Made it to Spain!

So I made it to Spain in one piece! I’ve put together my bike, and it all seems to be working fine. I’m looking forward to getting riding, although the weather’s looking a bit mixed over the next week- with some thunderstorms forecast- hopefully I can outrun them!

Firstly, apologies for no photos- I’ll try and get some up tomorrow.

I’m staying at Camping Barcelona, which is in Mataro- a down about 40km north of Barcelona. It has ~130,000 people, so about the same size as Dunedin. I’m taking the campground’s free bus into Barcelona today to have a look around.

The rest is an excerpt from an email to my parents with some details:

Ah, so Spain. I think Mataro is a satellite city (with 120k people) where people commute into Barcelona to work. It does have a really nice beach, and so I’m sure it’s pumping in tourist season. It’s kinda hard to tell how big the commercial district is, as most places are shops downstairs and apartments upstairs. Pretty much everywhere is about 3-4 stories- they really pack them in. It’s a nice town though- lots of public spaces etc.

I walked past a fruit market yesterday- I was hoping someone would be selling some bread, but it was just fruit. I didn’t end up buying any, and went into a little supermarket instead. It’s amazing how much you rely on packaging when shopping if you don’t know the language! For example, even buying tomato pasta sauce- it all has a tomato on the front- pasta sauce, tomato sauce and the concentrated tomato paste. And don’t get me started on salami’s/strange looking meats! Haha.

I’m wondering if the supermarket i went to was a bit of a specialised one (it was right beside their big fruit market)- so i’ll go into town tomorrow and check out a bigger one. Need to find a hardware store too, hopefully they’ll have white spirits, seeing as the outdoor store who sold the gas bottle didn’t, and the campground doesn’t have a kitchen! I’ve written down the names of the fuel in Spanish now, so that should help.Language hasn’t been too much of an issue so far. It’s really helpful that there’s a guy running the campground who speaks english (and spent some time in NZ- he knew more about Super15 rugby than I did!). Otherwise, it’s mainly been the outdoor store and the supermarket. It wasn’t too bad- the checkout girl asked me something, maybe whether I had coupons or not, but yeah, just smiled and handed over the money.. hehe

One thing that was interesting was that a lot of the shops are open until 1.30pm, then close for the afternoon and re-open in the evening. I guess its the siesta after lunch.. But it’s definitely the sort of place that you’d sit around outside eating tapas and drinking all afternoon! (if you could afford it!)