That's a Big Dog!

Barcelona really is a terrific city. I write this from Madrid several days (and several paradors) later. Madrid has a totally different vibe, more people, more stuff, yet so far I don't have the same happy vibe. Perhaps it will come later when we have left. We had a day to bimble in Barcelona ahead of the tennis so went on the hop on hop off bus, both routes, one after the other. Absolutely fascinating. Very easy way to get a handle on a city. Also the history bits are interesting, if very abbreviated. The books may have it differently but it seems that up until the 1950s, Barcelona was still a bit of a run down, provincial town of no great importance. It was and remains a left wing city. In the Civil War, which is a huge event in the transformation of the country, Barcelona being Catalonia, was socialist, communist, anarchist, you name it, but 100% opposed to the Nationalists under Franco. Barcelona was the last place to fall, and Franco didn't forget. Madrid incidentally was a Nationalist city. Its football club, Real, was royalty, Barcelona was an upstart. The city was transformed in the 1950s with new buildings, new roads so other than in the old sections, the city has an organised grid structure with diagonal boulevards leading into and out of the city, all meeting in central piazzas. The club where we were staying was on one such diagonal very close to one of these central piazzas. Also consequently the buildings are relatively new. The city is not medieval at all. Another huge step up was the 1992 Olympic Games. This sparked huge new buildings and development of the remaining yuckier bits of the city, particularly the port area. The athletes' village is today a bringht new quarter of the city, the port and surrounding beaches jewels. Almost unbelievable, an Olympic games that actually worked for the host city. Usually they are massive financial drains, with today countries vying for not having to stage them. We figured out the bus system well enough to get to and from the tennis... again sited in the middle of a residential area, very up market one too. This is the home of the Royal Tennis Club of Barcelona. It reminded me of Coral Beach Club in Bermuda! Maybe not as swanky as Monte Carlo, for that really is the club of the royal family with only the uber wealthy able to breathe the same saintly air, except for that week when the public are allowed in. No royal family in left wing Barcelona of course, but tons of well to do families who are everywhere in that tennis week. It seemed that most of the tournament volunteers were members or children of members and that large numbers of the crowd too were members. People were wandering up to people all over kissing one another on the cheeks, changing seats and genrally behaving like the most important things were happening off the courts, rather than on them. The thing that finally summed it up for me was that someone brought their dog with them to tennis. Not one of those handbag dogs, but a very very big dog. One of those blue eyed, very hairy dogs that look like huskies. It was about my size. The owner brought it up the stairs into the stands and it flopped down in the middle of the public axis ways. This was very much a reminder that this tournament is MINE, not yours. Classic. The tournament itself was a 500 point, 64 draw, men only event. Not all the big guys would be playing. Djokovich for example skipped it. On the courts, Nadal was knocked out early and Alcaraz pulled out injured, so with a host of lesser ranked names present much depended on the two finalists from Monte Carlo: Tsitsipas and Ruud. Otherwise the final would have been between lesser players. Good for them, bad for the tournament organisers. But boy did those guys make a meal of things. Tsitsipas in particular should have been beaten in the two successive matches we watched, yet somehow his opponents managed to give it back to him in the most unlikely way. Ruud was a little more efficient, but not much. Somehow they managed to make it through to the finals. Ruud won this week, but we didnt stay to watch. We were on our way to our parador trail.