Barcelona Day 2

I went for another run this morning, this time down to the beach, and it occurred to me that I don’t really ever run. So my legs are very sore, but the good kind of sore. 

For the first time this entire trip, it was rainy most of the day. This part of Spain is suffering from a severe drought, and it desperately needs the rain. This is a picture of a dam up in the mountains near here where I was wandering around with Robert. If you click on it, you can see that the reservoir is extremely low and the river that is supposed to feed the reservoir is completely dry. 

A couple of years ago, I was on the Plaza Real in Barcelona and some tourists were craning their necks to take pictures of something up in a palm tree, which turned out to be a couple of bright green parakeets chirping away and making everyone happy. My apartment at the time was next to a big park; I noticed that the park was full of those birds and thought that if those tourists really wanted some good parakeet pictures to post, they should just walk over to the park and point their camera in any direction. Then just today I read that they are, according to one travel website “cute” and “noisy” (the birds, not the tourists), but according to actual information are an invasive species that kills trees and destroys the nests of other birds, and anyone in Spain with a hunting license is authorized to shoot them (again, the birds). But of course, not in parks or plazas, which is where most of the 20,000+ of them live. 

On every trip I’ve ever made to Europe, I’ve noticed that local people constantly consume alcohol over the course of the day. These aren’t loud obnoxious young people, it’s just something that’s quietly part of daily life. This is a picture of two guys in Tarragona at 8:30 in the morning with a cup of coffee and two very large shots each of two different kinds of liquor, which they poured into their coffee. I’m sure they do this most mornings as a way to perk up the beginning of their day. But imagine if you had a friend who drank two shots every morning to get the day started. 

I mentioned this to my Spanish friend Robert, and he agreed, saying that it had never really registered with him, but that it’s true. It’s just accepted as a normal part of life here, but if anyone exhibited that behavior in the US, it would be cause for concern. Just different cultural norms.

Tomorrow is my last day here after more than three weeks, so I have to cram a lot into it because I may never be back here, except that if the past is any predictor of the future I’ll probably be back next year.