07.08.15
Late start again, temperatures are up to a dry 39 degrees. It's breakfast of tuna and potato salad and Croissants and toothpicks filled with olives, anchovies both white and brown. Freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee. Joel's always ready for eclectic meals but since these are available for breakfast maybe it's standard fare here?
Today's the day to negotiate the city, find our way around and explore. Joel guides us with a smart phone app and we admire plazas and quiet lanes and busy thoroughfares. We find a quiet cool bar ( it's the coffee shop alternative in Europe) and have coffee. He gets us to the museum of art and we have enough time to see Goya , Picasso and others I only have read about in senior art at Nambour State High. It all seemed very boring back then but looking now at the history it is representing, history I am walking around in and on it becomes alive. These art works covering the walls were the Facebook of those days, documenting the passage of time. People and places, battles, victories and peace times. We humans have always wanted to record our days, hoping that it makes our life count and we will not be forgotten in the future.
Then it's to an enormous park, shady green trees, water in the lake, sparkling out of fountains and cool shallows in a small wending creek. A glass house, stunning in its size and complication, a glass palace with minimalist art, places to eat under shady umbrellas, a group of men cheering as they play soccer, buskers and artists selling their wares.
Joel is very sorted, Ok mum, we will cut through here, loop around there and then do a figure eight there, we will have seen most of the park/gallery/plaza. - and I am very content following his lead.
We have seen so many building, and each one is still awe inspiring. These have been built over centuries and for an Australian it's always hard to fathom age, put it into perspective. The first fleet arrived in Australia in what, 1788? That was just yesterday here.
Finally late, as the evening light fades to softest of pinks behind the royal palace we find a street bar / restaurant and have some bread and soak it in the anchovies and oil. Drinking yet another jug of sangria. Musicians come up and do their Spanish music busking for coins. We walk home and I mother around, putting a load of washing on and collapsing exhausted while Joel meets up with friends for a few hours. He has friends in every city that kid of mine.