Saturday, April 09, 2005

Where's Snowflake?

The main point of this trip is to meet up with some of Jan's children. No 1 son lives with his wife in Barcelona, and No 1 daughter and her husband and child and No 2 son all decide to visit from the UK for a get together. No 3 son can't make it.

We meet at a Catalan restaurant which offers a great 12 euros, three course, lunch time menu. If you know where to go, you can eat really well and really cheaply in Barcelona, and of course we are led by locals.

So where do you take your grandchild for an afternoon out? The answer is the zoo, or as the Spanish pronounce it the Thoo, which is just next door. Barcelona Zoo was home, until recently, to Snowflake, an albino gorilla, who was quite famous and who died a few years ago. I'm not sure what I feel about Thoos. For a start there are 7 adults, at 14 euros each, to accompany one 20 month old child, who gets in free! But that's not the main point. There are the usual array of wild beasts (which reminds me of a girl I used to go out with - but that's another story), but the enclosures don't seem large enough at times and you see quite a lot of repetitive pacing and rocking, which I believe is a sign of boredom and potential mental health problems. But enough about me, and back to the zoo. Or more precisely, back to the hotel for a quick sleep, because tonight is going to be a late one.

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