ESPANA
I’m in Barcelona.
Top tip – stay the hell away from Mickey’s Tapas Bar on La Rambla. The paella is crap and they charge 21 Euro for a pitcher of sangria, which in the case of Mickey’s is some red goon and fanta with a few bits of orange.
(One highlight of La Rambla was Zareen’s dancing upstaging the Michael Jackson impersonator who, coincidentally, was a Spaniard considerably darker than MJ himself and stubbornly refused to molest the nearby kids.)
Instead, go to Marcelino’s on Muntaner street. The grub is good and cheap and glasses of wine go at 90 euro cents (about $1.60), as do coffees. The rabbit with garlic sauce is a Catalan favourite, apparently.
Paris isn’t as plagued with dog turd as rumoured, and it a swell town. Hanging with my ex-housemate Joey was rockin, and we saw some terrific jazz. The picasso museum is hot stuff, as is the museum di carnival, which has a lot of revolutionary and napoleonic era art and artifacts. French people are exceedingly friendly by the way. And you can smoke in hospitals.
Tokyo is crazy. Interestingly you can occassionally detect traces of a proud and noble culture under all the Hello Kitty, neon and school girl mania. It was obviously this proud and noble culture that inspired me to get rotten drunk at Gaspanic – a 10 square metre underground hip hop club populated with African American ex-pats and local girls in tasteful costumes.
I will write a full report later.
Props to Pakistan for flogging England by an innings and 100 runs even without ‘that man’ Afridi.
Highlight – double century to no namer Mohammed Yousef (WHO?-sef).
