Hop-On Hop-Off Bus

The first time I rode into Barcelona on the train someone asked Joaquim where he was going to sit. ¨Seaside, ¨ he said. ¨After all of these years, even after going to university every day on the train, I never tire of seeing the waves splash against the rocks or the view of the Mediterranean.¨

The high spray dashes against the rocks and then for an instant, hangs in the air, that place between continuing upward and beginnning its descent to the ground. There is that view always going on, as well as the colour of the waves as they turn, just ready to make their final press into shore –marine blue, turquoise, grey blue water carrying sand with it, all of it so beautiful.

The sand is contantly cleaned and replaced. When a terrible storm hits the shore, the sand is dragged back out to sea. Of course -- the stretch of sand along the Mediterranean is a tourist´s delight. I heard the commentator on the Hop on Hop Off Bus remark that the harbour we were circling in Barcelona now had as its main commercial feature, the luxury cruise liners bringing people in for their stop along the Barcelona side of the Mediterranean.

I took the bus alone. Joaquim, Bonnie, David (5 years old) and his cousins Irina (7 years old) and Mariona (4 yrs old) were going to the Aquarium. I rode this style of bus for two days in Paris, and two days in Rome, so bought another two day ticket and began my journey hidden behind the wind guard of the plastic shield in the front of the bus on the top level.


Barcelona´s Diagonal

Only the red and green routes run in the bus´s winter schedule, the first taking me around the Olympic Village, the Modernista District, along the Diagonal, through the Gothic Area, down by the Harbour, even to a football (read soccer) stadium that is the largest in Europe – seats over 100,000 fans. ¨Imagine the rush of energy, being here when a game is being played¨, said the tape and then there was music and the chanting of crowds of soccer fans.  That bit of imaginative play might have been lost on me.

 I do not go in a fashionable style on a bus like this. I have one scarf around my neck, one over my head and around my ears, and a blanket tucked across my lap and under my knees. One hand has to be free to grab the front security rail when the bus lurches around a corner, and I am constantly gasping as we miss a bicyclist with the courage to dart across the front of a moving bus. If the bus waits and is turned off at a stop, ¨to keep us on schedule¨, then the dials to the earphones have to be readjusted, finding the English channel again and pumping up the volume so as not to miss one precious word of the script, which is also in the book I am holding with my other hand, so I will know exactly what to look for.

We drove by a statue of Pablo Casals, twice, and I missed it both times. I was told he made the tune A Song of the Birds famous and then played a melody from it, I knew I had one more thing to look up and listen to when I got home.

Arta