat, which is apparently amazing. Instead, I’ve decided to head for the Castell de Montjuic – which most people don’t seem to have heard of. My early morning wander down Las Ramblas is quiet and tranquil – except for the couple having an impressively loud screaming match in the middle of the road. (For those in the profession, I would rate this as a medium risk domestic). Apart from them, the only people out and about are the police who are sorting out the rough sleepers.

I head down to the Columbus statue that apparently has him pointing towards the New World. Technically, they’re correct, but only because the world is an oblate spheroid which means he’s considering a seriously long journey. Seeing as he thought he had found India, it might be appropriate anyway.

Given the increasing heat, it’s clearly a good idea to keep away from the cooling effect of the sea front, so I walk along Avinguda del Paral·lel. From there, I’m going to take the funicular railway up the hill. Montjuic Castle doesn’t open until 10:00 so I have a leisurely stroll and pop into a cafe for breakfast. This seems more popular than the dire little place yesterday – there are two police officers inside, so they either have a lot of trouble here, or the food is reasonable. Breakfast turns out to be coffee and a croissant – still not exactly Spanish but a real improvement on yesterday.

I’m wondering just how hot it’s going to get, and make sure that the suntan lotion is liberally applied. The heat is not helped by my Berlin baseball cap which seems to have some kind of heating element inside it. It’s soaked with sweat already – lovely subject, eh? – but if I put it on backwards, it seems to be slightly better. I consider taking it off altogether, but that would be decidedly unwise, and resign myself to looking like an idiot.

Montjuic Castle is accessible by the funicular and then a cable car. The funicular opens at 09:00, so I’m sat there with 10 minutes to go. There will be another delay at the half way point, as the cable car doesn’t start running until 10:00. A sensible person would probably have started later in the day, but as these blogs will have shown, I’m not the most sensible person in the world. Also, I’d have had to spend even more time in the shithole.

I’m expecting great views over Barcelona from the funicular, so have my phone ready to snap some pictures. I am, of course, foiled as it runs most of its’ length underground. However, there is a great view from the little park at the top, with views across the city to Mount Tibidabo (which still makes me chuckle).

I’ve pre-booked my cable car tickets, and have to wait 45 minutes or so for it. It’s so quiet here compared to the rest of the city and it’s nice to have a break from the constant noise. The amount of mopeds, bikes and e-scooters tearing around the city is insane. I read somewhere that Barcelona has the highest per capita ownership of motorcycle of any city in Europe. I don’t find that hard to believe. It is also the proud owner of the largest number of pretentious buildings in the world! (source: me). Oh, just a word on road crossing etiquette in Barcelona – bizarrely it seems to work better than in Berlin and if you go along with the lights you have a reasonable chance of making it across the road in one piece.

The cable car station is right beside the pool that was used for the diving events in the 1992 Olympics. I remember the fantastic shots that were taken of the divers with the city far below them.

As I’ve got some time, I thought it might be nice to grab some photos from the same location. Clearly a lot of people have the same idea as the terrace overlooking the pool is now occupied by a restaurant and a cafe, both of which are shut. I’ll think about this again on the way down (but they’re still closed when I come back).

I’m at the head of the queue for the cable car (no surprise there) and manage to snag a car to myself. As we head higher up the hill, the whole area opens up beneath us and I take the traditional shots that everyone takes from a cable car, including one of the rather bizarre instructions on what you should not do in the cable car and a pretentious one down the line of empty cars (which I’m quite proud of).

Castell de Montjuic is fantastic to wander around and, in places, is absolutely beautiful. It dates back to 1640 and has the distinction of having been used to bombard Barcelona on at least one occasion! If you do ever visit here, there is a waring attached: there is VERY little shade!

From the outside, there are spectacular views across the city and somewhat less spectacular views across the port, which is huge. Outside the main port, the seafront is dominated by the vast bulks of cruise ships which blend into the environment with the same discomfort that a Conservative MP displays at a homeless shelter.

It’s bakingly hot up here and I’m starting to re-think my original plan of walking down. I start off by walking around the battlements.

The walk becomes a bit of a nature ramble as there’s no one else walking around this part. As a result, I surprise a snake and a tiny little lizard. I then find some ants the size of my thumbnail and a spider with a remarkably bright green back. Typically, they all disappear as soon as I get the phone out, so here’s a picture with a slightly more complacent dove.

I finish with another view over the unpleasant docks and then head into the parade ground. The colonnade here is about 10 degrees cooler than outside.

The colonnade is lined with numbered doors, all of which are shut. I eventually find one which is open and has a truly startling and very clever piece of art inside. I then make the mistake of starting to read the pretentious twaddle used to describe it – sometimes, people should just let art speak for itself.

The time has finally come to brave the terrace. This is the top of the castle and is eye-wateringly bright in the sun. There’s not much here, but it’s well worth looking around.

It’s got an example of a sundial on the side of a tower – or rather, two sundials because each one only works for half the day. Oh, yes and this was one of the trig points used to calculate the metre.

I really, really preferred this to La Pedrera – it is probably the highlight of my visit.

But now I have to go back down into the city. It’s is possible to walk back down – a long winding road that goes past the old Olympic stadium and finishes at Pablos Espanol. Despite the heat, I still decide to do this, so I take the cable car back down to the funicular station and head off.

On the way down, I find the Jardin des Escultures, and we have to ask ourselves the time-honoured question: “Yes. But is it art?”

In an attempt to answer the question, I present you with my own piece of art. As we are in the capital of Catalonia, I have taken it’s title from the Catalan. Here it is together with an explanation for the piece which should (preferably) be read aloud by Ardal O’Hanlon. Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your consideration Solitud.

In Solitud, the artist has chosen to explore the link between nature and the commercial environment, the emptiness of existence juxtaposed with the irrationality of life and the complex elemental underpinning of the universe. The hat, a symbol of post-war American arrogation, is alone. Without it’s purpose, it is empty, bereft. It is half open, indicating use and now, perhaps, abandonment. Composed of entirely synthetic fibres, it lies amidst the detritus of nature – stone, hewed and hacked by man’s machinations; pine needles, dead and carelessly strewn. Yet in the background, green verdant leaves show us that life goes on and the community sought by the author is at hand, though also out of reach. The hat is a fox – but why? Foxes signify playfulness and mischievousness, but here the artist uses the fox to represent independence and protection. For the hat is alone, crumpled and apparently cast harshly aside. But the sweat on it indicates it has been used and opens us up to the hope that it will be used again.

The walk down is a very pleasant one, along wide pavements that are used by (believe it or not, in this heat) joggers. (Actually, most of them look like the serious types that want to be called runners). The Olympic stadium is suitably impressive and triggers more memories of seeing it on TV.

Opposite it is a sculpture that was donated by Korea, and further down the hill a quite impressive bell tower, which starts tolling just as I wander by.

At the bottom of the hill (and it’s taken me the best part of an hour to get here) is a very nice little park and the Pablo Espanol.

The Pablo Espanol is a very odd place. It was constructed for the Barcelona International Exposition of 1929 and is described as an “open air architectural museum”. It has four areas that are styled to represent the different styles of building and architecture found around Spain. It doesn’t feel like a museum – it feels more like something designed for tourists – and the prices are accordingly high. However, this is the first time that I’ve actually felt that I was in Spain. It is characterful and I have a really good wander around.

But in the end, this place is just about taking your money and some of it just jars with me.

Does it jar, or does it Jar-Jar?

I was planning to eat here, but the prices are clearly inflated. So, I decide to head back across the city to Artespanol Paella & Tapas. On the way to the metro, I stop to look at the Montjuic Fountains.

They do a light show here every evening – but given my concerns about personal safety, there’s no way I’m heading over here after dark! With a wistful look back, I head for the metro and soon find myself walking into Artespanol. The waiter recognises me and hustles me straight to a table. I stumble my way through the menu, refusing to use the English version – my attempt to pronounce ajillo causes much hilarity at the next table. But at least I tried!! I feel much better when three American ladies sit down on the other side of me. They cause far more trouble (“I’m allergic to milk, eggs and dairy. My friend can only eat off plates that were cast on the waning moon, and my other friend must sit facing Jupiter.”) When they order, they don’t attempt the Spanish and talk to the waiter about “number 76” so I feel better for trying. They get a lot less annoying when their food arrives and, like me, resort to yummy noises instead. I decide to take a tapas approach today (not easy when there’s just one of you!).

I ended up selecting: champinones al ajillo, pimientos de padrón, calamares a la andaluza negritos and croquetas de bacalao. With sangria, naturally. It is all insanely good.

I finish my day by taking a long, slow walk back to the hotel through the Barcelona streets, stopping briefly to admire a typical Catalan establishment.

I have an 07:00 start tomorrow, so I’m going to barricade the door and spend one final night in the shithole. Tomorrow I head for Paris and I have to start worrying about my finances again.

Well, dear reader, when last we spoke I was going to sleep in the place that shitholes go to die, and clearly not having a good time. Before I went to sleep, I tried to find another hotel to move to. But anything inside the town was prohibitively expensive (especially considering my current concerns about money) and to get somewhere reasonable, I would have to go about 15 miles outside Barcelona. So I just have to tough it out. I do some research for tomorrow and find that a place called Books & Co apparently serves the best breakfast in Barcelona. It is also, happily, close to the shithole. That will at least start my day well and seeing as I have two of the big ticket tourist items scheduled for tomorrow, it will SURELY be a better day.

I sense you can see how this will go.

I do not get a good nights sleep. While the lack of windows means no noise from the street, the walls are remarkably thin. The sleazy receptionist has some friends that sit with him until about 11pm and have a very loud conversation which I can hear every word of – I just can’t understand what they’re saying. At 2am, I wake up convinced that there is someone in the room with me. It turns out that there is a bathroom adjacent to my room, and the plumbing is extremely noisy. I get back to sleep, but the the receptionists friends come back at 05:00.

I head out of my room before 07:00 to find reception devoid of anything approaching life and head into the shower. It’s one of those tiny cubicles with solid plastic walls that manage to remind me almost perfectly of a coffin. I struggle to get the door shut because the mould has it firmly locked in place. I then have the fun of trying to shower while trying not to touch the walls. As a result I keep bumping the tap and have an exciting freezing/scalding experience.

I head out just after 07:00. It’s going to get over 30 degrees today, but my concerns about security means I’m wearing jeans rather than shorts and all my documents are in my backpack. I have what can best be described as a death grip on it. Outside, it hasn’t heated up yet and Las Ramblas is a completely different place.

The crowds are gone and during my walk down it, I’m accompanied by street sweepers and the relatively few early-bird tourists. There are several courts off of Las Ramblas, and as I wander into one, I’m nearly mown down by two police officers on mopeds.

I wonder what criminal conspiracy they are investigating, so I follow them and then watch them waking up the rough sleepers and moving them on before the tourists arrive. Books & Co doesn’t open until 08:00, so I amuse myself by wandering around some of the back streets.

Eventually, 08:00 rolls around and I head for Books & Co. They have an excellent menu outside, so I head in and find two women behind the counter. The three of us then manage to confuse each other completely. They ask me what my room number is as they assume I’m staying at the hotel next door. I manage to explain that I’m not, so they sit me down and give me the breakfast menu. This turns out to be a fixed menu and so I end up with orange juice (elegantly dispensed from the carton), coffee (bitter and luke-warm) and a sándwich tostado de jamón y queso. Or, as you and I would say, a ham and cheese toastie. I’m not sure who rated this the “best breakfast in Barcelona”, but I can only assume that it was someone who has never previously eaten breakfast. Or possibly has been fed intravenously for the last twenty years so they have nothing to compare it to. I’m am highly unimpressed and Books & Co gets added to the list of things I don’t like about Barcelona.

But enough of such maudlin things – Sagrada Familia awaits and that can’t be disappointing can it? I head for the train station and pick up my pre-booked 48 hour bus/train ticket. I’ve planned my day – Sagrada Familia at 10:30, La Pedrera at 13:30. Should give me easily enough time to look around and get some lunch in between. I am, as you would expect, painfully early and so at 09:00 I find myself outside Gaudi’s masterpiece – which they still haven’t finished.

There are a lot of places that you visit and the expectation far exceeds the reality. Sagrada Familia is not one of those places and I walk around it astounded by the level of detail and more convinced than ever that Gaudi was probably bat-crap crazy. If the outside is like this, what must the interior be like? I head around to the entrance and check my e-ticket to see if I can get in early. It’s at this point, I find out that they’ve cancelled it. I was sent an email yesterday, but it’s OK, they can offer me a ticket in three days time.

And I lose it.

I hate this bastard city, the people in it and every smug SOB who has harped on about what a marvellous place this is. Everything about it is crap and I’m stuck here for another two days. I don’t often get close to tears, but I am now and I find somewhere to sit down while I try to work out what to do now. My tour of La Pedrera isn’t for another 3 1/2 hours. While I’m thinking, I go onto Facebook and make this succinct but heartfelt post.

Barcelona is S**T!

This gets some remarkably fast responses from people. Some are genuinely concerned, one alleged friend just wants to know why I’m being a drama queen. So let me explain: I’m on my own; I don’t speak the language (either of them); I don’t feel safe; I’m staying the shithole to end all shitholes and I just want to GO HOME! So thanks to all the people who checked I was OK.

I sit there for about half an hour as the heat climbs and go through a couple of bottles of water. I find some places nearby that I can go and look at, so I sort myself out and head off. As I do, I pass a stop with a parked sightseeing bus and I decide to ask if my 48 hour ticket would cover that. It turns out is doesn’t, but the lady selling tickets makes the mistake of asking if I’m alright. I end up pouring out my frustrations to this poor woman. She is the first nice person I’ve met in Barcelona and seems genuinely upset that I think little more of her city than I do of Swindon. I end up spending 30 euros on a ticket and climbing aboard. Either she was a nice person, or an excellent salesperson.

The tourist bus goes right past La Pedrera, so I won’t have to worry about that. Barcelona divides the tourist routes into blue and red (essentially north and south). My ticket gives me access to both and I can hop on and off. La Pedrera is one of the places where both lines meet, so I decide to do one line after another – after all, I have sod all else planned. It also has an audio guide and the definite advantage that the bus is air conditioned. I settle down to try and settle down (if you see what I mean).

The bus heads off and the tour starts to calm me down – until the audio guide goes through a warning about not carrying your valuables with you. All that does it get me stressed again and I’m very close to just locking myself in my room for 48 hours before getting the hell out of here.

The tour is good at pointing out the tourist spots and gives a brief description of the area and background to what we’re seeing (or, very often not seeing as I’d have to get off to actually see things properly). This continues until we get to Camp Neu when the audio guide waxes lyrical about bastard football. This does not help my mood.

We get to La Pedrera and I hop off. I’ve still got an hour and a half before my booking, so I get into the queue for the red route. I’m behind a group of women who are clearly on a hen party so I’m put off sitting on the top deck as that’s where they go. Probably just as well as the sun is relentless today and I would have ended up looking like a lobster despite the sun cream that I’ve been liberally applying.

The red route runs just like the blue one – including the audio guide rubbing it in about personal security. By the time the tour finished, I am thoroughly sick of the terms “modernista” and “UNESCO World Heritage Site” as every other building seems to be described that way. I get off at La Pedrera again. Which (like everything designed by Gaudi) is in the modernista style. (For those of us not artistically inclined, just think “fucking weird” and that will tell you what modernista is).

I have a ticket for La Pedrera which allows me to “avoid the queue”. So I join the queue. There’s only one, and you need an “avoid the queue” ticket for it. Despite all the signs telling people they have to buy their tickets before joining the queue, a refreshingly large number of people in front of me haven’t bought one. Some of them become quite cross with the woman guarding the door like Horatius guarding the bridge. I then also become quite cross with her when she won’t let me in – my ticket is for 13:30 and it’s only 13:20. Some people have far too much power!

I stand in the sun for 10 minutes and watch several other people being refused entry. One American man storms off across the street with this apologetic wife in tow. Eventually 13:30 comes around and I re-join the queue. By then, Cerberus has been replaced by a very friendly Golden Retriever and I am let in.

Now, I am not an expert in art. (I am an expert in many things, including cryptozoology and parapsychology, but not art). So when I tell you that La Pedrera is fucking weird, it is not an informed opinion. But it really is fucking weird.

Lots of the lines are very fluid gives a sense of dislocation that is made worse by an audio guide that seems to be being narrated by Ardal O’Hanlon. The guide itself is staggeringly pretentious. Just imagine the following being read by Father Dougal:

Look around you. What you see is not concrete but tree trunks. There you can see the shapes of animals in the curves. There they are: deer, snake, elephants. Oh look Ted, is that an axolotl?

The above does contain a measure of artistic licence (borrowed from the Published Author), but the whole thing made me hear Stephen Fry’s voice in my ear as he whispers “Pretension – by Fry and Laurie!”

La Pedrera is certainly impressive – especially when you consider that it has no internal supporting walls. Clever chap that Gaudi – bat-crap crazy, but clever. It does make me laugh when the audio guide waxes lyrical how Gaudi designed light into his buildings and how he said that the sun was always better than electric light. I laughed because the area I was in at the time, was all (of course) lit by electric light.

On the roof, he really went to town.

In case, you thought this had strayed from pretentious into downright weird, there are some information plaques around to drag you right back into pretentious.

This building was designed for people to live in, and I have to wonder what the people that it was built for thought about it.

“Look Maureen, I wanted a simple two-up, two-down with a patio and a conservatory and look what we got. I know he’s your cousin, but the O’Halloran brothers would have done it for half the price and the neighbours wouldn’t be moaning about it all the time.”

The tour takes me all around the building and then through not one, but two gift shops. The second has the required bookmark and I head out. While I was queueing, I had spotted a restaurant just down the road and I decide to give it a try. I’m not expecting much except over-inflated prices, but the Artespanol Paella and Tapas is a pleasant surprise and a damned good find.

I head in to find that the restaurant is well set up for dealing with tourists – menus are available in a variety of languages and several staff are multi-lingual. I’m sat down and on the table beside me, two ladies are tucking into their paellas – and they look incredible. Not the ladies, the paellas. Look, I’m sure they’re very nice people but the paella was more attractive!

Given my experiences so far, I’m waiting to be let down as I order a jug of Sangria and a paella.

Barcelona, all is forgiven. Well, not really, but this food goes a long way to shore up your reputation. The paella goes down very well – as does the sangria. I am then tempted into trying a pijama, which is apparently a traditional Catalan dessert made up of Catalan custard, ice cream, peach and sweetened cream. It’s delicious, though I’ve seen enough Masterchef to know that it needs some crunch with it.

This sets me up very nicely for a long stroll back to the shithole, pausing to snap a photo of a place that Roz would love.

On the way back, I pass an American family where the person that I would assume to be the eldest son was asking at the top of his voice the following: “How many street people do you think eat rats? I mean just grab one and eat ’em? Or maybe cook them?” Without wishing to make judgements, I suspect he may be a fuckwit.

I head back planning to have a nap for a couple of hours and then head out again. In the end, I buy some bottles of water on the way back and then barricade the door for the night.

Today is transition day and I am leaving Berlin and heading for Barcelona. This, of course, raises the problem of what to do with the day. I have to check out by 09:00, and check in at the airport isn’t until 13:30. I could leave my luggage here and head into the city centre, but that’s an hour each way and not really worth it. My decision is made easier by my knee and my back. Both are registering their disapproval at the amount of walking over the last couple of days. So, I decide to take a rest day – although it feels like a bit of a waste. The plan is to head into the Kurfurstendamm, find a cafe and do some planning for Barcelona.

This turns out to be remarkably easy and I soon find myself disembarking from the bus at the Europa-Center. On the way, I spotted somewhere which would probably be extremely messy if attended by the wrong people. (The “wrong people” being the IBPL.)

I skirt past Starbucks and find a coffee shop called Einstein. It’s probably part of a chain as well, but at least it feels slightly different from going to somewhere that I could easily have gone to in the UK. I settle down, start to people watch and try to learn some basic phrases for use in Barcelona. The most important of these is, of course, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish”.

My guidebook immediately throws me a curveball by telling me that the title of this entry should have been “una cervesa si us plau”. I’m thrown by this – I’m sure por favor is correct… except that the guide book is informing me that people in Barcelona speak Catalan. I then spend a happy half an hour trying to work out which language I am going to fail to be fluent in for the next few days – and end up still unsure.

This isn’t helping my trepidation about going to Barcelona. When I told a friend I was going here, he immediately warned me about pickpockets and told me that several of his colleagues got robbed while they were there. While he was trying to be helpful, it didn’t exactly make me feel happy about going there. I’d done a lot of research online since then and found a huge amount of contradictory information. Half seemed to say that Barcelona had high crime stats, the other claimed that Barcelona was one of the safest cities in Europe. (Granted, the latter report was from a website sponsored by the Barcelona Tourist Office).

What they all seemed clear on was the fact that you would be absolutely fine as long as you left your valuables locked in the hotel safe. For some reason, that didn’t put me at ease.

Anyway, the coffee is tasty but bitter – and cold by the time I’ve finished my planning. I have booked a trip around La Pedrera which should fit nicely with my Sagrada Familia tour that I booked weeks ago, and I am planning to head up to Montjuic Castle on my second day there. I have also sat there chuckling when I found out that Mount Tibidabo is a real place, rather than somewhere that Friends made up.

I’ve also found out that Sir Norman Foster has been at work in Barcelona as well. True to his form on the Reichstag Dome, he’s designed something that really doesn’t blend in but is remarkably impressive.

I replace my cold coffee (yes, alright I drank it!) with another cup and a slice of strudel (when in Germany…)

This must be part of a chain, because the strudel is a normal size!

Eventually, it’s time to head off to the airport. I decide that Google’s suggested route is far too complex, so I wander across to the Berlin Zoologischer Garten Bahnhof. The train I catch wanders its’ leisurely way into East Berlin before heading south to the airport. I’m early (duh!) and as I don’t need to check my luggage in, I head straight for security. My boots again get me stopped at the scanner, but the guy checking it is less annoying than the guy at Heathrow and he checks behind the laces to make sure I don’t have a machete, 200g of cocaine and a small family of Mexican nationals stashed down there. His English is considerably better than my German and he politely laughs as he comments “Big boots” and I reply with “Big feet.”

I get to have a chuckle as well as someone ahead of me is having a major strop as they are being told that they cannot take some of their toiletries on board. Apparently, he has come “all the way from LA” with no problem. It’s also clear that his luggage is way too large to take on board. The people dealing with him remain glacially polite, and I enjoy his discomfort all the more as he is sporting a “man-bun”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this is a valid sartorial choice somewhere – just not anywhere I’ve ever been.

I now have some time to kill in the Departure Lounge. Compared to Heathrow, it’s incredibly quiet. It doesn’t have less people, it’s just that none of them seem to feel the need to have screaming conversations at the top of their voices. It makes the whole place much more relaxing. What doesn’t make it more relaxing is the heat. No-one else seems particularly affected by this, so it adds to my theory of being allergic to Departure Lounges.

The relaxed atmosphere stops as soon as we try to get onto the plane. The woman at the gate came up and made an announcement which I barely understood – worryingly, it was in English. I (and several others) guessed that meant we should get ready, so we moved forward to the signs that clearly put priority boarding on the left and everyone else on the right. The lady became increasingly frustrated with people stood in the middle, so repeatedly stormed up and down yelling at them to keep the middle clear. Each time in English. It didn’t seem to occur to her that a flight from Berlin to Spain might not have a high percentage of English-speakers – and judging by the confusion on the faces around me, this was definitely the case.

Eventually, the queues were sorted out to her liking and we started to head to the gate. At this point, it became clear that most of the people with priority boarding were in the wrong queue and they tried to queue-jump. Luckily, I was near enough to the front that none got ahead of me or I would have had to give them a severe stare.

I end up beside a Scottish lady who was very open in her conversation, and made us all aware of her private business despite none of us actually being spoken to. Apparently she is the wife of a diplomat and she is concerned that she went to an “underground concert”. I check around for lurking papparazzi, but clearly no-one gave a damn. There is a delay when she reaches the desk and, to her surprise, is asked for her ID. It’s not a surprise to the rest of us, as we’ve been told to take out our IDs every thirty seconds for last twenty minutes, but clearly she is used to being recognised. She digs it out of her capacious purse, and returns to her one-sided conversation. I just hope she isn’t sat anywhere near me.

As we head down to board the plane, the whole “left and right” thing comes up again, with the woman adamant that we mustn’t walk down the centre of the gangway. Seeing as it’s now only wide enough for two people, this is unlikely to be a problem – until two air staff decide to head out of the plane. They, of course, do this as inconveniently as possible, one walking up to the left and the other to the right. As a result, we’re all standing in the middle when she comes back into view and she really starts yelling.

As we get onto the plane, they tell us to put masks on. This results in people stopping in the middle of the aisle to fumble around with their bags, and blocking the entry for everyone else. Except me. I’m sitting in Row B, so I stow my bag, put my mask on and sit down and almost immediately wonder why my knees are now approximately at the level of my chin. My pre-booked seat with “extra leg-room” clearly doesn’t exist and I just hope that no-one sits beside me. If they do, its going to be a very uncomfortable journey.

To my relief, the Scottish lady heads further back, although I can still hear her voice echoing down the plane like some kind of soap-opera obsessed banshee. It does then occur to me to wonder why a diplomats wife is travelling on Easyjet! In front of me is an empty seat, it’s yard of legroom taunting me as I sit half sideways to fit my legs in. For a moment, it looks as though it’s going to be empty, but one of the last people on is a diminutive woman who claims the seat. Of course, by now all the overhead storage is full and she has an excellent and extended moan about having to carry it further down the plane. She then disappears from view as she settles into her seat. If she tries to recline it during the journey, I’ll give her what for!

So we settle down to wait for take off. Twenty minutes later, the doors are still open. They then turn the planes power off and on again. I’m no expert, but that’s not a good sign. There is a huge sigh of relief when the power comes back on, but no-one has bothered to tell us what’s going on. In fact, they’re not talking to us at all. 36 minutes after we should have taken off, they finally close the door and the captain comes onto the intercom to tell us “the problem has been sorted out”. Wait – there was a problem? What was it? Has William Shatner spotted a gremlin on the wing? We wait excitedly for more information but instead get the incredibly predictable security briefing.

Finally, the plan disengages from the airport and we head for Barcelona. It seems for quite some time as though we’re going to drive the whole way there but eventually it lurches into the sky and takes a very gentle ascent path, giving us all a lovely view of the patchwork fields of Germany. All this delay does very little for anyone who is a nervous flier, so I try to calm down and send up prayers to God, Jahweh, Allah and Orlanth.

The rest of the journey is without incident – unless you want to hear about the in-flight food, which I suspect you do not. The approach to Barcelona is spectacular, with an impressive view of the city, Mount Tibidabo (*chuckle*) and Norman Fosters edifice.

The airport is the complete opposite of Berlin. It’s loud and energetic and everyone seems to be talking at the top of their voices. It’s also very hot – this is not, it transpires, my allergic reaction to Departure Lounges but the fact that the air temperature is over 30 degrees. (Yes, I know, after the last summer, that’s relatively low. But back then it was bloody hot!)

I head out to the Aerobus and I meet the most impatient driver I’ve ever come across. Every time someone asks him a question, he tuts and rolls his eyes and seems to take a great deal of pleasure making sure he answers in a language they will not understand. At the first stop there is a queue of tourists who are, not surprisingly, unsure of whether or not this is the right bus. Rather than helping them, he just drives off and mutters a comment which I’m sure was “Lovely tourists, enjoy your holiday” rather than anything derogatory.

The traffic on the way into town is crazy. He seems to be enjoying himself as his seat is incredibly highly sprung and he goes up and down like a kid on a bouncy castle. This enjoyment does not extend to tolerance for any delay, so when we turn onto an off-ramp that is packed with stationary cars, he leans on his horn. I consider asking why – there’s a solid traffic queue, so this will achieve nothing – but I don’t for two very important reasons: (1) I don’t speak much Spanish and even less Catalan and haven’t worked out which he is currently speaking; (2) I’m pretty sure I’ll end up at the side of the road with my luggage.

This is not a good introduction to Barcelona. The area we drive through looks like your Sim City game has gone out of control, so you’ve just dumped everything by a really big road. For a city of culture and architecture, I’m not impressed.

The bus drops me off at Plaza Catalunya which is absolutely packed and very impressive. I head down Las Ramblas which I’ve been told is really exciting and interesting. Yeah, I guess so – if you like Soho after dark. I pass the very lovely and scenic cannabis shops, the Erotic Museum of Barcelona and a man lying on the pavement with a sign saying “Homeless. Need money for weed.” At least he’s honest.

With all my trepidations about Barcelona, this is a nightmare. Luckily it’s not far to my hotel, so I can take shelter in there and re-group. Or so I hope.

I’m staying at a place called The Hotel Mont Thabor. I’ve given it a suitable Trip Advisor review, but I could summarise it in two words: A Shithole. Actually, that’s not fair to other shitholes. This is where shitholes go to die. This is a shithole that has really lost it’s way and is looked down on by other shitholes.

I head in – maybe it will be better on the inside. I am met by a greasy little man who has about him an ambience that makes me think he usually has to ask how many hours the room is being booked for. I try to engage him in conversation, and in three languages ask him whether it’s easier to speak Spanish or Catalan. He doesn’t understand and clearly just wants to return to his TV. My room is just off reception, and so I go into my residence for the next two days.

The lock on the door is the flimsiest thing since a conservative MP tried to justify a self-serving budget that “incidentally” gave him a £3000 pay rise. As a result, about 30 seconds after this photo, my bag is being used to jam the door shut. I hate it here. Apart from some stellar air-conditioning, this place is an absolute hole. It’s taken everything I was concerned about with Barcelona and added to it.

I’ll have a little side-bar here, because while I was in Barcelona, I posted the above photo while trying to explain my Facebook post “Barcelona is s**t” (You’ll get the full explanation in day two). One person’s response to this was to post the photo on a Whatsapp group that I’m no longer a member of and make several comments about people not doing due diligence before they book a hotel. Let me just set the record straight, should that feculent tosser ever read this. Unlike him, I’m on a budget. Unlike him, I don’t get off on posting plates of pretentious food that I’ve made and boasting about how generous I am to allow my servants to shelter in the house during forest fires. Unlike him, I actually have friends. I did check this place out – and it’s comments were just as varied as those I had for my previous stay in Berlin. Finally, strangely enough when I’m completely strung out and on my own in a foreign country, the last thing I need is some smug bastard like him dissing me to other people I know. Side-bar over.

So here I am, sat in this shithole. I’m sharing a toilet and shower and I really want to go out and get something to eat. But I don’t want to follow the safety guidance I’ve been given – I’m definitely not leaving my valuables here – and taking them with me into the evening Barcelona crowd is just not worth the risk. So I buy two massive bottles of water from Senor Sleaze, and hole up in my room until morning. I spend some time trying to find another hotel for the next two days, but they either cost a fortune, or are a considerable distance. I’m just going to have to stick it out.
Tomorrow, I have Sagrada Familia and la Pedrera. That will keep me busy for most of the day. Surely things will get better!

*Bonus picture*
Because that was a lot of writing and very few pictures, here’s a random otter. ENJOY!

So, dear reader(s), I left you on a cliff-hanger with my financial worries looming over me like a really big looming thing. Despite all my worries and concerns, I sleep fairly well. I do, however, wake up to a stern lecture from my legs who are not happy with the amount of walking I did yesterday. After some negotiation, they agree to carry on. Outside is a beautiful sunny day, although Accuweather and the doom-laden receptionist still claim there are going to be thunderstorms. I decide to ignore them and head down to fruhstuck.

After yesterdays encounter with what would locally be described as ein grosses fruhstuck, I decide to go for something smaller. Ironically I end up going for the Franzosisches Fruhstuck – after all, when in Germany, why not go French?! When it arrives it is (to my surprise) not obscenely huge – though the bowl of chopped fruit is still a bit weird.

I’ve included a shot of the menu – I dread to think how huge Bismarck and Walters were.

As I work my way through my croissant, I ponder the day ahead: Charlottenberg Palace, the Victory Column and Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. A friend also wants me to find the Sausage Museum, but I’m not going to expend too much effort on that. Money is still concerning me, but I’ve worked out that my overdraft should be sufficient to keep me going, though things will be tight for the rest of month. I decide to ignore this and enjoy the holiday.

By the time I leave the hotel, it looks like Accuweather is going to be right. It’s clouded over, there are some brisk winds and it’s definitely colder. Accuweather now says it won’t rain – clearly the water descending from the sky is some form of motile water that is previously unknown to science! The Age-Appropriate hoodie is deployed and I head for the bus.

The journey is relatively simple – one bus and one train and then a bit of a walk. The busses still strike me as odd. The drivers can clearly see what is going on upstairs – someone who wasn’t wearing their mask got a severe talking to! Despite that, the seats on the top floors are covered with graffiti. It’s all a little bizarre.

The rain only lasts until I get off the train, when things ease off to the point where it all feels like being at home. I manage to stay dry on my way to the palace and I get there just before the doors open.

Inside the ticket is a steal at 13 Euros and gives access to the old palace, new wing and garden. Entrance comes with an extremely comprehensive audio guide that covers the entire old palace.

This is a truly spectacular place and has been restored extremely well. I only find out just how much has been restored in the first room where there is a computerised demonstration of the history of the palace. This is a top down view that has little people and carriages and wagons running around and reminds me (for no readily apparent reason) of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time (for all you bloody children out there, it was a television show). I’m therefore smiling to myself inappropriately when the screen darkens, searchlights appear and the Allies bomb the crap out of it. I feel vaguely embarrassed but does mean that I appreciate the scale of the reconstruction and restoration.

It takes me over an hour just to go around the old palace, which is remarkably beautiful. Lots of art, lots of silver, lots of. displays. Way too much to talk about in detail, so here’s a montage.

As you can see, their decorator favoured the under-stated approach! 🙂

It is incredibly beautiful and very impressive. There is a level of detail and intricacy that makes Laurence Llewellyn Bowen look like a soberly dressed prison chaplain. And it is in room, after room, after room. The reconstruction is incredible as is their attention to detail. One of the paintings was slashed with a sabre. When they restored the paintings, they made the decision to leave the sabre slashes apparent as they felt this was part of the story of the piece.

The audio guide is very good and by the end of the tour, I have learned various useful facts, which I will now regurgitate for you:

1. The traditional Prussian spiked helmet originated in Russia
2. The Prussian obsession with military uniforms and militaria was started by the aptly named Frederick the Soldier and was, in part at least, a fashion statement
3. Royal beds were very rarely slept in
4. In an audience chamber, you could tell how important you were by whether or not you were offered a seat. If you were, how much the monarch liked you determined whether the seat had arms or a cushion. (I am going to start doing that at work.)
   

It is a stunning place, but I decide not to check out the new wing as I’m feeling a bit “palaced” out. I have the same reaction in art galleries and museums. There’s only so much staring at things I can do before I get restless. Also, there was virtually nowhere to sit down in the palace, so my legs were reminding me of the terms of the entente agreed to this morning.

I decide to call it ein Tag and head off to the Victory Column (aka the much more difficult to spell and pronounce, Siegessaule). When I posted pictures of the column on Facebook, some smart-alec commented that Germany didn’t have any victories to boast of. Well (according to Wikipedia), the Siegessaule was designed by Heinrich Strack to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Second Schleswig War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria and its German allies in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). So there.

I’ve already been past it several times as it has a prominent position in the Tiergarten, so I head over there on a bus. The column is right in the middle of a very busy roundabout, so the first problem is how the hell do I get to it?

I start to walk around the roundabout, traversing the numerous very busy, multi-lane roads that come off it and looking forlornly for a way across. There must be some way as there are people over there. I can even see some of them at the top (in the picture you can just see their heads in the section below the angel).

At this point it’s worth commenting on the tricky nature of crossing roads in Berlin. The crossings I am using are all traffic light controlled, so I’m thinking it should be easy. When the light shows red for me, clearly I do not cross. Foolishly, I assume that when the light is green, I can cross. This is mostly true. it seems as though the pedestrian crossing might be given a green light, but the traffic doesn’t get a red one. As a result, I often find myself nearly mown down by cars, bicycles and fucking e-scooters as they casually charge across the crossing. Everyone else seems to have the same problems as me, so this is clearly normal. I wonder what it will be like in Barcelona and Paris? You never know, you may get the chance to find out!

Anyway, back to the plot (or as much of a plot as Michael Bay ever puts into a film). I’ve got halfway around and still found no way across and can’t see any way across at ground level. I did find this chap though.

Look it’s that bloke they named a Fruhstuck after!! If you’re lucky, he’ll turn up again. (It’s almost like planning has taken place!)

Eventually, I realise that the large concrete building ahead of me isn’t a public toilet, but instead is the entrance to a pedestrian underpass. It is, unusually, completely un-signposted and (of course) there was one right by my bus stop. However, if I’d found it, I would have missed out on that nice Herr Bismarck. (Or “birthmark” as autocorrect keeps insisting).

Anyway, I get across, join the queue and pay my 3.5 euros (not exactly breaking the bank, is it!). There is a large friendly sign telling me that it’s 60 steps to the first viewing platform, and another 230 to the top. My legs are voting for the lower platform, so I trick them by stopping off there for a walk around and another view of Herr Bismarck.

Having lulled them into a false sense of security, the legs and I tackle the rest of climb…

… which is pretty steep. Luckily, the designers have very sensibly put seats at regular intervals. An elderly German lady are united by the lack of a common language and our dislike of stairs and we encourage each other to the top. The viewing area at the top is absolutely packed. There is just enough room to squeeze past people, but the view is excellent. Oh look, there’s that Bismarck chap again!

There’s a superb view towards the Brandenburg Gate.

It’s amazing to think that most of the trees in the Tiergarten were chopped down during and after World War II.

Finally, off to somewhere that is for me one of the most iconic places in Berlin – Checkpoint Charlie. My mastery of the bus and train system is now complete, so after a very slick journey I get to Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. As I get there, It occurs to me that I haven’t since breakfast, so I head into a shop called Kamps and order a coffee and a slice of butter-streuselkuchen. There is a short discussion when I ask for a smaller slice and find that I can’t have one, so something that probably features in Weight Watchers meetings under the heading “AVOID”, lands on my plate like an elephant steak. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if the slice of cake is longer than the plate, you either need bigger plates or to serve SMALLER PORTIONS! It is delicious – but I only eat about a quarter of it. The rest gets wrapped up and put in the backpack – and eventually thrown away.

Checkpoint Charlie is weird and, overall, the most disappointing thing about my visit to Berlin. The old checkpoint is just in the middle of the street, and I almost walked past without realising what it was.

The wall itself has completely disappeared, except for a small portion of it which is completely covered in graffiti.

I can’t work out whether the graffiti is deliberate or whether it’s just part of the general graffiti I’ve seen everywhere else. I’m actually disappointed that more of the wall wasn’t kept intact – but I can also understand the desire to rip it down. No worries, I can always buy a piece of it in the sad tourist trap known as the Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. The museum is over-priced compared to everywhere else I’ve been in Berlin and the shop at the start and end of the tour might as well just be called “The Tourist Trap”. You can buy 99 flavours of total crap here, including “guaranteed” pieces of the wall. No bookmarks though.

The museum itself has a problem – several problems actually. It’s dealing with a sombre and sensitive subject and they have a huge amount of material that they want to try and put over. They also want to put it into a historical context. Personally, I would think this would lend itself to being organised chronologically so that we can understand the political backdrop before being shown the various ways that people tried to escape. Instead, it gives the impression of a collection that someone has built up over time and pieces have just been put in where they will fit. Rather than something like an audio-guide, they have vast screeds of text on the wall – made vaster (more vast?) because they are in multiple languages. And whoever did their translation, is not very good so I find myself struggling to understand what they are trying to say. As a result you have to really concentrate to get anything out of the experience.

My concentration is somewhat impaired by the woman just ahead of me who has decided that this is the ideal place to bring her Jack Russell. It’s okay though, because he’ll stay in her shoulder-bag.

Oops, he got out.

Oops, he got out again.

Oops, well, what a shock, he’s off again.

Oops, you’ll never guess what happened now?

Frustrated, and a little pissed off, I head off for my last visit of the day – Potsdam Plaza. This is meant to be spectacular during the evening, but even during the day it is dominated by some striking modern architecture.

At ground level, I’m intrigued by all the pictures of people and head for a closer look.

Is it art? Some kind of installation? A comment on the diverse communities in the 21st century? No, it’s a fucking advert

They’re trying to say that it’s “art” but actually it’s just an insurance company cynically using diversity as a selling point.

I head on to the Sony Centre.

It’s pretty spectacular, but little more than a frame for a variety of ways to divest me of my money. Seeing as I’m already a bit concerned about that, and my legs are definitely not happy, I decide to head back to the hotel even though it’s only 3pm.

I’ve managed to get to the one part of Berlin where there is no direct bus, so I have a bit of a walk to an appropriate bus stop. It’s beside what would seem to be a car showroom.

This actually the National Gallery, as evidenced by the odd statuary outside.

Hold on! Isn’t that second one from Babylon 5?

Hmm.

I head back to the hotel, aware that I have barely scratched the surface of Berlin. Tomorrow, I’m off to Barcelona and although my flight isn’t until mid-afternoon I won’t really have the chance to sample more of this fascinating city.

I loved it here. The people are friendly, the city is amazing and it feels like I’ve packed a lot into a relatively short time. Now off to the Mediterranean, where apparently it’s a scorcher!

Despite the room being quite comfortable, I have a pretty awful nights sleep. I blame this on the two pints of beer, but sadly, being awake half the night seems to be the norm for me currently. It’s made worse by the fact that there is no water in the room and I have nothing to carry water in – so I have to keep padding down to the bathroom and drinking from the tap. Water gets put on the shopping list. At least my repeated journeys to and fro are helping seal the words Ziehen and Drucken firmly in mind. (“Pull” and “Push”). 6am hoves into view and I head down to use the showers and have the usual fun deciphering the deceptively complex controls. This is made more fun by the fact the shower takes ages to warm up, so I’m not sure I’ve moved the dial in the right direction…. at which point it becomes scaldingly hot. This is also the point that I realise they don’t provide soap. The shopping list grows. I’d best add suntan lotion to it just in case the weather forecast is wrong and we aren’t getting a day of rain and thunderstorms.

I get back to my room and get dressed just in time for breakfast – or I would be, if I hadn’t misread my watch when I got up. In fact it’s only 05:45 and I have an hour to wait. I would absolutely love to blame the time difference, but I can’t. While I’m waiting, I review todays plan: Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate and Potsdam Plaza. And I should be able to get Unter den Linden in as well. I have tickets for the Reichstag, but they close in inclement weather, so I’m really hoping the forecast is wrong.

7am finally comes round and I head into the restaurant for breakfast, I hover near the door because it’s very unclear where to go and I’m in sight of a waitress who is having an animated conversation with the only other occupant of the bar. This is clearly the wrong thing to do as she turns to me, waves her arms angrily and shouts at me in a stream of unintelligible German. I explain that I don’t speak German and she rather abruptly says “Just sit anywhere”. Suitably chastened I head into another room and sit down. No tip for her, I feel.

I decide to go for the fruhstuck – of which, there are four. Not wishing to be greedy, I go for the second smallest. I am relieved I didn’t choose the biggest one, because when it turns up, it is vast!

There is at least a pound of cheese on the plate (some of which can best be described as “gnarly”). Although I’m a keen cheese eater, this is too much, even for me. I make barely a dent in it and half expect to get shouted at by Frau Blucher when she returns. Instead, she gets me a paper bag and I make up a cheese roll for lunch. I clearly misjudged her and actually she’s quite friendly

My Reichstag tour is booked for 10:15 and I have to get there twenty minutes beforehand. So, naturally I plan to be there for 09:30. The journey involves two buses and I’m still a little nervous about the bus system, so I plan on leaving by 08:30. At 08:00 I’m still in breakfast, so I pay, rush up to my room, grab my kit and head out. Just as I’m walking up to the bus stop, it sails past, so I make a run for it, and happily take my seat. I then manage to arrive an hour early.

I get off a stop early. This is, of course, planned, because it means I get a great view of the Reichstag as I walk up to it.

The tour only goes around the dome on top which, clearly, is a relatively recent addition to the building. It was added during the reconstruction of the Reichstag in the 1990s and was designed by Norman Foster – who seems to get everywhere, and design what can best be described as “weird shit”.

Oh, and if you look to the left of the Reichstag, that odd needle-shaped thing in the distance is the Fernsehturm. It looks quite small here, but the base of that ball in the middle is at 203m. This may become relevant later.

I have a roam around the outside of the Reichstag. Now, I’m sort of expecting there to be the remains of a bloody great wall around here somewhere, but there’s nothing to be seen. Oh wait, is this it?

I confess to being a little disappointed. Maybe the plaque can shed some light on it.

So, a fairly important wall, just not the one I’m after. I head on towards the Brandenburg gate, first passing Germany’s answer to the TARDIS.

Apparently, there is a line of different colour bricks to show where the Berlin Wall used to be. I can’t find it, but I do find the Brandenburg Gate.

The Brandenburg Gate is truly impressive, a vast edifice at the end of a long straight road to the west, with the Siegessaule (Victory Column) at the other end. To the east, is the Unter den Linden.

I then head south to the starkly named Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, aka the Holocaust Memorial. This is a remarkable memorial that covers a 200,000 sq ft site. (Yes, I fact-checked that because it sounded huge). It is simple, but effective.

It is bleak and solemn and despite the fact that it’s beside a busy road, remarkably quiet. I’m here at a good time of day as there are very few people around. I don’t get the full effect until I walk through to the centre. The ground dips towards the middle, and the obelisks (stelae?) get bigger. As a result, it’s like walking through a narrow canyon.

When you’re in the middle, the sound of the road fades and it’s still and calm. It’s both oppressive and impressive as these massive blocks stretch high above your head. I have issues with art sometimes (wait until I get to Barcelona!), but I can really appreciate this. I head out with a sense of relief and make my way back to the Reichstag.

The promised rain and thunderstorms have failed to appear and so I head into the security station, pausing to snap a picture of a …. thing:

I’m glad they said what it was, otherwise I’m sure some people would have used it as a bootscraper.

Entry to the Reichstag is free – but not free of a security check, so I head through with a crowd of people and head up. Masks are on and we get audio guides as we step out onto the Reichstag roof.

The dome is am amazing bit of architecture. It clearly doesn’t match the architecture around it, but somehow it works. Inside the dome is a curving ramp that takes you to the top and a huge mirrored cone in the centre. The audio guide is clever enough that it senses where you are, so if you walk on too far, it stops and switches to the next segment. I try to fool it by walking back down … clearly this has been tried before and it happily copes.

As you ascend, the view over Berlin gets better and better, until you get to the top, where the roof is open to the elements. According to my guidebook, this is to symbolically “allow for the free and open dissemination of debate throughout the country”.

Just as I’m wondering what happens when it rains, my audio guide illuminates me. The mirrored cone is hollow. Rain water is collected in it and repurposed for use in the Reichstag. That Norman is a clever chap! I start to head down and appreciate just how high this dome is.

The mirrored cone, by the way, serves a purpose other than allowing people to take cool photos with their reflections in it. It reflects light into the council chamber below, reducing the amount of lighting required both there and in the surrounding offices. Definitely a clever chap.

As it’s still relatively early, I decide to hike down the Unter den Linden and visit the Fernsehturm. I start heading down and spot a shop that allows me to stock up on water, the obligatory bookmark and a Berlin baseball cap, so that everyone will know I’m a tourist.

This is now into what was East Berlin, and there are some suitably monolithic buildings along the route.

For some reason, they’re more ornate than I imagined they would be. Some are a massive surprise – like the Berliner Dom (aka Berlin Cathedral).

And the biggest surprise of all:

The threatened poor weather has failed to appear. In fact, it’s sunny and warm and I’m keeping an eye out for somewhere to buy suntan lotion. I haven’t found one by the time I approach the Fernsehturm via the Neptune Fountain.

The Fernsehturm really looks insanely tall from here.

I spot a chemists and manage to stock up on sun tan lotion and shower gel. Great service – the lady also gives me some vitamin C tablets and a pack of tissues to wipe the lotion away from my eyes. I find a place near the Fernsehturm to apply the lotion to the skin.

On to the Fernsehturm. I decided not to pay for the 3D visual experience and just head upstairs, where I wrangle my way through security. There, the security guard asks me to empty my bag – which turns out to be quite embarrassing as on top are 2 empty plastic water bottles and a used tissue. They are followed by sun tan lotion, shower gel, charger and cable, iPad mini, Age-Appropriate Hoody… at that point she gave up and waved me through. At least we didn’t get as far as the cheese roll, which I’m reminded of as someone on Facebook has commented on my gargantuan breakfast.

The viewing deck is at the base of the sphere and, as I said earlier, is 203m off the ground. The lift is insanely fast – fast enough to make my ears pop. The views over the city are stunning – and give me a good idea how far I’ve walked today.

It’s an excellent experience and there’s a restaurant here. I don’t go to it – partially as I expect it to be insanely expensive – so I head back down in the ear-popping lift and find somewhere to sit outside to eat my cheese roll. It’s bakingly hot now, and I’m glad I’ve got the sun tan lotion. I decide to head back to the Kurfurstendamm and grab a bus rather than hiking back. I’m getting more confident with them now and love the way that they both announce the stop coming up and show you the next three stops.

I’d been told to visit the Kurfurstendamm by several people and to my disappointment it just seems to be an extended set of shopping streets. However, at the centre of it is the church that is referred to as the Broken Tooth, alongside it’s remarkably ugly modern replacement.

And then I hit my first major hitch for this holiday. I pick up a couple of t-shirts and decide to pay using my Capital One card. Now, this is my only credit card and I use it exclusively for on-line shopping. I paid for some of the airfares on it and I’ve got about £1000 on it to use this holiday – this includes the last hotel I’ll be staying at which is the only one that hasn’t taken the money in advance, and is the most expensive hotel. So, I get the card out and then suddenly realise that I don’t know what the PIN is. I can’t use it contactless, because I’ve never activated it for that. I know exactly WHERE the PIN is, I just remember it, because I’ve never used it. I end up sheepishly paying using my normal account card. It’s ok though, I can get to my PIN using the Capital One app. So I head back to my hotel to do that.

Excellent. Settle down in my room, having filled my two plastic water bottles from the tap. Hah – the plan is coming together. OK, activate the app. Oh… because I haven’t used the App for 6 months I have to reactivate it. No problems: all I have to do it put in ………. the FUCKING PIN!

This is manageable. I’ll call the helpline. They are VERY helpful and agree to send me the PIN – to my home address. I point out the uselessness of this. The poor woman at the end of the phone keeps telling me that there is no way they can see my PIN as it is under the “highest level of security”. They do come up with an alternative solution – get the hotel to take the money out remotely before I arrive. Really? My god, you’re a genius! Except I thought of that two hours ago, and the hotel isn’t answering my FUCKING EMAILS!

I’m now left having to pay for everything out of my account. Worse, I arrive in Paris the day before I get paid, so probably won’t have enough money in my account. Capital One are absolutely useless. It feels as though they have royally screwed me.

I’m rather peeved (as you may have surmised), so instead of heading into Potsdam Plaza, I head out to somewhere more local and end up buying a kebab. In Slough (culinary capital that we are), there is a shop called The German Doner Kebab (where, apparently, you can buy “Kebabs done right”). They do actually make remarkably good kebabs and I’m keen to try them in Berlin. Of course, they don’t call them German Doner Kebabs here 🙂 I go for a small one, and I’m relieved that I do as they provide me with half a cow and I head off to find somewhere to eat it. It’s very good, but like breakfast I can only manage about a quarter of it.

I throw the rest away and head back to the hotel, where I lie awake worrying about money.

Once again, I have set forth on holiday and felt the need to take notes and then inflict my musings on the Internet in the hope of an elusive but lucrative book deal. Since one of my friends has become a Published Author (the capitals are his), I have been seething with resentment and envy and wait to be discovered by some publisher who has been stranded in a dark corner of the internet due to their triple addiction to Opal Fruits, Emmerdale and the Great British Sewing Bee. This may be a forlorn hope, but it gets me through the long dark winter nights.

Anyway, to return to a more fruitful line of thought I’d better explain how this came about. After the completion of A-Z, I was at a loose end as to what to do this year. I spoke with two of my friends – the Published Author and his Long-Suffering Wife (her capitals) – about a trip that I’d been planning which involved driving from Lands End to John O’Groats and visiting various places on the way. This was to take about 10 days. After some discussion we decided that we were only seeing half of the country and so a far more grandiose plan was hatched which required a total of 21 days, to be done over two years. I definitely want to do this, but I had a few concerns financially. I retire next year and while it is clear that I will have to find another job, it is far from certain what my financial situation will be. As a result, I asked them if we could defer it for a couple of years.

That left me without a planned holiday. I have visited very few places in Europe and so I thought that it would be a good idea to approach it in the same way that I approached A-Z. I had a look online and, before sanity could leap forward and stop me, booked my flights and hotels. The plan was simple: three European destinations in 10 days. What could possibly be a problem about that? Well, two things sprang to mind almost immediately: (1) Covid; (2) It’s just plain stupid. Recklessly, I decided to ignore both of these minor concerns. After all, I’d just spent 5 years travelling around England on my own. The only major difference is the language and, despite my lack of fluency in all three relevant languages (four, actually, but more of that later) I would surely be able to cope. After all, I’d managed perfectly well in Wales, Cornwall and Yorkshire!

All the bookings got done in September last year, and I scheduled the holiday to run from late May to early June. That way, I would get paid part of the way through and I could spread the finances. I also have a credit card that I put one of the hotels on just to make sure there weren’t any problems. Armed with that, I then plunged into the things that now have to be thought about when travelling abroad: Covid Pass, Passenger Locator Form, toiletries in 100ml containers, secure wallet. I rounded it all off with a sneaky holster style thing that would allow me to carry my valuables around with me – perfect as long as I would be wearing at least two layers. (As it happened, it never got used – partially because it was always too warm).

Before all that was done, I’d had to navigate my way through the seat booking system on the plane. On all three I went for extra legroom, and on Easyjet opted for Priority Boarding. Then I found that different airlines have different sizes of allowable luggage in the cabin. I ended up paying for a small bag to be put in the hold, but as the holiday approached decided to go with cabin bags only to stop that enthralling wait in the Arrivals lounge as your luggage takes the OAP equivalent of an Alton Towers thrill-ride.

As usual I packed well in advance … about 2 hours before leaving home. I ended up taking the same bags as I took to Jersey. Consider briefly that I went there for three days, and this time I was packing for 9 days. I was going to travel wearing boots and was packing my trainers. Why I didn’t just take my trainers, I don’t know! This gave me my first packing issue. I put them in the suitcase, at which point it was half full and it was clear that my clothing wouldn’t fit. So the trainers got stuffed into my backpack, and everything else carefully folded into the case, and zipped shut. And then re-packed as I’d forgotten my shorts. And then re-packed again after someone texted me to make sure that the Age-Appropriate Hoody was going with me. I had already made a significant reduction in my normal packing by only bringing one book with me: Independent People by Halldor Laxness. Well, we don’t count guide books do we? We do? Oh, well I had four books then. And several on my iPad.

Everything gets packed in good time and I head down to my friends who are giving me a lift to Heathrow. Heathrow now charges £5 for the pleasure of dropping someone off, so the day starts with an argument about me paying the fiver. I end up sneakily leaving it in their kitchen and we head off to the airport.

I wander in and am immediately accosted by a “helpful person” who directs me to the end of an unfeasibly long queue. This is apparently the “fast track” that we go through if we aren’t booking luggage into the hold. As the line inches forward, the staff amuse themselves by making up rules. The man in front of me is wearing a very smart light blue suit, but seems to have no shirt on underneath. One of the staff yells at him to get his attention and tells him to put on a shirt. To my surprise, he shucks of his jacket and rather shame-facedly gets a shirt out of his suitcase and puts it on. I am now concerned that there may be other clothing rules in play that I am not aware of. Luckily, this seems to have just been a ploy by the staff member to get a good look at his bare torso. Of course, the poor guy is now stuck in line with everyone who has seen this happen. Luckily most of us are English, so nothing is said.

Finally, I get to the front of the line (ok, it was only about twenty minutes, but it seemed longer). There I scan in my boarding pass and join a second queue under a sign cheerfully telling us that it will “only” take 29 minutes to get through security. The line heads forward at the same glacially slow place, interrupted only for people in wheelchairs to be whisked past. There are a variety of signs telling us to empty our pockets, take out iPads and electronic devices, remove jackets and take out our bag of toiletries. As a result, by the time I get to the security desk I feel as though I’m completing a juggling challenge on some particularly ridiculous reality show. After all the signs, they haven’t mentioned watches or belts. As a result the line keeps halting as they have to tell people when they get to the scanner. So, they get added to the items that I am juggling. I put them on the conveyor belt and still get stopped – by my boots. They get removed and then I get to stand in the machine with my hands in the air while the staff look on and make disparaging comments.

Eventually, I get through and recover my luggage – half of which is missing. A very polite lady apologetically checks my toiletries and then with one mighty stagger (I’m still juggling everything), I am through to the departure lounge. It’s taken just under an hour since I was dropped off to go approximately 200 yards. However, it’s time to start the holiday so I wander down to the Wetherspoons for my first highly nutritional meal of the holiday – scrambled eggs on toast. I wash it down with a Pepsi Max, as I’m absolutely roasting.

While I’m eating my breakfast and contemplating my 2 hour wait for the plane, I’ll use the time on a sidebar about airports – specifically departure lounges. Are they all kept at a very high temperature or a high humidity? Because at every one I visited on holiday (including the Eurostar departure lounge), I ended up sweating as though I’d just run a mile. (Which, for me, is a LOT!). Weirdly, I didn’t have the same effect in arrivals lounges. It could be psychosomatic and is part of my nerves around flying …. but why did it happen at bloody Eurostar? It’s very odd and definitely meant that I had an uncomfortable time in the queue at Heathrow. The only thing I had to wipe my face was my handkerchief which was absolutely sodden by the time I got to the Wetherspoons. I seemed to have acclimatised while finishing off my breakfast.

Heathrow tricks me into thinking that things are moving forward by announcing the departure gate an hour prior to the airplane leaving. I obediently head down and grab a seat and wait…. and wait. My wait is briefly broken by the entertainment of a woman who felt the need to play all of us some music on her phone. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I mentally filed it under “God Awful”. While the staff pretend to be doing something very important (i.e. wait for the plane to turn up), they repeatedly tell us that it is a “very busy flight. Your hand luggage may have to go in the hold.” I’d been warned about this by friends who went to Lisbon recently. I take a firmer grip on my case. Much to my surprise, I go straight through and am soon in line to get to my seat. This is, of course, delayed by people who insist on standing in the middle of the aisle while rooting through their luggage for the handkerchief that they must absolutely have right now and has (of course) slipped down to the bottom. Despite this, I’m soon sat in my seat by the emergency exit with my bag under the seat in front of me and my rucksack in the overhead bin. Ahhh – first hurdle over. I think that I’m going to be lucky and not be sharing the row, but I’m soon joined by a pair of American students. They’re not actually travelling together, but both seem quite friendly.

The cabin staff give us time to settle down before telling us that we’re not allowed to store anything under the seat in front. By that time, none of the bins near us have any room in, so I end up stowing my bag halfway down the plane and on the other side of the flimsy curtain that will later be drawn to shield higher class passengers from us hoi-polloi.

It’s about now that I remember that I dislike flying. I used to be fine with it but when I was working for Fujitsu I travelled up to Edinburgh with a colleague who used to be an Aeronautical Engineer. He was a remarkably bad flyer because, as he kindly explained to me, “I know everything that can go wrong.” And that’s when I started to hate flying.

Despite that, we have an uneventful flight. The student beside me makes a desultory attempt at conversation, but is far more interested in the game on his phone. As am I. I do get a little confused when the pilot announces that we’ll be landing in thirty minutes, although they might take a “short cut”! A short cut? Seriously, how the hell does that work? I’m still mulling on that one when we land at Berlin Brandenberg Airport.

I then have to negotiate passport control. I’m very tempted to try the European route as I still have a euro passport, but decide I’d best be sensible and join the longer queue. This moves pretty quickly though and I soon get to try out my German for the first time. He is visibly unimpressed, but luckily not offended and I’m soon through and heading out of the airport.

I’ve decided to head to the guest house so that I can dump my bag and then maybe head back into the centre of Berlin. The journey isn’t exactly straightforward – train to Sudkreuz, Ringbahn to Hallensee and then a bus. I’ve found all this out from Google Maps – something that I will rely on a lot over the coming days. Though it lets me down immediately by guiding me to what looks like the centre of a large office block. It takes me a little while to work out that the station is underground (largely due to the lack of signs) and I eventually head down to the platform. I haven’t deciphered the way the trains are referred to yet and manage to miss my first train before working out where I need to be to catch the next one.

Part of my confusion has been caused by the fact that I’ve walked onto the platform without going through any kind of barrier. This is the same for all the stations that I used while in Berlin. In fact, no one ever asked to see a ticket. I had bought one beforehand – its called the Berlin WelcomeCard and you can download and print it yourself. It gives free travel on busses, trams and trains throughout Berlin and reductions at certain tourist venues. Well worth picking up for peace of mind if nothing else.

Anyway, the train arrives and to my surprise it’s a double decker. First class seems to be upstairs, so I plonk myself in what seems a very luxurious seat downstairs, opposite a young lady who gives me evils over her mask. It takes me a while to work out why – masks are mandatory on public transport in Berlin. Somewhat shamefacedly, I slip mine on and return to concentrating on getting off at the right stop. Which is pretty straightforward as Sudkreuz is the first stop.

This is helped by an announcement as the train pulls away. It is hugely long and seems to come in three acts with at least one intermission. I have absolutely no idea what has been said. Luckily, he then announces in English “Dear passengers, welcome to the train to Rostock.” Wait – is that it? I know he said a darn sight more than that in German. I feel cheated. A bit like watching a subtitled film and when a character yells “Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!”, the subtitle just says “Damn!”

Sudkreuz comes up after about twenty minutes and I start the hunt for the Ringbahn. This turns out to be simple – I walk up the stairs to the platform and there the train is. I’ve worked out by now that the Ringbahn is a circular rail route that goes all the way around Berlin and, unlike the Spiral Line in London, is an actual circle. It’s pinned on four stations: Sudkreuz, Ostkreuz, Westkreuz and …. can you guess the fourth one? Yes, of course it’s Gesundbrunnen. Apparently they wanted to change the name to Nordkreuz but people objected.

The problem then is working out which way the train is going. The ever practical Germans have a solution and the front of the train has a symbol on it:

.. which indicates which way around the Ringbahn the train is going. Simple.

The train is much more like the underground trains I’m used to – and by that I mean, shabby. As we head around to Hallensee, I’m surprised by the sheer volume of graffiti adorning walls and bridges on either side of the track. They either don’t clean it off and this is the accumulated graffiti of years, or there are massive gangs of youths roaming the streets with spray cans. I’m not sure which is true, but during my time in Berlin, I find there is a lot of graffiti – on monuments, walls, and the upstairs of busses. Given the fact that all the busses have CCTV and the drivers are very aware of people who aren’t wearing masks, this surprises me a lot. But on this journey it unsettles me a bit – I’m starting to worry about the hotel I’m staying at. This is the most salubrious of the three places I’m staying and the areas that we’re travelling through do not fill me with confidence.

I shouldn’t have worried. The hotel is in Grunewald, which is quite an affluent suburb of Berlin. At least I assume it is, judging from some of the houses that I walk past after I get off the bus.

The place that I’m staying is the Hotel St.-Michaels-Heim. It’s quite impressive as I walk up to it and not quite what I was expecting (in a good way).

It’s an odd setup in that one end of the building is a hotel, while the other end is a hostel. I’m at the hostel end, which is cheaper and which means I’ll be sharing a bathroom. What I didn’t realise was that I’d be sharing a bathroom with the entire floor! The bedrooms are clean, but basic – I had to make my own bed. Oh, the horror! However, it’s quiet and comfortable and the friendly receptionist assures me that the bar is open.

I sort my things out and then head down for a medicinal drink. On the way, I pass the on-site church (not a chapel, it’s a church!) and the frankly rather impressive entrance hall.

The bar is outside on the terrace and there are a large group of people here who are clearly having a very good time. Once the staff realise that I’m not part of the group, they reassure me that the bar is open and I’m soon sat down with a very nice Pilsner lager. I sit there, updating my notes on the day and enjoying a leisurely pint. I can see that several tables are being served pizzas, so I decide to try and get one of these traditional German meals for myself. I then get told that these are not pizzas, these are Flammkuchen. What the hell – I want to try local food while I’m away. So my second pint is accompanied by a ham and mushroom Flammkuchen. Which is a little odd. It’s basically a crisp pizza. Except that the tomato sauce is replaced by a scraping of creme fraiche (or something similar) and the toppings are scattered on top. As a result, they are remarkably mobile and if you’re not careful you end up dropping them – which explains why the local sparrows are remarkably brave and hop around between my feet picking up scraps of food. (Brave, but not stupid – as soon as I grab my phone, they go all shy and bugger off). It’s not exactly haute cuisine (or whatever the German equivalent would be) but it certainly rounds off the day quite well.

It’s early enough for me to head into town for a proper meal, but I’m actually quite knackered. So I head up to my room and browse through the literature they’ve left. That’s when I find out one of the odd rules of the premises: you are not allowed to play card games. Apparently the hotel is owned by a religious order and although they’re happy with people drinking alcohol, card games are banned. While wondering how they would know I would be playing cards, I drift off to the sound of trumpets from a room somewhere below where some form of group is clearly having a practise.

Day One

So, here we are having finally arrived at the last episode of this strange odyssey. I have to apologise to everyone who reads this as I’ve been putting off writing this final chapter. I think because once it’s written down, it’s finally over. I never thought when this all started back in 2017 that I’d get so invested in what is (let’s face it) a fairly silly idea. It’s now nearly 5 years later (thanks, in part to bloody Covid) and my final journey was in June 2021 which is now 9 months ago.

Just to remind you what was going on then, we were coming out of lockdown 3 (2.5?) and everything was opening up again. Masks were still de rigeur and everyone was still nervous about crowds (or, at least, sensible people were). On the week I was travelling, the G7 Summit was taking place in Cornwall. Several people from work were going down to police it and I joked that I would see them there, never thinking that we would be anywhere near each other.

After four years, this was the final journey. Many people had tried to guess the final destination, but no-one got it right – until the night before when Graham Widger said “isn’t there a place called Zennor in Cornwall”. Not for nothing is he known as a git – but well done, despite that. As I get ready to go, the weather is in a celebratory mood – sunny and warm. However, apparently it’s worse in Cornwall – 5 degrees colder and with rain predicted for tomorrow. Facebook cheerfully reminds me that 4 years ago I was in Farnham – the last of my original 8 trips.

I have some trepidation about the journey. It’s a long train ride with three changes: Reading (inevitably), Newton Abbot and St Erth. I’ve been warned that my journey back will start with a Rail Replacement Bus, so I have a sneaking suspicion that the same will be true today. My train leaves at 09:04 and I’m scheduled to get to St Ives at 14:58. I’m not looking forward to spending 6 hours masked. However, elegantly attired in Magnum boots and shorts, I head for the station.

Slough station is as uninspiring as ever and so needs little more comment as I wait for my train. Todays book is The Man Who Ate the World by Jay Rayner. It’s about his search for the perfect dinner and while I enjoy his writing style, I find myself wishing I could afford to eat at just one of the places he is talking about. I will have to satisfy myself with searching for a decent pasty while I’m in Cornwall – keto be damned!! I checked my weight this morning, expecting two weeks of hedonism (or more appropriately hedonism-light) and a belated Christmas celebration to have stacked the weight on. To my surprise, the damage is only 2 pounds.

Being a seasoned traveller, I get into the right zone for my carriage as I have a reserved seat. I then check outside to make sure I’m getting in the right end. Excellent planning – or it would be, if the sign on the outside was correct – and it isn’t. So I walk the entire length of the carriage and take possession of my seat which, as usual, has no reserved sign on it. I am in the company of a couple of young gentlemen who are sprawled out and exhibiting all the signs of recovering from a hard night and an early, sunny morning. One is wearing a West Ham shirt, so he might have his head in his hands for more existential reasons than a brain-bursting hangover. At least they both have their masks on.

The journey to Reading is uneventful except for the trolley service – both retro and more efficient than the LNER app. I check to see where my connecting train and, would you believe it, it’s Platform 7B. I’ve missed it like an old friend. Or, possibly, more like a slightly annoying wart. Even on this warm day, 7B still maintains its’ traditional chill. I briefly consider popping into the waiting room to see if the urine smell has gone, but wisely decide to take a seat on a bench instead. I have 10 minutes to wait.

This time the sign is right and I board the right carriage at the right end. The carriage is packed with the three of us and so we are spread out as much as possible. As we head towards the south west, I try and work out why I’m changing at Newton Abbot. This train goes to Plymouth, as does the one I’m going to catch. In fact, that train starts at Exeter and we’ll be there in plenty of time to make the change. I could buck the system and change at a different station, but the worrying part of my brain is convinced that will mean I have flouted some obscure by-law and they’ll make me walk home. They then announce that half of this train is going to Newquay, which is only 30 miles from St Ives. Surely going there would have been faster? Rather than try and untie the Gordian knot of train timetables I decide to just go with the flow.

This service also has a retro trolley. This time I succumb to its’ lure and my coffee is accidentally joined by a chocolate brownie (which is not as disappointing as I expected and is crumbly with a big hit of chocolate). I hope this is a good sign of things to come. Of course, my excuse for having this is that while eating & drinking I can take my mask off. Not that there’s anyone within about 10 seats of me.

Jay Rayner wrote this book in 2008, and the section I’m reading makes a comment about bloggers. It’s actually a quote from Mario Batali. I hope they don’t mind me quoting it (let’s face it, they’ll probably never find out but if they do and they object, I’ll do an edit).

Many of the anonymous authors who vent on blogs rant their snarky vituperatives from behind the smoky curtain of the Web. This allows them a peculiar and nasty vocabulary that seems to be taken as truth by virtue of the fact that it has been printed somewhere. Unfortunately, this also allows untruths, lies and malicious and personally driven dreck to be quoted as fact.

This is something that has been commented on a lot recently and seems more relevant than ever in our current society.

My reading is interrupted by me occasionally looking outside at a beautifully green landscape with searingly blue skies. Skies which get cloudier and darker, the further the journey goes. As the train approaches Taunton an announcement is garbled over the tannoy. It’s a long announcement and he clearly knows it’s too long, so he gets faster as it goes on – which, naturally, makes it even more difficult to decipher. All I can catch is that we can change at Taunton to get a bus to Minehead. I don’t recall ever hearing that on this journey before, and it’s a nice reminded of my trip to Porlock two weeks ago.

By the time the train approaches Exeter, the sun has disappeared and the clouds look decidedly grey, tinged with black. This, unlike the raven, does not bode well. My concerns about the Cornish weather are coming true. I really hope not as I want to finish this madness off with a truly painful 10 mile hike rather than a more sensible but dull bus ride.

No journey would be complete without at least one comment on the toilet. It is one of these clever modern ones, with buttons everywhere and everything automated. With my previous experience still in my mind, I use it with no issues and return to my seat. I later hear a woman sat near me complain about there being no water in the bathroom and I mentally scoff at her – I had no problems – and I head off to use it again. It’s previously pristine condition has charged – there is water (or some unnameable fluid) all over the floor and ripped up tissues are everywhere. It’s as though it’s been infested by a particularly excitable flock of Morris Dancers. I wash my hands and the water stops before I’ve got the soap off. Previously, it started again but this time it doesn’t so I end up wiping my hands clean with tissues. Mine go into the bin rather than adding to the debris. I mentally apologise to the woman for scoffing at her. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t seem to matter to her.

The second change is done and the train thunders along the coast towards Plymouth. This bit of coast is very familiar as I used to take the train to and from London when I first moved up there. I remember one journey when there was a storm and waves were breaking against the train as we traversed this section – spectacular, a little scary and, due to a leaky carriage, somewhat moist.

Jay Rayner is finished by this time and I have moved on to Living by Henry Green.

As we approach Plymouth, the sky is an unrelieved grey. We arrive and the train sits at the platform for over a quarter of an hour – because otherwise, the journey might be too short! Joy of joys, as we wait a woman drags a small and screaming child into the carriage. Luckily, they’re in the next carriage but his shrieks echo down the train until the doors mercifully shut. So far, there are no indications of refreshments on this train and I’m starting to feel both hungry and thirsty. Where is the retro trolley service when you need it?

As we head across the Tamar into Cornwall, it starts to rain. We cross one of my favourite bridges (the Brunel Rail Bridge) which gives an excellent view of the much less inspiring road bridge.

As we enter Cornwall, the looming clouds finally stop looming, and it starts to rain. The clouds in places are so low that it looks more like mist. All views are severely truncated but it’s still a beautifully rural bit of countryside.

At Bodmin Parkway, I get an excellent view of the opposite platform and some excellent examples of idiocy. One has a mask dropped around his neck, the other has one hanging out of his top pocket. So clearly neither are medically exempt. So their reason for not wearing them? Not a clue. Just to make it worse, they’re stood either side of a sign telling everyone to wear masks while in the station. *sigh*

At St Erth, my suspicions are found to be true and I need to use Bus Replacement Service for the last stage of the trip. The reason is now clear – the G7 conference in Carbis Bay which happens to be right beside St Ives where I will be staying. As I approach the double decker bus, there are 6 staff hanging around outside and I am invited to sit anywhere – or to drive if I wish! I decline the kind offer and take the front seat upstairs. I’m the only passenger as the bus heads to St Ives.

On the approach to St Ives, I get some excellent views across the town – and of the warship moored in the bay. St Ives is based around a harbour and the remarkably busy car park is on top of a hill to the east of the town.

My overnight stay is (naturally) on a hill to the west of the town. But it’s too early to go there, so I head down the insanely steep path into town.

St Ives is a typical Cornish town and looks like many other I’ve been to.

As I head down to the harbour it steadily gets busier, until I come out onto the quay, which is crowded with tourists. Given the fact that its quite cold and the weather isn’t brilliant, I’m surprised to see so many people here. Everywhere is full, so I head off to the streets behind the front, where I find some extremely steep lanes and a complete lack of places to eat!

Eventually, I give up and return to the front and end up in a place called The Searoom, where I have a nutritionally balanced meal of mussels, chips and cider.

It’s not exactly cheap, but it is very tasty and I’d recommend a visit to anyone coming this way.

https://www.stivesliquor.co/searoom

Suitably sustained, I head up some very steep roads to find my overnight accommodation at The Nook. I get inside to find 7 men sat around chatting. They all have that air of being police so I suspect they’re here for the G7. I naturally don’t ask. I also don’t ask why none of them are wearing masks. I do ask where the owners are. They have no idea. In the end, I give up and phone them and they give me a pass code for the key safe which contains my room key. I terminated the call and then checked my thesaurus for the definition of impersonal. Yes, there it is halfway down: The Nook. Now the advantage of this place over the last pace I stayed is that they are providing breakfast. I head up to my room to find a lovely note telling me that they have decided not to provide breakfasts at the moment. I check around to see where my rebate is for this decision, but instead they’ve left me a tote bag, some apple juice and some crackers.

I settle down to plan tomorrow and to work out where I can get breakfast in the morning. There isn’t anywhere nearby to get anything, but I eventually find a Spar about a mile away and I stock up for a light snack, breakfast and something for the journey tomorrow. I am now ready for tomorrows hike – though I am concerned about the sections described as a “scramble”.

Day Two

The day dawns grey and overcast. Much like my mood after I am woken my the boding ravens on the garage roof outside. Or are they crows? I decide in the end that they are Cornish Choughs. Judge for yourself.

Whatever they are, they’re bloody loud. That’s the view from my room btw – lovely, eh?

As I’m awake, it’s breakfast then boots on and head out. Well, that is, after the traditional fight with the shower. This one is slow to start and then extremely reluctant to turn off. Eventually the timeless struggle of man versus machine is won by man leaving and heading for the South West Coast Path.

The age-appropriate hoody goes on because weather.com is filling me with doubt. It states that there will be scattered showers with the biggest coming through around 09:00. Which should be just as I’m somewhere with absolutely no shelter. I could wait until after then, but the weather doesn’t seem to get much better. So I gird up my loins (and everything else) and head out.

Now, some may recall that I had a previous encounter with the South West Coast Path when I was in Porlock. There it was clearly marked with signs, even when it wasn’t really needed. I am expecting the same here. Of course my expectations are immediately shattered as I get onto a completely unmarked path. This must be the right one – if I go any further towards the coast, I’ll be in the sea. It starts off as a tarmacked path with plenty of early morning joggers. If it’s like this all the way, this will be a doddle.

I head off and very quickly find myself alone on the path with no sounds except for the wind and the cries of birds. I’m still unsure this is the right path, but then I find this.

So at least I know I’m in the right place. Suitably braced, I head off with cries of pheasants coming out of the undergrowth. Or are they piskies? I become more convinced of the latter as the morning goes on. Bouyed up with confidence, I proceed with the tarmac underfoot, until …

From here on, the path is best described as elusive. It gets crossed by sheep paths and can be extremely difficult to work out which way to go. You would have thought it was simple – too far to the right, is clearly bad – but at several points I found myself peering over into the abyss.

After taking one of these tracks and then toiling back to what I assume what was the actual path, I encountered the man I think of as the Last Jogger. He came from the direction I was walking in and stopped looking at the track I’d just toiled up. “Is that the way, then?” He asked. I advised him to keep going and he disappeared off. He was the last person I would see for nearly 3 hours.

I head on, the weather fortunately holding off although I can see rainclouds in the distance. I’m trying to work out where I am in my South West Coast Path book, but one headland looks much like another.

The path winds in and out, often descending into little valleys made by streams and then with the joyful thought of an ascent on the other side.

It is still delightfully un-signposted and then I eventually find one that the piskies have failed to remove.

I’m definitely starting to feel piskie-led and my feelings on it are made less sanguine when they seem to be leaving messages for me.

This little piskie “conceit” is now actually starting to scare the crap out of me. I toil on, the path sometimes going up streams (literally) and after three hours, I finally see someone coming in the other direction. We pause to talk and they tell me that there’s a “bit of a scramble” ahead. I’ve already been through a couple of sections described that way and they weren’t a problem, so I laugh and say I’ll be careful. My laughter is clearly heard by the piskies, who are probably pissing themselves as they watch me navigate the “scramble”.

I’m sorry, but that is NOT a path!

As I get to the last headland I can see that the path has two routes ahead, both of which have people on them. Good lord, it’s rush hour on the South West Coast Path. Distracted by them, I miss my footing and feel a sharp wrench go up one hamstring and twist my ankle. Luckily, I’m wearing boots, so no damage is done and after a bit of massage, the hamstring clears. Cursing the piskies I head on up the bluff.

By the time I get to the top, the low cloud is more like mist. I’m absolutely knackered – this relatively short walk has drained me. As I slowly amble across the bluff a voice from behind warns me and I step aside for a jogger. Who is wearing a weighted vest. Git.

On the other side of the bluff, I part company with the coast path and head into Zennor. I walk through pleasant farmland to the tiny village of Zennor.

I head to The Tinners Arms, (https://tinnersarms.com) where I order coffee and Aspalls Orchards and wait for them to begin serving lunch. I’m bitterly cold and most of my clothing is damp. I probably shouldn’t have the cider, but when in Cornwall…

About 40 minutes later, the couple that told me about the scramble comes in – hold on, how the hell did they get here so fast? Maybe I was walking that slowly. Another few people arrive and they all get served before me. I’ve clearly been forgotten. I’m actually happy to just sit there and warm up and I read a bit more of Living (which I’m now getting into and starting to enjoy).

Eventually my order is taken and I go for Leek and Potato Soup, followed by Deep Fried Squid and Chips. The food is really good (the chips are particularly excellent), but I’m full and I leave most of my main course.

My decision now is how to get back. I could retrace my steps (NO!) or I could walk a direct path through farmland. Alternatively, I could get a taxi. This seems the most sensible alternative as my age-appropriate hoody and baseball cap are both soaked and walking in them would be pretty miserable. When I get outside, the tables are full – clearly it’s not as cold as I think it is. That makes the taxi an even better idea.

The taxi driver is completely silent. Maybe he’s from some kind of Cistercian Order of Taxi Drivers. I’m happy as it means I don’t have to make polite conversation. It takes 15 minutes to get back to The Nook – a journey that took me 4 hours. It makes it all seem a little pointless. I spend the rest of the day camped out in my room at The Book. Which, by the way, hadn’t been cleaned.

Day Three

My journey back starts in grey, overcast weather. My train from St Erth leaves at 10:30, but as I have to use the Bus Replacement Service, I have no idea how long the journey will take. As a result, I head out at 09:00 … just in case. This should be an easier journey as the train goes straight through to Reading. The tote bad from The Nook comes in handy to carry my boots and my feet have the relief of lighter shoes.

Once I head out, it’s clear that my knees and calves are very unhappy with me about yesterdays little jaunt. I plan a cunning route to the car park that avoids the worst of the hills, but I’m limping a little so it’s not my fastest walk ever. It does, however, give me a great view over the bay.

At the car park, there is a steady stream of buses turning up and lots of very helpful staff who tell me where to wait. They are also helping people getting off the buses – tourists get directed down the hill, protesters get directed to the top of the car park. All very civilised.

As my bus arrives, the staff help a little old man on and completely ignore the little old lady who is stood beside me. I offer to help her and so I find myself wheeling her wheely suitcase on for her – oh, the piskies are laughing at that one! I’m the last one on, but still get the front seat on the top deck.

I get to St Erth with plenty of time (no surprise there). The staff on duty here are excellent. Once they work out I’ve got an hour to wait, they explain that I can get an earlier train if I pay a bit more – but I don’t want to do that. I sit down on the now rainy platform and 15 minutes later, one comes back to me. He’s checked and I can definitely take the earlier train if I want to. I check my ticket and it’s for a specified train, so wouldn’t work – but I’m very impressed at their customer service.

I’ve now moved on to reading Glory Season by David Brin.

By the time my train arrives, two other staff members have come to speak to me and asked if I have a seat booked. When I confirm that I’m in carriage J, I say that I think this means I have to be at the end of the train. They confirm this and point to the other end of the platform. When my train is called I head down to the unsheltered end of that platform where there is nowhere to get out of the now persistent rain. I get an excellent view of Carriage J sweeping majestically past. I get on and walk through largely empty carriages to get to Carriage J.

Where someone is in my seat.

I check my seat number and am about to ask them to move, when I realise I’ve miscounted and am still in Carriage H. I head off, negotiating my way past the retro trolley and slump into my seat. 4 1/2 hours to Reading.

The carriage gets fuller at Camborne, including the requisite delightfully crying child. Luckily it stops fairly quickly – maybe someone left it on the platform. Oh no, there it goes again. At Truro a couple get on and (quite reasonably) have to ask three youths to move as they are reserved seats. As they stand up, I can clearly see the reserved signs and wonder why they sat there in the first place.

The three get off at Bodmin Parkway and are replaced by a couple who have brought their chihuahuas with them. To misquote Joey, “It’s not a dog!” Luckily they are quiet. At the same station, a woman gets on with a child in a pushchair and a slightly older child dragging along behind her. She decides to let them play. This comprises them running up and down the carriage shrieking at the top of their voices.

And yet, strangely, none of this really bothers me. Not the strident way that Chihuahua woman demands “TEA” from the retro trolley. Not the loud man behind me who seems to be on his phone for the entire four hours. Not the brats running up and down.

When I’m queuing on the approach to Reading and my way is blocked because a couple and their 3 toddlers are trying to use just two seats, I barely care. I’d like to think this is finally a sign of maturity, but I think it’s because I’m sad that this project is over.

So there it is. Thank you to everyone who has followed this mildly insane project. It has been the subject of many conversations and enough inspired guesses to give me another 24 trips if I wanted to do it. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I hope you have found this entertaining. It’s definitely been fun to write it. So what happens next? I have an idea that I discussed with John and Janice (you met them back in K is for Kensington) about a Grand Tour. But that’s going to have to wait until I have a better idea of my financial future. I retire next year, so I can’t make any commitments. What am I doing this year? Well I’m doing three countries in 9 days in May/June. And who knows, maybe I’ll add that to the blog too.