Bullets from Barca

• First thing I saw on the Ramblas right after my previous post? The things you see in Barca? How's about a 50-something man and his mate, both bollock naked but for some underwear tatoos (I know, underwear tatoos, Jasus), strolling down the street without a care in the world. And hear this, one of them had a huuuuge willy. He walked ahead of me down the street slapping and flopping from thigh to thigh and from the rear it was like Snuffaluffagus from Sesame Street had attached himself to his belly and was trying to eat peanuts off his knees. *Quite* the eye-opening start to the holiday. I found out later it's not illegal to saunter about the streets of Barcelona with no clothes on, but hear me now, it fucking well should be. I have the pictures to prove it but it's defo NSFW like.
  
• The people you meet? Ah Jasus. Who didn't I meet? There were two students in the bar the first night looking for work, who confessed to me later they only spoke to me because they'd heard me ordering and thought I sounded like Father Dougal and they kind of enjoyed it so they stood in my shadow for hours drinking pints, talking shite and listening to the comic timbre of my voice as I said "Mad, Ted" and "Eh, don't know Ted" over and over and over. Yer wan behind the bar was from Wexford and she told me she'd just taken a notion seven years ago and moved over. I told her I wished I had the gumption to do something like that and she looked me square in the eye and asked what the fuck was stopping me? I was extremely hammered but it made me stop and think, or at least made me wish I was sober enough to be able to and that's the same thing when you're absolutely stotious.
  
• Wednesday night and Barca finally, finally exposed the weaknesses that have been creeping ivy-like over Man United in the last few months, and satisfyingly strangled them in the Champions League final. Oh how sweet it was. The celebrations afterwards (which later turned to riots, I was gone home though. And no, I didn't start them) were sheer lunacy. I've never seen bedlam, hurooing and pandemonium like it, and I've been in dinner queues in Cavan when the grub's run out. Suffice to say that I was extremely hammered and with 100,000 people in the streets all shouting, roaring, singing, dancing, spraying beer, launching fireworks, chucking dogs in the air and shooting them on the way down, and slapping each other across the face with wet kippers, well it was great to be there and the look on Fergie's face after was another picture to behold.
• Thursday and after a day trotting around and topping up my sunburn for a few hours at Sagrada Familia, I crowd surfed my way to Via Liaetana and cheered home the Barca team with their big cup. I then met some big business noise with one of those annoying nasal accents like Michael Flatley where just when you think he's definitely an American it's a case of oh shit, wait, he's not, he's Irish...ooops sorry, he's American again...or is he...ah shit, now he sounds like that chef Paul Rankin so maybe he's from Belfast. It was Kildare in the end. He was actually a nice guy, just a little too proud of how much money he was earning. Then again, I was extremely hammered. But my prostitute avoidance skills - there has to be a downside unfortunately, Barca's is seedy in nature - were called into action very often on the way home and I dodged those biatches with a nimble street dancing routine not seen since Gene Kelly was in his pomp. They may have liked me because the secret was out about my sexy Fr. Dougal accent, I can't be sure though because you see I was absolu....ah whatever.
  
• Friday and after my usual very late breakfast under the sun, at the little place on the corner beside my hotel, I remembered a suggestion on here that I take a cable car up Montjuic and because these were being renovated last time I was here, it was one of few first-time experiences I could have. So I did. And I nearly shit myself because it was a breezy day and it was swaying a little bit and we were up very high and crucially, I'm a big flaming Jessie as well. I wasn't even extremely hammered, just wishing I was. I took some video on my way down of this and the woman and her elderly companion in the cab with me were great fun - they were shitting themselves almost as much as I was.
• Friday night was my last night and having sensibly elected to stay off the beer, I, needless to say, proceeded to get absolutely hammered when I fell in with a crew of ne'er do wells in an Irish bar. I think they made me sing which is a good sign of drunkeness in my book and one of the married ones was feeling my leg a lot and smiling vacantly which was a good sign of drunkness in her's I shouldn't imagine, but nothing happened, I swear. I realise now that all those other nights I thought I was drunk, these were just merely the dreams of the come-true drunkenness that ensued that evening of my last big blast in Barca. I remember very little but I think I had a good time alright.
  
• Saturday, Sunday, Monday. It's incredible how tired I was but I hauled ass around the city to kill time until my evening flight and bought myself some Barca football shorts in memory of a great trip. Every time I sweat in the gym now I can remember my little break away, when the sun fried me every day, I melted in the heat and I purged myself of hangovers through my very pores. I went back to the little place beside my hotel - La Particella on Carrer D'Arago - where theya shpeak no Inglees - and had a slap up feed of meatballs and spaghetti. They were just amazed I wasn't having breakfast as it was 6pm in the evening after all but I put the tin hat on it when I gave the proprietress a fiver tip and she almost started crying she was so touched. Awwwww bless. I collapsed in the door late on Saturday night and slept for 12 hours straight without stirring, got up and could barely stay awake all day before going back to bed about 11 that night and kipping for another ten hours straight.

Did I have a good time? Ach it was alright I suppose.