Techno frustrations & Gypsy stings


Well all my planning for being able to post photos and txt to the blog, from my mobile whilst travelling have come to nothing. I first suspected problems when I tried to send a photo from Tullamarine and the phone gave me a message saying that the blog didn't recognise my carrier. I figured that it was because I had switched to roaming and so I re-registered the blog and I got a photo through. Thought I had fixed it, so I have sent a couple of photos over the last 24 hours, but no luck - they haven't turned up on the site.
Today I think some gypsies put a moker on me. I got stung by them in an absolutely typical scam. We were in a courtyard behind the Barcelona cathedral, admiring some buildings and listening to a guitarist. A young girl came up to me and asked me to sign a petition to fund a home for deaf children or some such rubbish. I should have told her to go away. Things happened very fast, the minute I hesitated, she became very insistent and I, stupidly gave in and even more stupidly gave her a couple of euros. Suddenly she dropped the euro's and there were 3 girls around me all shoving petitions under my nose and saying 'you must sign', I yelled at them 'No!' and they took off so fast, they were gone in a split second. I thought I'd been smart and saved my bag from being ripped off. It wasn't until half an hour later that I realised they had actually taken my coin purse right out of my hand and I hadn't even realised. Fortunately I only had 15 euro, a AUD$10 in it, my spare phone battery and a spare phone memory card, as the rest of my cash and my credit cards were in my money belt with my passport. But I think they put a curse on me as the next thing that happened was that my phone camera stopped working!

We haven't really recovered from jetlag yet. Gill and I arrived in Barcelona at 9.30 am on Thursday morning after 25hours travelling, and we were on the go all day. We did the Gaudi bus tour in the afternoon and it was just fantastic. I couldn't believe that I was actually IN Park Guell and looking at and touching all those incredible mosaics. We drove past houses he built and went to the Sangra familla. I find it almost incomprehensible to imagine the passion that drove this man. We ended up in bed by 8.30 pm. Today we have been to place espanola and the National Museum of Art, Catalanya, then through the park juic, past the olympic stadium and got lost trying to find our way back. I ended up finding our way by instinct as the map got so torn we couldn't hold it together to read it. We spent the afternoon wandering the del Born and Gothic districts, eating, drinking, shopping and enjoying ourselves. Cath & Gill are already in bed asleep, & I'm on my way!

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