The continuing diaries of an Englishman abroad visiting such exotic places as Spain, USA, Malta and heaven knows where. Tagging along are his wife Pauline and daughter Emma.

Everything you are about to read is based on true events and real people. It may have been embellished beyond recognition for a cheap laugh but everything happened to a greater or lesser degree. Apart from the bits I made up. OK, and apart from the jokes. And apart from the fantasy sequences. But all the characters are real, believe me.


Exciting isn't it?


Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Spain 2005 - Day 6


The two gay men waved and smiled at me again this morning.

Must start trying to avoid eye contact at some stage.

We’re all off to PortAventura today………..definitely………….I think.

It’s a scorching hot day again and the ten minute walk was on a constant slight incline so what with that and the high temperature I was worn out before I’d even got there. What they didn’t tell us was, it may have been ten minutes walk from the hotel to the outskirts of the park but it was a further ten minutes from there to the park’s turnstile entrance. By the time we’d actually got in, it was around mid-day and I was doing my usual impression of a walking drop of water. The park was really busy, far busier than I’d imagined it to be but this was largely due to the high numbers of Spanish kids packed into it. As far as I could make out it wasn’t the Spanish school holiday period, yet there were groups and groups of them wherever we went.

And their manners were non-existent. Pushing, shoving, shouting, spitting, running, barging into people – they were really getting on my nerves and we’d only been in the park for five minutes. Some of these kids are going to get shoved so hard in a minute they won’t know what hit them.

Pauline and Emma can’t take the fast rides so I tagged along whenever Hollie, Sam and Emily decided to go on one. For the first couple of hours, after we’d all been on a disappointing simulation ride called ‘Sea Quest’ we just spent ages and ages walking up and down the same stretch of park not doing much at all for some reason I never quite understood and then, all of a sudden, everyone wanted to eat.

By 3 pm we hadn’t progressed much further than where we’d come in but suddenly there was a flurry of activity and everyone decided to go on some water rapids ride and left me standing there looking after the bags. Soon after, I was in a queue with Hollie, Sam and Emily for the ‘largest all-wooden roller coaster in the world’. This rattled and really shook us around fro a few minutes before I finally got off with a headache. I wondered what that bag was for that they gave us as we got on. I thought it was a sick bag but it was obviously meant for our teeth fillings. As we got off we looked at the photos taken during the ride and posted up for sale at the exit for exorbitant prices. There was a good one of me with my head in my hands. At least I think it was me. Difficult to tell really as my eyeballs were still vibrating slightly giving me a sort of quadruple vision.

Then it was off to see a ‘Wild West Stunt Show’ which was remarkably boring. It seemed to be aimed at six year olds but then again maybe that’s the average Spanish intelligence level as most of the Spanish audience laughed and clapped at everything anyway. I assumed they must have all been ‘Sol’ readers. Of course it doesn’t help when everything is performed in Spanish but they didn’t seem to be able to pull it off with the same degree of professionalism and excitement that there U.S. counterparts do.

Around 7 pm Hollie appeared to have taken that deadly one ride too many and was feeling distinctly unwell. For a seasoned big ride enthusiast this came as a bit of a surprise to everyone including Hollie so with two more park days in hand we decided to call it a day. The fireworks finale at midnight would just have to wait for another day. As we’d now planned out where all the major rides were we decided to come back during the late afternoon/early evening to avoid the heat of he day but more importantly the bloody Spanish kids.

We got back to the hotel and were down to dinner at 9 pm.

The Irish family river-danced in and I admired their nice ornate fence and brick wall with stone lions on each of the pillars.

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