Reflecting and Spain

Sometimes I wish I had never lived in another country so I would never know what I was missing. I don't think anywhere is truly a perfect place to live, but now I just feel these huge glaring omissions in my life in England. Like the sun; beautiful surroundings; affordable yet good quality sushi; amazing independent cafes each different from the next (Costa I want to bring you down*); Sundays on the beach; incredible restaurants; and...y'know...general joy, fun and vastly improved quality of life.

But I know that if I went back to live in Sydney there would be other empty holes that cannot be filled. Like family; The Guardian; BBC 6 Music; affordable and regular live music; London; proximity to Europe, and British and European culture, history and society; better clothes; and just a whole lot of really nice and interesting things that make you feel alive. What I also get in England though is a general feeling that life can just become a joyless daily slog towards not a lot.

I uploaded a bunch of photos the other week from my trip to Barcelona the week before Christmas, so here's a little insight into some fun in the Spanish sun (15 degrees and bright blue skies - perfect winter). Mark and I went out there to meet our friends from Sydney - Emma, Anya and Ellen, and another of their friends, Hannah.

Beautiful poinsettia in our apartment - the apartment was really nice and so cheap!

We went up to Gaudi's Park Guell - the only place I had really visited last time I went to Barcelona. It's so lovely there, although seemingly permanently heaving with tourists. It's like a lifesize toy park or a strange board game come to life.

View over Barca.

I made everyone pose as animals etc for photos but Mark would not pose!

We found this amazing cocktail bar called Pile 43 which served 674824 varieties of mojito. We went there twice actually. The lady who ran the bar was awesome and gave us vodka-lemon slice-turkish coffee shots along with our mojitos!

Mark and I on our second (early evening) visit... We visited the Picasso Museum which is really good and well worth a visit - I love it when you can see the progression in an artists work (often from a fairly traditional starting point - always particularly strange with an artist such as Picasso who ended up known for something rather more abstract and modern. I think my favourite instance of that kind of development is if you look at the works of Mondrian - quite a transformation!)

We ate paella and tapas and drank sangria and on our final day caught the train out to Figueres, a town famous as the birthplace of Salvador Dali and home to the Dali Theatre and Museum, which houses the largest collection of Dali works in the world. It's amazing - Dali helped to design it so the whole thing is like a Dali work in itself. He is also buried underneath the building.

The main courtyard. There are creepy people in the car and it rains inside the car!

Emma and Anya on the stairs...

It was nice to come home for Christmas, but Barcelona was definitely a fun distraction from surrounding stresses of life and work. Made me glad to be in Europe.

*Ubiquitous blandness is normally associated with Starbucks I know, but I learnt something from the Telegraph Magazine today: there are 650 Starbucks in the UK, compared with a staggering 1,300 Costas. That's more than there are even McDonalds.