Tube Stops: Termini, Aeroport, El Prat de Llobregat, Espanya, Liceu, Jaume 1, Lesseps
Everyone needs a holiday, right? None more so than the Romans...again the city is empty and everyone has left town to go to their apartments by the sea. For every piece of rented or bought property in Rome, there seems to be an accompanying sea-side pied-a-terre for most Italians living in Rome.
Every year, me and my friends have tried to have a holiday away together somewhere but for the last few years, the people's choice has been Sitges, located along the coast of Spain near Barcelona. Having booked our holiday in January, I decided to head to Barcelona first, a place we visited albeit briefly on our last sojourn to Sitges.
I had arranged to stay first at an artist's studio-cum-bedsit for the weekend, via the website airbnb.com, which fell through as it was already booked. Next, one day before leaving, I booked a bed at a couple's apartment near the centre of Barcelona, only to have them try to rip me off by raising the price and asking for money 'offline'. Great. So I arrived on Saturday and hostel-hopped, eventually ending up in a cupboard above a tourist shop: just me, a 2 x 4 floor space, a bed and a fan. Occasionally-agraphobic me was happy :)
My friend Claudio & his friend Alessandro were also in town on their hols so we agreed to meet at the Espanya tube stop and check out the Eixample district. As night fell, Barcelona became surreal - tourist attractions seemed otherwordly, long vistas carried us past abstract monuments and towards the concrete grid system of Eixample. A long promenade lead to a massive fountain whose gigantic jets of water were illuminated with a rainbow of colours as they were fired into the air in time to various classic 70's disco tunes and 80's power ballads: spectacle meets child-like fun. My attention was absolutely captivated but in contrast, Eixample itself was empty, long stretches of anonymous buildings - or rather we were early, venturing out to find a meal at 22:00.
Views of Barcelona
By the end of the night, we had dined in a chic restaurant with only one or two other people, an atmosphere that whilst being stylish and chic, was monochromatic and a little cold: where was everyone? Was this the ghost-town that Rome becomes in the Summer? The masses were just waiting however, to crowd the streets in barely-there gym-wear, whilst the bars and clubs, hidden behind simply-detailed facades stretched and yawned and opened their doors. We chatted to an Amy Winehouse drag-queen about living in Rome and pushed our way through a sea of meat at 'Bim Bam Bum' (!!), long stretches of walking gym advertisements. Interestingly, I experienced homophobia earlier in the day when two guys shouted "Maria Maria!" at a gay couple holding hands. It wasn't until the two guys walked past the couple that they saw how enormous they were and promptly stopped. I smiled.
(original photo by Claudio)
A.R.T
I have a confession to make. I have never been able to stop thinking about art since I was at school. I won the art prize at school three years running and there is something in my blood that churns and gurgles whenever my hands get itchy and I see art materials hanging lifelessly in a shop window. It's like being addicted to substance that you don't need to injest but that constantly reinvigorates and nourishes you. Get me, with the profoundity there. Recent attempts to perform cartharses on a regular basis include:
1) Setting up an Istagram account
2) Experimenting with pencil and ink, analysing portraiture again (see left)
3) Visiting Barcelona
I had the very good fortune to become friends with Daniel Meakin in Barcelona, a resident artist of some ten years whose bright murals and crushingly colourful depictions of towns and city-scapes have been sold in countries all over the world. This for me was someone who 'has made it', living the dream and profiting from it. We had coffee in the Cafe del'Opera, musing about the world, followed by a tour of Barcelonetto and beers by the harbour, and all the while my head was filled with thoughts of my second cousin's gallery and how everything seemed to make sense and abstract wishes and dreams started to combine together, previously raw ingredients taking a possible shape. Galleries which host your artwork at 0% commission? No need for art qualifications or academic background? All easily swallowed with the last of my Estrella!
Some of Daniel's work (which I hope he doesn't mind me reposting!)
The evening finished with a reunion with Cas, a teacher from the school where I work in Rome who has since gone back to her native land of Barcelona. She recommended a tapas bar near the narrow streets of the Jaume tube stop, where we had amazing tapas, ripping off the heads of massive prawns, eating the greasiest but the most amazing chorizo and of course, quaffing large glasses of sangria. With Claudio and Alessandro, plus Cas' friend Julia, we had lots to catch up on, and the conversation soon turned into a U.N. conference with all the different languages being spoken!
(From left to right: yours truly, Claudio, Cas, Natalie Portman
From tapas, to more drinks around La Ramblas and finally a student-esque bar, where me, Cas and Julia talked love, loss and life in general, whilst I looked around at the projector screen showing rock concerts live, the oil drum seats and hundreds of beer labels stuck to one wall and remembered London: the haphazard and the 'don't give a shit' decor. The waitress didn't serve us for what seemed like half an hour - a rockabilly attitude which made me love/hate the place even more, no pretensions. More of Julia's English accent and a double-take we were all doing, thinking that
Outside Moog, a club where a top floor is entirely
dedicated to dancing to 80's & 90's pop, surrounded by mirrors
under pink light. In other words, disco heaven.
Down a back-street, we passed 'Moog', a club that to all appearances appeared to be a hide-out for rock stars who have fallen from some level of grace, for tourist booze-hounds and the like. In reality, the vision of a big, curly-haired DJ, trapped behind a cage of bars, rocking out to Bananarama was more than brilliant and we danced as if no-one was watching (despite watching ourselves reflected a thousand times in the mirrors). My family nickname is 'Moog' and it seems that again, fate was telling me something in us going to what has to be one of the best clubs I've ever been too. Kudos to Cas!
The weekend was over in one heavy heartbeat and soon I was on my way to the airport to meet the others and head to Sitges...
The weekend was over in one heavy heartbeat and soon I was on my way to the airport to meet the others and head to Sitges...
No comments:
Post a Comment