TravelShop Turkey’s bus doesn’t actually take you to Istanbul or Tunis, but love those krazy keywords (and of course even Trabzon isn’t that Turkish any more anyway).

–Hello.
–Hello, is that the Department of Tourism? Yes? Hello, a week ago I sent you an email asking if this Friday you could let me and a group in to see the crypt of blah blah blah, and I was wondering whether this would still be possible.
–Oh yes, I read the email.
–So?
–Yes, that should be [...]

(Even if they can’t make a decent paella.)

Will my favourite herpetoid be safe from the war on the narco wild life?

Party political prejudice, or yet more historical memory bollocks?

But here are a couple of photos from the day after the great storm

Where are the heaving (crowds of) drunks of yesteryear?

According to this list. As a popular destination, Barcelona has two in the top ten, Hostal Windsor and Hostal Abrevadero. A friend tells me that the proportion being fired in the sector substantially exceeds official figures for the drop in tourists. My money’s on the cockroaches to survive.

Chez Jaume Ferrete.

“Jewish mountain” is currently hot favourite in Barcelona council offices because it is believed that this will attract well-off tourists from New York and Israel. Joan Amades says that at the end of the C19th, local sailors referred to gardens of St Bertrand as fossa del jueu, “the Jewish grave”, and indeed there were Jewish [...]