Barcelona Excitement.

I'm going to Barcelona tomorrow!!! Eek I'm super duper excited.

Polly and I went to Barcelona last year as the first stop of our inter-rail journey and we fell in love with it,. If a city were an equation, Barcelona would be a very good equation; it's beautiful and has history and character and charm, but is also incredibly modern and cool and both aspects are culturally significant and it has an exciting night life and good weather and a beach.

Spain won the Euro Champions or something (a football event at any rate) and the entire city became a party venue. It was soooo much fun. We met a girl called Andrea in a crammed cocktail bar who was studying at Barcelona uni and she knew everyone and everything and she got us into places for free with just a smooth Spanish word and I literally wanted to befriend her forever. Sadly, she wrote her email address down for us on a piece of paper which Polly stowed safely in her purse, which transpired to be less safe when her purse was stolen, and so we never managed to thank her for such a wonderful night.

Andrea and I celebrating Spain's football win.

So tomorrow we return, accompanied by my sister. I'm really looking forward to showing her all the beautiful places we visited, as well discovering more, especially as we have more time. I'm particularly excited about the tapas experience, my sister will totally appreciate that.

I haven't yet started packing, although I have obviously drawn a plan of each of my outfits, and we leave at five tomorrow morning, so I should probably go and do that.

Mother Punk.

My sister, my mum and I always try to go to the Hayward Gallery, on the Southbank, once during the summer. I’m not really sure why we go in the summer rather than at any time of year – it does, unsurprisingly, exist all year round – but it’s a sort of tradition, I imagine derived from one summer holiday activity years ago, and the Williams family does love a good tradition, so we do. It’s a really cool art gallery and I would totally recommend going; all the best exhibitions I have ever seen have been here and it’s always very inspiring and thought provoking.
We never check what’s on; we always just jump on the tube, skip across The Millennium Bridge, waltz up and take a look. Past exhibitions have looked at dreams, home and the moon. There’s normally something free, and we all know that’s always a bonus.

But this year, when September greeted us shockingly early, we hadn’t completed our tradition. The Hayward gallery remained unvisited. Well we couldn’t have that!!
As soon as we realised that the summer had whizzed by on trains across Europe and open top buses in New York and runs on English beaches and jet skis in Portugal, we dashed to the Hayward Gallery. The exhibition was on punk, which was really pretty cool.

My mum used to be a bit of a punk, back in the day, so she was thrilled. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for her, and I really loved it.

 

 

 

 

People were so much cooler then, so much more enthusiastic, so much more ready to give it a go and fuck being ‘cool’. And because of that they were really very cool.

 

 

Side note: I felt I fitted in, in my crop jumper with leather collar, red lips, and leather jacket. Maybe a bit of a fraud, especially when standing next to some of the old punks, who had long greying hair and earrings, but still working it, I liked to think. The guys nudging fifty were still cooler than me though. I’m working on it.

 
When we’d finished looking at every old poster and self-produced newspaper and record, it was nearly six o’clock. Cocktail hour! We headed off to gorgeous Mexican bar and restaurant Las Iguanas. The bartender mixed our drinks to perfection. They were seriouslyyy good. We watched the bar fill up from our seat by the window, and watched the buzz of Southbank go by, and watched The Thames dance past.