Near West bound

Logic has it that we must be in the Near West given we flew in over the Far East, via the Middle East to arrive in the heart of Catelonia, home of the water pistol tottin' locals who have apparently taken up arms against the hordes of tourists besieging their wonderful city. This is price we have to pay for splashing cash around the place. Looking forward to it when we hit the sidewalks tomorrow.

It was a 3 hop trip to get here. A lift to the airport from Offspring no.1 accompanied by the two coat pooch was greatly appreciated whilst non-blogger being stripped of scissors and a knife going through security wasn't. The 9 hour overnight jaunt to Bangkok went ok, curiously interrupted by a fellow passenger asking how long will the Blogger be watching the movie as she wanted to go to sleep. This is why they hand out eye masks was the smart reply (not delivered as these smart replies are always thought of after the event). 
The airport in Bangkok is huge. Sprawling. Cavernous. It even has it's own in house train set. Fully autonomous as well. At home we can't even get one to the airport let alone one inside.

Here they even have autonomous floor polishers inocculously roaming around looking remarkably like R2D2. Life copying art. The 5 hour layover passed by relatively eventless. Mostly just sitting around drinking coffee and being awestruck as to how many shopping strips seem to go for kms in all directions, all busy due to the plethora of peeps who were on all their way to wherever they had deemed necessary to be.
Leg no.2 was a 10 hour stint to Istanbul AP. More food and drinks at the wrong time of the day, bloated and worn out it only seemed appropriate to crash out just after lunch. Forced jet lag. And then wake into a dreamscape, everything is twisted around, it should be mid afternoon and yet it's dark outside, the nighttime footy is on live from home and they're serving breakfast like it's 5 am. Body clock spinning in reverse. More coffee. The live feed of finals fails as we slip through the safe corridor amongst the warring countries of the middle east with Shpongle providing the acoustic backdrop.
It took a while to realize the windows were deliberately blacked out to make it feel like night, the only logical reason for doing this is to appease some desk bound psycologist who has shares in a smart window manufacturing company. Admittedly the music was this bloggers choice. The windows magically cleared as we decended through the clouds to glimpse a vast suburban sprawl dotted with temples adorned with the 5 layer spires that ensure all participants are constantly reminded of the power structures under which they are controlled by.

Unfortunately we can't tick Turkiea off as a visited country as we didn't leave the airport. The 4 hours spent there was basically people watching and not eating as we figured the next leg would fatten us up again. This AP is (apparently) the busiest in Europe. No internal trains, no Star Wars robots scurrying around. Bit disappointing actually.

Enough hairy people to possibly be Wookies but that's about it. Looks like they stole the roof design from Southern Cross station back home. Aussie architecture leading the world of design and engineering (yeah right).
The next leg to Barcelona started off badly with another huge long walk to the gate only to see a milling crowd not boarding. Something wrong somewhere. At least we know our luggage has magically traveled all the way with us and is in the hold.
Eventually taking off the 4 hour hop was straight forward as we crossed the Italian boot in the dark with storms raging over the Alps down below our level to the north. Love a good lightning show. A long wait for the bags to appear and a hotel shuttle bus in the wee small hours and voila! 47 hours after leaving home, we're here. Easy.