More reign in Spain

OK more on spain.

We took one trip out the whole day we were there. A visit to Barcelona. This is what we found.  Though the Nou Camp and Sagrada Famillia maybe nice to be honest both left me cold.  Sagrada has to be one of the most meretricious piles of old cock I've seen.  Gaudi by name and Gaudy by nature, which seems to influence a lot of his works.   Parc Guell a rich persons estate that morphed into a park due to epic fail, was largely excellent.  Gaudis use of ceramic either excites you or bores you and in most places it was the latter, but the bird nest walls inhabited by pigeons and wisteria are suitably beautiful.  Also nice is Gaudis Chameleon figure masquerading as a dragon at the main entrance, and various orange flowered opuntias nestled around the place.

Theres a piddly mosaic set in the roof adjacent to this excellent view.

Onto the Sagrada Familia, the worlds most famous building site, and to be honest the marmite of large religious buildings.  I hate it, all its Gaudi sorry Gaudy walls and candle wax columns, its fruit on spikes and rogue words and paeons to god.  Even though technically it won't be done untill 2026* there are massive queues to see inside the big eyesore which goes to show that people are weird.  There is a park outside of it, which is very nice, filled with living statues and dudes trying to be babies (very funny, he had the voice of Mr Punch and had me in stitches).  I suspect you want a bloody picture of the Sagrada, go on heres one then.

Its Gormenghast, big fucking whoop.

Finally we got to stop at a few other places including lunch break in las Ramblas.  For Londoners imagine if Portobello Road and Piccadilly merged going down toward the Thames as one unit, you'll have a rough idea of the area.  A mix of people flogging stuff to change your voice to that of Mr Punches (really Annoying), plants, including a Rebutia for 6euro amongst the general floristry stuff and tickets to Sonar and other shows.
This largely made up for it, they still have a C+A here which is funny seeing as the last closed down ages ago in the UK.  The rest is a trip to a mirador at Montjuic overlooking town and some stuff from the 92 olympics which remember from a poster in our Spanish class.  Nice.

The pigeons flying into view make this in my opinion.

We promised more on the Central Arcade chain of Arcades in Salou, there were about 5 of them with increasingly tenuous arcade games and bits, the latter ones were simply a "Locutorio" (Netcaff) with a few air hockey and crane toys out front, the big one on the main drag is the one you want, a homage to Naomi hardaware it has a massive array of Virtua Tennis, Virtua NBA and Spike out, Coupled with a decent array of Pins, including Ripleys Believe it or not (really nice believe it or not), Pirates Of the Caribbean, Star Trek and the quite Scary Red and Teds Roadshow, complete with big Scary Riddler heads that talk to you when you lose.  Theres quite bit to hold your attention here, the casino arcade has a Sopranos pin but we don't talk about that.

Off the main drag there are two further Centrals that deserve your attention.  A stones throw from another arcade {not worth visiting} is a run down place.   There they had this in working order.

Furoko Wars.

An unlikely mix of Tug of war and Japanese weirdness, we're pretty sure that it translates to Furoko Wars but not sure of its overall Romanization.  It allows you to select Easy, Medium and Hard modes.  When thats done you're supposed to stand at the back board (not shown) and pull on the rope until an onscreen enemy gets wrenched off its feet.  The game is made by Takumi and Towa Corp in 1995 were pretty sure its the same Takumi that is a splinter from Toaplan, and looking on line it seems Towa Corp does these sort of rides, they did a big Pop Up Pirate as well as this.

The final place is half way to the old town of Salou and has a few more Virtua Tennises and some Gaelco games.  What you really want to check out is the Scared Stiff pinball out the back which is suitably awesome and, next to it for the princely sum of 2 euro....

These are

the robots

you're looking for

Rideable robots.

Sadly you'll need to be a child to have any fun with them.
And I bitterly regret not getting video of them in action, but damn they look awesome.











*Possibly earlier.  Edit that should be Fukoro wars, throughout.  Be on your way...

We R Back

Hiatus deceleration, 3,2,1 you are back in your familiar room...

A family holiday in Salou Spain, one week of overcast weather and one week of traditional Spanish sun, a rather excellent trip staying at the Golden Avenida Park hotel.
Of course what you want to know is if there was any strangeness there and overall what it was all like.

 Heres a potted list of highlights for your delectation.

1. It seems that the Russians and ex Russian states have seriously made their move into tourism.  Where it used to be signs in German and that, most parts have signs in cyrillic script as well as Catalan (Salou is part of the Costa Dorada/ Daurada.).

2.  We saw an Octopus, a real live octopus.  Found by one of the aforementioned Russian chums, hidden under a rock and with the arm it presented I guess its around a good 12 inches.  The guy who found it asked in broken Spanish if it was any good to eat and if it was in any way poisonous.  We made our excuses and left, so we guessed the octopus ended up on his dinner table that night.

3. An old Spanish lady holding her arm out to check her tan against that of an African guy next to her.  In fact this year I've seen more Africans in Spain than at any other time.  Normally resigned to flogging knock off shades and hair braiding, I've seen them diversify into official jobs rather than, so called black market activities.  Incidentally Spain always had a dodgy reputation for racial depictions, Carioca Cafe and Conguitos chocolate peanuts are two of the products that come to mind with dubious depictions of africans.  Whereas by the late 90's we had managed to pension off Robinson from Robinsons Jam, they were still depicting africans as spear wielding natives on conguitos packets. 

4. Central Arcade.  I love an arcade and will do a full  report on what I saw in an upcoming blog, but safe to say that there are a shed load of Pinballs there as well as a wide spec of Naomi Cabs too.  Including Virtua NBA which I didn't know they did (along with Virtuas Striker and Tennis).  Incidentally Time crisis is virtually ubiquitious.

5.  A massive thunderstorm, proving that the rain in Spain is mainly a bastard pain.

Anyway this is just a brief hello, we'll look at other stuff when I have time.