We’re back in Barcelona and because it’s been a while we decided to check out the zoo last weekend. Our nephews are members so they’re on a first name basis with most of the animals but they still enjoyed introducing us to the pygmy hippo, the lion ladies and the new bearded vulture which has a much more menacing name in Spanish “Quebrantahuesos” (bone-breaker).

Adorable pygmy hippo, that could probably crush your skull without much trouble.

Hey, this is a family friendly site! We won't have any of that copulating stuff here, thank you very much.

...and here we have two juveniles in their natural habitat, clowning around.

The Catalans have a peculiar relationship with fireworks. They absolutely adore them but on the one night when the whole world erupts in fireworks and merriment – December 31 – the reign of Cataluña is eerily quiet and dark. To make up for that omission the Catalans burn enormous amounts of firework for the rest of the year, with the biggest display happening during Sant Joan, the night of June 23, when everyone goes to the beach for picnics, watches fireworks and, until a few years ago, built bonfires to jump through for good luck.

For the rest of the year, fireworks are added to whatever festivity happens to be at hand and the most incredible of these are the correfocs, literally “fire-runs”. Traditionally they happen around the Festa de la Mercè in September but in the district of Gràcia they seem to happen every other weekend. And sometimes on a Friday, just because.

We happened to be in Gràcia for an illustration exhibition last Friday (if you live in Barcelona, it’s up until the 28th of April and has some wonderful work by Alba Marina Rivera who illustrated “El contador de cuentos”). When we stepped out of the town hall, we were greeted by a castell being built:

Which ended in a slightly wobbly “Torre de Quatre” which means it was a tower of two people per level, four levels high. (Ahem, at least that’s what I learned from Wikipedia…) Unfortunately the quality of the images isn’t very good because I only had my phone with me but as the saying goes “the best camera is the one that’s with you”.

The little kid on top is supposed to raise a hand to ‘complete’ the tower before crawling down again on the other side but this one was a bit too scared and wobbly so she just crawled over to the other side and slid down. I don’t blame her…
After the castell had disassembled and everyone returned to the ground safely, the drummers of the first ‘devil group’ started up, whipping their devil dancers into shape:

My favourite part though were these two street sweepers who kept darting into the plaza to clean between the groups. Reminded me of “Asterix in Switzerland” with the Swiss servants constantly cleaning everything during the cheese-fondue orgy, much to the consternation of the Romans. I only have a tiny video of them and it’s bad quality on top of it but it’ll give you an idea…

After each group has performed, they do a little tour of the surrounding streets with their drums and the fireworks. Since Gràcia is a very old neighbourhood, the streets are narrow and short. Perfect place for firecrackers, loud music and hundreds of unsuspecting tourists!

One of the devil groups had, along with some bitchin’ costumes, its own dragon. An homage to the Drac at the Parc Güell:

Even though the above view from our balcony can be quite distracting, we have managed to get some work done over the summer and are slowly but surely getting ready to take off once more. As usual, we’re starting the planning from the back. I’m not sure why this works so well for us but having a fixed point in the future does make things easier since you’re limited to a certain time frame. Our fixed point in this case is cherry blossom season in Japan.

This usually starts around late March in the south of the country and then sweeps north over a few short weeks. We’ve rented an apartment in Kyoto from the end of March till the end of April so hopefully we’ll get lucky and get there right in time for sakura.

Once Kyoto was fixed, the other destinations just fell into place: Australia December through February and New Zealand February/March (we’ve already seen most of NZ on an extended trip several years ago but we both fell in love with the country and can’t wait to go back and visit those few places we missed last time round). Before Australia we’ll be spending October and November roaming around south-east Asia:

Seoul (we found a great flight from Rome so that’ll be our first stop)
Vietnam
Laos
Cambodia
Indonesia

True to form, we haven’t organized anything for these countries yet since these are the closest ones on the calendar. But we do have a wealth of information already thanks to travel-hungry friends and our trusty guidebook. Now we just need to sift through it all and pick what we like. (So far some definite points are: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Angkor Wat, the jar fields, Hué and Hoi An.) In any case, September 29th is our take-off date so I guess preparations should begin…soon.

After we left England – what now seems like ages ago – we made a pitstop in Menèrbes at Sally’s house before going on to Italy and the long-awaited change of clothes since we were still travelling with our winter clothes at this time.

Menèrbes is the arch-typical Provençal village, with tiny little shops, a handful of delicious restaurants and views to die for. Just the place to relax after a long, long drive (London – Menèrbes: 14 hours).

With our bellies full of camembert and champagne, we drove to Italy and got our SUMMER CLOTHES! Yes, it was such a glorious moment to get our shorts and sandals that it warrants all caps.

For the rest of the summer we moved between Mallorca, Barcelona, France and Italy. In Mallorca we watched waterskiers take it to the next level

and some beautiful moon rises.

In Barcelona we heard, and sang, some Karaoke (note Alfred’s expert mic handling)

and wore as little clothes as possible in the heat.

We went to Bordeaux to see our friends Henri and Martha get married

and stayed to admire the street performers and cadillacs, in Cadillac, naturally.

Now we’re house-sitting for Conor’s godfather in Italy and even though the dogs, Red and Green, and the cat, Cat, are less than thrilled that their masters have gone on holiday for a weekend and left them here with two complete strangers, we’re enjoying our last few days in Europe. Where are you off to next, you ask? We’ll tell you all about it in the next post.

Leaving the empty apartment was sad. In fact, it was so sad that I forgot to return the keys to the portera so we had to turn around and go back. (Hadn’t gone too far yet, thank goodness.) At least that gave us a chance to get breakfast at Submarin 2 and wouldn’t you know it – they have almost* the best croissants in Barcelona! Right in front of our noses for the last year and we didn’t bother to try them until the day we leave.

(*Nothing beats Mauri.)

Empty apartments also have their advantage as the kids showed us on our last afternoon.