View of University Square

I will rarely, if ever, turn down a visit to Barcelona. We've been quite a few times over the years, including a week in summer 2021 which was just great. We were hoping to see Bb and Dd this time again, but it didn't work out. Sometimes, life gets in the way.

Our journey out was awful. It was a red eye flight on Ryanair, which is bad enough on its own. I don't cope well with these 3am starts any more... But I didn't have time to take yesterday off as a travel day, but I really do need to think about that more in the future. But what made the flight appalling was a group of four drunken men, one in particular who was basically harassing a woman of East Asian origin sitting on the row in front of us the whole time. It was apparent she was getting increasingly hassled by it, and was just trying to ignore him, but he was getting increasingly insistent. Throughout the flight he was talking to her, to the cabin crew, to his friends and to no one in particular. Most people attempted not to engage him. The cabin crew obviously knew it was happening and that he and his friends were swigging duty free alcohol decanted into plastic bottles. Of the four, the one sitting directly in front of us was the most obviously pissed. Swaying from side to side when he stood up. I finally cracked and after one particularly insistent attempt to engage the woman in the window seat, I reached through and touched her shoulder and asked her if she was alright. From her face, which was terrified, it was obvious she was not, but she appreciated the gesture. Of course, he then turned on me, and on Mr A, and on anyone in particular who spoke up (a few others did). When we landed (mercifully soon after) everyone sat in the plane and let these obnoxious men get off first, and as we left we spoke to the cabin crew. They basically said "you should have reported it". It is obvious that Ryanair cabin crew will ignore anything for a quiet life, as any reporting of it, by us or them would result in the police coming and then they would be delayed from their schedule by the need to give police reports. I've recorded this incident here, but it's absolutely not something I want to talk about or think about in the future. I want to move on, and preferably never fly Ryanair again. It was the pits. I've added a collage of some photos I took out of the window in an effort to distract myself from the events inside the plane.

We found our way to the hotel in the Corts area, located conveniently for both my conference destination and the Bb and Dd barrio. We decompressed a little on a rather long journey on the train to Sants station, and the walk up from the station. We also stopped for breakfast. The hotel room was not ready, but I left Mr A and most of my stuff waiting for the room and headed off for an afternoon's work.

Mr A and I reconvened later, with the group I was with, at the university main building, which has an interesting history. We had a guided tour, which took us up into the bell tower where we had a great view over the city. The building was the first to be built, in the late 19th century, outside the historic city walls. It also houses an amazing collection of rare books and manuscripts, and we were privileged to see and get very close to a 14th century copy of the Justinian's codex, a work of Seneca and a book of urbs and civitas, including a page of the earliest pictorial representations of Barcelona as a city. That's the second extra (also a collage).

Our final act in the historical building was to plunder someone else's reception. We simply went where we were directed as a group, and drank sparkling wine and orange juice and ate canapés. It turned out that this was someone else's reception, and ours was elsewhere. Whoops. We never found out precisely where. After that, it was to the dinner, which we left early to return to the hotel by taxi, completely exhausted.