Europe, Day VII
Waking up this morning was a feat, but luckily no one was in a hurry to get moving. I’d slept in the top bunk on the top floor of our host’s apartment in Old Town, two blocks from the beach where I could hear waves rolling in and smell salt in the air.
Outside on the balcony the girls smoked and gossiped and waited for me to stir so we could all go meet another expatriate American who was traveling down from Montpelier. For some reason, this character had a jones for the food at Hard Rock Café and an active distaste for France and the French, despite making their country his home. Begrudgingly, we all left to go meet him at the Hard Rock, walking thru various parades, live music, festivals and Gaudí projects along the way.
The rest of the afternoon was blurred by the heat and our crippling hangovers. We mostly walked and gawked and at some point I tried to buy tennis shoes but was too addled to concentrate on a purchase. We took an afternoon break then rendezvoused at a restaurant for an early dinner in the middle of a huge, columned city square whose name escapes me. I had a delicious paella that I couldn’t appreciate fully due to the previous night’s gin abuses, but the seafood was fresh and spicy.
Afterward we visited a hookah bar to meet a mutual friend who’d just returned from Morocco. Apparently if one is a visiting Western/European female, she must do no small amount of research beforehand in order to dress and act in a manner not offensive to the locals. I cannot do justice in retelling all the particulars of this lady’s story, but I can’t overemphasize the gyst of it, which is, always be prepared and don’t assume anything.
Still later we ended up at a “youth bar” with an emphasis on reggae, an altogether dodgy destination. The dancing was incongruously close to what we used to identify as breakdancing. The style was only sort of relevant to the staggered reggae off-beats booming from the speakers, but then again everything felt pretty off-kilter. The plaza outside was jammed with skateboarders, dreadlocked kids and strange hybridized subcultural cues: cat-eye glasses with hippie dresses, b-boy hats with pashmina scarves, leather pants with braided fratboy belts. It was like someone took a New York club and sent it through the scrambler.
Totally sober, I was beginning to feel more stoned than these club kids on account of a hangover I still couldn’t shake. I rallied for us to head back home for a good night’s sleep since our plane the next morning was leaving at an obscene hour.
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