We had a good flight. It was a bucket-shop Britannia route to the back of beyond, but the seats were comfortable, the food was good and the views fantastic. The French air traffic controllers were on strike again, and so we were forced to fly low beneath the clouds, the fields of France stretching out below us all the way to the Pyrenees, which threw up cold draughts of air and bounced us around. Beyond them, the patchwork brown of an arid Spanish landscape took over from the lush green fields of France, and immediately I wanted to write about what I could see. Perhaps it was a mistake to leave my PDA at home.

We are staying at the El Xalet. I don’t know what it means, but X appears in the name of the Xocholate shop on the main street, too, so I guess it’s Chalet (and Chocotale). From the looks of things it was once a grand house, and the architectural drawings above the marble staircase are dated 1901.

The floors are tiled and the ceilings are faded works of painted art from the centre of which drop dusty glass chandeliers. It puts me in mind of Cuba, and I can’t help but wonder whether it is mere coincidence that the street on which it is built is the Isla de Cuba.

Trevor and Jon come over to meet us, and then the four of us; Trevor, Jon, Paul and myself; head out into the town to find food. The streets are crowded and in places we have to push our way through, past barriers in the narrow roadways, set up to fence off long rectangles of the worn dark surface.

Tomorrow is the festival of Corpus Christi, and it features large in the Catalonian calendar. Much of the surrounding countryside and even Barcelona has emptied its inhabitants into the town, and now whole families - hundreds of them - from grandmother to grandson and everyone in between, sits on doorway stoops, and garden chairs, cutting the buds off newly trimmed flowers and plucking the petals from others.

The fenced-off rectangles of road are now home to carefully drawn chalk outlines of saints and religious icons, smiling faces and musical instruments, each one filled with mounds of grain and the cut buds pressed stem-down into them to fill in the colours.

The main square is dominated by a figure of Christ, many times larger than life, and I decide right then that tomorrow must be an early start.

1. Sitges
   Back from Sitges - and up to date with my notes. The entries for the week gone by, when I had no Internet access,...
   
   
2. Sitges: Corpus Christi
   The sun slants down onto the bed, peeping in through the shutters, and wakes me some time after eight. I lay there listening to feint...
   
   
3. Sitges: Breakwater
   Our hotel is a positive menagerie. A few days ago there was a red-eared terrapin on the side of the pool. Now we find there...