Barcelona

Palma, Mallorca, waiting for a flight to Lisbon. Lisbon, the home of my old friend Stone, salt cod and pasteis de nata. We're travel fucked and weary. An hour on the metro, half an hour on the bus, two hours in an airport, 40 minutes on a plane, four more hours in an airport and another 45 minutes on a plane. And I feel OLD. I am OLD. A year older, at least. Two big evenings of celebration more tired. If you're going to be in Barcelona, you may as well throw down on the partying.

Partying is the modus operandi of the locals. Wake up late and stay out late. 10am on a friday morning in central Barcelona is dead zone time. It may as well be 5am in JHB. 11pm, on the other hand, is when everyone sits down for dinner. You learn, you adapt, you arrogate the Barcelona lifestyle. You sleep in. You start late. Lunchtime becomes breakfast. Bedtime becomes dinnertime. You learn. You adapt.

See the locals - tanned, tattooed, gooood-looking, endlessly-chilled. See the tourists - burned, flabby, bloodshot eyes, waiting in queues and biiiitching.

You arrogate to the point that you look past the tourists and the pandora's box of shit they've opened in Barcelona. The litter, the crowds, the unruly drunks, the early morning beachfront shitzone, the souvenir hellholes and crappy t-shirts appropriating Barcelonas history and the nest of thieves that moronic tourists flashing money and drinking too much in a sun too hot brings. Don't make the mistake of going to La Rambla. it the Gothic Quarter instead. Hit Park Guell. Hit the Picasso museum. Hit the small restaurants far away from the attractions. Go late or go early.

Or, don't go to Barcelona, not in July or August. Go late or go early. And don't be a tourist.