Primavera!

This week I have been recovering from an exotic Spanish cold.  It wasn't the sort of memento I was hoping to take back from my holiday in Barcelona, but my suffering was worth it for the fun we had over the previous week. 

G and I were in Barcelona for the Primavera music festival, a festival well worth the exclamation mark assigned to it in the title to this piece.  Primavera is a three day orgy of music and involved some old-time favourite bands such as Pavement and the Pixies, as well as some of our more recent favourites, such as Wild Beasts and Florence and the Machine.  I also discovered a new-found love for acts I had thought I despised, such as the Pet Shop Boys.  You can see the full line-up here.

The holiday had a rather inauspicious beginning.  G and I arrived at our hotel in Barcelona (the Silken on Avenue Diagonal) in the early hours of a Thursday only to be told that, notwithstanding the fact we had pre-paid for a week's stay in the hotel, the hotel was overbooked and they had no room to give us.  We were ferried to an associated hotel for the night.  We then returned to our booked hotel the next morning, grumpy and tired.  To compensate for their error (or perhaps simply to stop us complaining at the hotel's front desk) we were upgraded to a suite for the remainder of our stay and provided with a daily complementary breakfast.   

On the Thursday two friends, Ke and Ka, arrived.  The four of us then began the routine we would follow for the next three days. We spent an afternoon wandering around Barcelona, stopping for the odd tapas meal and drink.  Then we all met in our suite at around 5 pm for cava and nibbles before heading to Primavera.  There, we fueled up on beer, red bull, jaggermeister shots (what can I say - they were only 1 euro each) and food from the food court before dancing the night away until around 4 am.  We also met up with some more friends who were in Barcelona for the party and generally had a debauched and excellent time. 

After three excellent days of partying, G and I then finished the trip off with another three nights of r&r in Barcelona.

The only downside to the trip was the fact that most of the hotel saw me nude, or nearly nude.  But I'll save that for another blog post.