When you live in a tourist town you get the question at least once a week. They're just in for the weekend, so you must be as well, right? It doesn't help that we aren't Spanish like most of the locals. Gee, I don't have to use any of my memorized lines from my Spanish-English phrase book. You must be a tourist too. I don't mind it. I do get to take a bit of pride in the fact that I'm on vacation all the time. My weather is always like this. I can go out to these bars on Tuesday.
It's almost nearly getting ready to not quite be time for things to start around here. Carnival is coming in a couple of weeks. And the streets are already filling up especially on weekends. I saw the balloon vendor at Cap de la Villa last night (a fixture during season). And the guys who stalk the streets, restaurants, and bars pedaling roses, light-up glasses, and squeaky toys are multiplying. But the class (or lack thereof) of people appearing in more significant numbers these days are the tourists.
I saw a clump of young Brits spill out of a bar the other night around dinner time. "If nobody's here, I wanna go to a bar with GOOD music." They seemed disappointed that no one else was crowding the bars to get their drink on. I felt like stopping to tell them that in Spain no one goes to the bars at nine p.m. At nine everyone's at home or in a restaurant. Hopefully they weren't too blottoed to enjoy it when the crowds actually got to the bars.
We went out last night (and the night before). I'm trying to slowly wean my forty-something still-thinks-he's-a-rave-boi partner off the bar scene, but it's a herculean task. When we got in to Oreks the only people we knew were mild acquaintances. We said our hellos and positioned ourselves in Juan's section of the bar. But then my partner said he had to go say hi to our friends. He's a bit like a Montessori pre-schooler in that everyone he sees is a "friend." In this case our "friends" we're a few guys who had noted the fact that someone in the bar other than themselves was speaking loudly in English. That's it. Friday night they make a comment about my partner being loud. Saturday night they're our friends.
So my partner latched on to them for the night. Call me antisocial, but I just don't latch on to strangers. It's a good way to get robbed or to end up snogging the uglier of a couple while your partner gets the cute one. Maybe I'm a prude; I don't know. I don't know what he was after with these guys. Most of the locals who hang out with tourists are looking for sloppy anonymous sex. And that's pretty much what tourists expect. I'm just not in to all that anymore. Eventually they left, headed to a more lively (code for slutty) place. I told the partner he could go on without me. I think, though, he had gotten the hint that they weren't interested. Two of them were a couple and the single one had already hooked up with a Swiss guy. He reluctantly agreed to head home. But the effect of hanging out with these guys lasted: even after we were back in our quiet(er) apartment he continued talking in that odd explosion of verbal diarrhea that is the English tourists' voice.
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