Spain 2005 - Day 5

The two gay men smiled and winked at me over the coffee and croissants this morning.

Think I’ll stop wearing my shorts at breakfast.

We share the hotel with the French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish and a shillelagh’s worth of Irish families. It’s interesting to see the different way that the various nationalities treat the sun beds. The Germans, as ever, all get their towels on them by 3 am every morning, the Dutch shred them up and smoke them, the French smother them in mayonnaise and eat them, the Spanish put them to one side until tomorrow while the Irish build them into small communities without planning permission. In fact over the past four days I’ve noticed the Irish contingent increasing at a steady rate. I don’t think they’re all officially on holiday in the hotel, I’m sure a lot of them have just arrived and are staying with friends under the Irish sun beds. The Irish family I tend to see most of seem to always have the same table at dinner every night. So far there’s a nice tarmac area to one side of it and they’re laying on the electricity supply as I write.

As ever there’s an events organiser prowling around the pool area trying to get people involved in a spot of darts, table tennis etc. but to his credit, he’s keeping a reasonably low profile and not being as pushy and loud as last year’s Emmathethompsonrep was. Having just said that, he may just be taking the job a tad too seriously. I’ve just seen him strolling around the pool with a rifle tucked under his arm. He can’t be getting enough volunteers for the table tennis I suppose. Oh no, hold on, it’s all right. He’s trying to organise a rifle shooting competition. That’s a relief.

I thought we were going to PortAventura today. We’d talked about it with the girls a couple of days ago and I thought we’d agreed that Monday would be a good day to go and make the first of our three day visits. It turned out that the girls hadn’t really thought about it at all so we’re definitely going tomorrow instead………….probably. PortAventura is a Universal theme park which has been described in the brochures as “only ten minutes walk away from the hotel”. In fact you can see some of the larger rides from our hotel balcony so it looks like it might be true for once.

As is often the case with many Mediterranean resorts, once you get away from the commercialised centre, the original ‘old town’ is not too far away, far more interesting and quieter. So, hiding my disappointment at not being able to scream and scream again on the Universal rides, we decided to take a walk into Salou and find the old port and surrounding area. I say we, but it turned out to just be me and Pauline, for some reason a long walk didn’t appeal to the girls. In fact the walk down to the old part of the town wasn’t too far anyway. Once we’d got past the shops and bars of central Salou the main promenade took us along the beach front to the port and soon modern ugly buildings slowly gave precedence to attractive Spanish architecture. Here was another area of shops but far more attractive with most of the shops jumbled up down narrow windy streets. One small shop we passed was like a big cupboard. It was only the width of its doorway and stretched back into the darkness like a long narrow corridor. I was so surprised as I walked in by this that I’ve got no idea what it was selling. Must have been long narrow things like flag poles….or telephone poles…..or fishing rods….or girders……….or stilts? Come to think of it you don’t see many shops selling stilts do you? Wonder where you go to buy them? Hang on I remember now. It was selling clothes. Ordinary clothes. Not even clothes for long tall narrow skinny people like the tall black man. Just clothes.

With our visit to the old town over, Pauline suggested we hop on a bus and visit Cambrils, another resort just a few miles along the coast which had been described to us as being quieter and prettier than Salou and well worth a visit. Ten minutes later we were walking around Cambrils but apart from the usual sea frontage of bars and shops it certainly didn’t appear to be prettier or quieter. Away from the front it looked like it was built on a roundabout in the middle of a motorway. There didn’t seem to be much there at all. The odd shop and bar here and there but nothing that made you think “must tell everyone to visit this place”. We’d found a few smaller, real streets as opposed to great thumping dual carriageways when Pauline popped into a shop for some postcards. She came out and showed me one which had a photo of an extremely attractive gateway in what looked like a city wall. The view was from the gate, down a narrow cobbled street covered in plants and flowers growing in the window boxes of local residents. On the postcard it just said ‘Cambrils’. “Well if that’s Cambrils I don’t know where we are, I said, “this place is nothing like that. They’ve made that up.”

Pauline said, “Don’t be stupid,” and went back to the shop to ask where we could find the actual area pictured on the postcard. She came back and said, “It’s apparently part of the old town, down here somewhere.” Things were looking up. We started walking, as usual without much idea of where we were really going and eventually gave up and asked again. This time it was an old lady on a bench and she directed us further on in the same general direction so at least we were making progress. We’d been walking non-stop since we’d got off the bus, it was really hot and it seemed we weren’t really getting anywhere even with the latest directions. We asked again, showing the postcard to a man who pointed along the road and gave us succinct directions in Spanish which we didn’t have a clue about and still we were walking. The heat was getting to me.

“I told you they’d made it up,” I said to Pauline, “that picture on the postcard is about as real as Michael Jackson’s head.” Pauline said, “Don’t be stupid” and strolled over to a postman, showed him the postcard and asked him where it was. Bloody hell, maybe we’ll get somewhere at last. He’s bound to know isn’t he? He told us that the old original walled town was where we’d find the gateway. It wasn’t very far away and it was well worth seeing, very pretty and something we shouldn’t miss. He pointed the way ahead and went on his postman’s way whistling a jaunty postman’s tune.

We started walking again. And walked. And walked. And walked.

It was getting hotter with every road we passed and it seemed like we’d been walking for hours. I looked at my watch. It was hours. And we’d still not got anywhere near the old town. “Bloody hell,” I said, “how far away can this old town be? It must be so old it’s disappeared off the face of the earth.” We were still walking around an area with wide open spaces and wide open roads when we suddenly appeared to be walking alongside a high stone wall. We walked through an archway, along a narrow road ending in a T-junction. We stopped, looked left and right, did a double take, looked right again and there along the street and up a few stone steps was the gated entrance shown on the postcard.

And do you know what?

It was nothing like the bloody picture. Oh you could tell it was the same gateway but there were no attractive flowers around its surrounding walls, it was just a rusty old gate.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t wonderful. It wasn’t anything.

Bloody hell, we’d walked for hours and hours just to see this landmark and it was pathetic. I couldn’t believe I’d put myself through two hours or so of ninety degree hell just to see this bit of old iron. And that was it. The rest of the so-called old town was like the gate – a great big disappointment.

That postman has a lot to answer for………..

I’ve noticed that the current trend in men’s fashion for evening wear is trousers which end about mid-calf. Neither one thing or the other really. It’s like they can’t quite make up their minds whether to wear long short trousers or short long trousers. Either way, they should only be worn by the under-25’s otherwise they make the wearer look like he should be wearing a bright red curly wig and a red nose to finish off the look.

Tonight the hotel entertainment is ‘Silly Games’.

Needless to say, we’re spending a quiet evening on our balcony. The girls are off to a karaoke bar.