Donde Este Barcelona?

So me and my friends went to Barcelona for a long weekend and I thought I'd write a review for any budding minibreak weekenders. I'd actually been before with Hen a couple of years ago. It was my birthday and we went for 2 nights. It was a really fun trip and eventful. The morning we left, we realised that our Ryan air flight was NOT flying to Barcelona, but to some shitmuncher town a 2 hour coach ride away. Probably as disappointing as a foreigner booking a flight to “London southend”. Anyways, it meant that with all the travel time, we got to Barcelona at about 9pm Friday and left 9am Sunday. But we managed to wonder about drunk for enough time and had a hurried pit stop to the massive cathedral thing that's been built for the last 150 years. Took a photo and scrammed. We were really into drawing on our faces in those days too. The photos are pretty hilair.

Anyways that was then and this is now. This time it was my good friend Chris’s birthday, the first of the group to turn 30 really. Wow. And on this trip, we had 4 full days and nights to absorb the city and do cultural things. And there were NINE of us. And we stayed in a fancy apartment instead of a grotty hostel. FANCY! and the sign of getting older. I might have to go to Reykjavik soon and just rock up in a minidress, a fur coat and a smile and see what happens. To prove I'm not old yet.  But I digress. 2 of the group could speak Spanish and decipher the menus and pint us in the general direction of good food and wine. Cos that's really I wasn’t on holiday. With maybe 3 cultural events so that I deserve to be drunk 100% of the time.

So here are my 5 top observations about Barcelona

1.       Don’t order tapas in large quantities. They will think you’re an idiot.

On the first night we got this really amazing type of tapas called “pinxos”. I knew what it was cos they have it in Brixton. It’s basically bits of food with sticks through them. And you just order it as you go, like at Yo Sushi. We kind of didn’t realise this and tried to order enough for 9 people  to have a full meal in one go and the results were disastrous. No one knew what anything was and I accidentally ate some cheesy fish thinking it was a sausage. But wow oh wow we ate some amazing stuff in there. And the wine came in tumblers which is basically my most favourite thing ever. So European! The highlight was a piece of very rare beef on a piece of toast with some melted roquefort on top. And don’t forget the stick through the middle. SALTY!

2.       Croquetas are NOT potato croquettes

I fell in love with croquetas. I probably said the word at least every 5 minutes. They’re basically these gooey breaded things with ham in them. I was on a strict diet on Barcelona of as much ham and cheese and bread I could eat and at least 4 portions of croquetas every day. And 2 bottles of red wine. Me and Laura split off from the group one day and I was seriously hanging and feeling all the excessive drinking in my soul. So we headed for a quiet square and ordered 2 beers. “no food?” asked the waitress? “non grazziass” I said. Then we decided to order croquetas. And shouted “dos croquetas” across the square in English accents. Then we ate them and looked at the empty plate for about 5 seconds before Laura caught the eye of the waitress and pointed to the empty plate and held up one finger.  No. We weren’t very confident linguists on this trip. In one shop I said “merci” in a perfect French accent by accident before running away in shame.

But...the whole time we were stuffing our faces with these delicious treats, we thought they were potato and we thought they were cheesy. Of which they were really neither. No cheese nor potato features in a croqueta. I guess we just assumed and our tastebuds trusted us wholeheartedly.

3.       You NEVER have to go without beer, even for short walks

Our theory is that they banned 24 hour drinking licences or booze licenses or something. So some clever people decided to just hide picnic coolers all over the city and sell cold cans of people to ANYONE walking past. We NEVER had to go without beer. It was really cool. Leave the apartment to walk one block. Buy a beer for the journey! Brills. On one occasion we paid upfront for 12 beers and then the man ran away and EVEYONE thought he was doing us over. We all started panicking and then he popped up from behind a bin with our drinks. On one night we had been told about a clubnight called “bitch” and we really wanted to go. We were walking from one bar to another discussing that we weren’t really sure what the name of the club was or the address and it wasn’t looking very hopeful, when Laura stopped one of the beer sellers and said clearly and loudly, in a perfect English accent “donday esta BITCH”. He wasn’t very helpful. But that was the highlight of the whole trip. I'm laughing quite hard now even typing.

4.       Spanish people must have amazing metabolisms

We were living opposite a supermarket and the whole place was basically bread, cheese and ham. So much ham. Ham everywhere. And cheese. So much cheese. In chunks as big as me. And ham legs hanging all over the place. it was like that everywhere. And every restaurant had delicious tapas and stuff on the menu. All cheesy and hammy. And fried. And ice cream shops on EVERY street. And weird fast food joints. Lining every street were loads of fast food places selling. Fast food chain specialising in pitta bread. Fast food joint specialising in pasta. Any kind of pasta you like. Fast food joint specialising in eggs. And with ALL this fattening food everywhere you turned, I didn’t spot one fat person. Well obvs there were some fat people but every time they were British, not Spanish. How do they stay so thin? Is it a massive ruse? What would they gain from such a ruse?

5.       Whatever you do..DO NOT ORDER PATATAS BRAVAS

Before this trip, I was trying to recall all the tapas dishes I knew from trips to La Tasca and my previously blurry trip to Spain. All I could come up with was patatas bravas. Which I vaguely recall being potatoes of some kind in a spicy tomato sauce. Or something. But when you order it, it's SO disappointing. It's just chips with spicy ketchup on top. And everywhere we went we kept ordering it. Probably I the hope that we’d just been unluckiy in the last place and maybe THIS eatery would get it right. But no. DON’T ORDER IT.

So there you have it. Barcelona for dummies. Go forth and be merry. By that I obvs mean drunk and incoherent. In an English accent.

Vamenos! 

A trip to the cini

So. Titanic is being re-released in the cinema BUT IN 3D! Wow.
When I was 14 I went and saw it 3 times at the cinema. There are a lot of films I saw 3 times at the cinema. 10 things I hate about you. Never Been Kissed. Err....Star Wars episode 1. There was a particular summer when I had an 8 week cinema pass and I basically went every day. I was really thin that year cos I wouldn’t eat breakfast or lunch, just drink massive pots of coffee and have 2 squares of pick n mix fudge.

Anyways, I saw Titanic 3 times. I was in love with Leo and I had lost and lots of posters and I bought all his videos. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape where he plays a boy with special needs. Gritty. The one where Robert Ne Niro is his dad and or his stepdad and there's a scene where he's having sex with the mum DOGGY STYLE. Rude. I can’t really remember anything else about that film apart from halfway through it cuts to 10 years later and they’ve tried to make him look older but it's really lamo. I've just googled it , it was called This Boy’s Life. It was pretty gritty.  And there was another one called the Basketball Diaries and I THINK Juliet Lewis was in it as a crack whore which is funny cos she was in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape! They’re probably friends. Anyways, in Basketball Diaries I think some boys get sexually abused by their basketball coach and Leonardo Dicaprio had to give some bloke a blowy in a toilet to pay for his drugs. Actually, I might be getting confused with Boogie Nights. But anyways, Basketball Diaries is really....gritty. And the twins from Sweet Valley High are in it and they have a threesome with Leo. That's pretty gritty. Actually it’s disgusting. I don’t understand twin fantasies AT ALL. I don’t have a sister so maybe I just don’t get it. But I don’t want to get naked and have my sister see me do sexy things. It’s like incest. Why is incest ok? It isn’t! Apart from this episode of Midsomer Murders I saw once where there was a brother and sister in love. I felt sorry for them. The whole world was against them and they were driven to murder! And also in these Virginia Andrews books called Flowers in the Attic. They're really good. This brother and sister are locked I an attic for many many years and they end up falling in love and having sex abut it's not their fault ok cos their mum locked them up and they only had each other. And while they live in the attic the sister learns ballet and becomes a world class ballet dancer when they escape and in the end they get married. It’s spanned over 5 books I think. So incest was OK then. And when Dirty Den Jr and Sharon Watts got it on that was OK. Although they weren’t really related cos she was adopted. So sometimes incest is ok and sometimes it isn’t really incest. I think that's what we’ve learned here today.

So back to Titanic and my love for it and Leo.

Seeing the film in the cinny 3 times made me quite obsessed. And on invicta fm they played the single ALL THE TIME but with little snippets from the film all the way through. To really bring the magic into your home. One particular quote was “Last week I was sitting under a bridge and now, here I am, on the greatest ship in the world, having dinner with you fine people”. When I heard those words I could picture him sitting there in his tux while all the snobbos turned their noses up at him.

Other memorable scenes included the one where they have sex in a car (a car on a ship? OUTRAGEOUS!) and it gets all steamy and one them puts their hand on the steamy window. PASSIONATE! That sex scene is so weird and intense. I suppose it’s meant to convey just how much they want and need each other but in fact they look constipated. The scene where her mum is doing up her corset is good too. And SYMBOLIC.

Aside from going to the cinema and seeing it 3 times and having Leo posters and videos, I also got a book all about him and bought the soundtrack. And I would sit in my room listening to the soundtrack and crying. Crying because I wanted to be a famous actress just like Kate Winslet. And she's from Reading! If she could do it, I could do it (in case you were wondering I am NOT now a famous actress). I also cried because I loved him and I wanted him to be mine. Which is really quite pathetic. Do teenagers still do this? I feel like they're all a bit too cool for school and have sex with other instead of pining for movie stars. Although, to be honest, at the time, I think a lot of my peers were having sex with each other and ignoring the film stars. I was a massive Geek and Loser. But who’s laughing now eh? I live in LONDON yeah? LONDINIUM.

But back then I was a massive geek and loser and one day my dad walked into my room to make me hurry up for school and I was crying and listening to Celine Dion very loudly while I stared at a poster of Leo and stroked his face. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? That's the second most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me. The first was when my colleague walked into the work kitchen to find me standing in front of the fridge with the door open, having just dunked a full block of cheese into a large jar of mayo and about to take a bite.

I was very upset that day and needed comfort food.

The thing is about Titanic though, and I think you’ll all agree, is that's it is SHITE. Just a few months after seeing it in the cinema and all the crying etc, it came out on video and I was all excited when I pre-ordered it from Woolworths. By the time it actually arrived, I was now in love with Johnny Depp (and quite handily already had the What’s Eating Gilbert Grape film on video). But I dutifully watched it and wow were those special effects bad. Most of the people on the ship are just CGI’d in and look like puppets! What had I been thinking? How did it win so many Oscars? I was only 14 OK? Of course I thought it was good. But those big wig film dudes should know a shit piece of sentimental, historically inaccurate claptrap when it bites them on the bum. SURELY?

But no no no they didn’t. And now...15 years later..they still haven’t cottoned on and it’s being allowed into the cinema again. In all serious. IS THIS A JOKE? There’s a big billboard for it at Hammersmith tube and every day I see at least 3 people laugh and then take a photo. IT’S A JOKE RIGHT???

That said, I kind of want to go and watch it. Although I hate 3d. And really the only bit where it’ll be worth it is when the ice berg looms up and kills everyone (obligatory joke and spoiling the end of titanic lolz).

Right, well I think I've had my say on the matter. I now have some cheesey mayo dipping to do and a poster to stare at.