Christmas Holidays, day 1: white christmas... in the pyrenées only

pirineos

Ok, so I finally arrived to Spain, after loooooong queues at Gatwick Airport (just three open desks for checking for Berlin, Belfast, Geneva, Madrid and Valencia... doesn't sound good!). Then almost an hour of delay -including the weird travel we made from the South Terminal to the North one, then more delays for getting my suitcase at Valencia. Seems like they didn't empty completely the tape from suitcases belonging to the previous flight. So they had to remove first all the remaining ones before allowing ours to enter the building. And gosh! they didn't look like working.

Also, the supposed to be automatic door didn't work properly. Someone had to force the door with a screwer.

This kind of things makes me feel ashamed of being spanish. And I didn't even try to go to the toilets. I didn't want to be welcomed with the characteristic unpleasant smell of spanish public toilets.

Then we had to walk a long path to arrive to our car. As you should know if you are willing to travel to Spain, there is a high probability of finding construction works wherever you go. These works usually are quite annoying and are very badly signalled, as in this case. They were refurbishing the parking and it was quite complicated to get to and from it, specially if you go with big luggage items.

Anyway, we managed to go out from there and find our path (a bit of femenine intuition and common sense works wonders!) through the motorway, and finally arrived home.

This evening we had a little walk around to have a look at the city and see how it changed since last time I was there (it's been almost a year since then). They have demolished lots of buildings (people doesn't refurbish things in Spain, they destroy everything and then start from scratch) and have even built a SUPER UGLY shopping center. It should have been called the Cement Delight - imagine a big mass of grey cement without any aesthethic taste in its shape, which doesn't look like agile but as a "big something", stuck in the middle of a neighbourhood, without any relationship with the decorations of surrounding buildings.

I really hate that contrast each time I come back to Spain. It's really disgusting. Each time you come back, you find there's something else which has been removed from your personal history. That building which had a nice icecream shop where you treated yourself on summer, has been demolished. That garden where you played, has been replaced by a public parking. And the list could continue forever. Of course nothing is forever but we really don't need to destroy all our memories, do we?

Anyway, time to go bed. I just slept like 4 hours today and am really tired!