'Fun' in the Sun.

Look at the irony in the title. Ahahaha.
-.-
As you may have already guessed from my last post, this wasn't the best of holidays. I much prefer short - say, three day - breaks to overly long breaks. That way, I can go there, do what I want, and then go home.
To be fair, I probably had already decided that I wasn't going to enjoy myself before we even set off. But bear with me.

On the Saturday, we left Stansted airport and flew to Perpignan, in the south of France. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, although when we experience turbulence near landing, my mum almost crushed all of the bones in my hand - she's absolutely petrified of landings, let alone when flying with Ryanair.

As our flight had been delayed by an hour and a half, we arrived in France later than we'd anticipated. This wouldn't have been an issue, had the villa people (we rented out a villa for two weeks) had left us anything in the fridge.
As it was, they'd only left us a pot of half-eaten jam.
This also wouldn't have been a problem.. that is, if the French shops didn't all shut at 8pm.
What sort of country does that?! D:
As we were staying near a town called Ceret, we decided to go out for a meal - but everywhere was full.
I'd not eaten since breakfast, so I feel I was allowed to be a bitchy so-and-so at that moment in time.

Not a good start to the holiday. We ended up getting a takeaway pizza at 11pm.

I can't actually remember exactly what we did over the two weeks, but it did involve a lot of beaches. I got horribly burnt on the first day of the holiday, and spend the rest of the holiday suffering with a second degree burn on my left shoulder.
So, whenever we went to a beach, I spent it sulking under a sun umbrella thing, reading a book. As a result of that, plus the fact that I read abormally quickly, I got through 16 books on that holiday, each with between 300 and 700 pages.

Of course, there were good points to the holiday. There was an adorable waiter in one of the restaurants...
"Ah, 'allo. Are you from England? I recognise your accents, I lived in England for a while."
"Evening. Yeah, we're from Cambridge, do you know it?"
"Ah, Cambridge! Yes, close to Birmingham, where I lived. Le vurst city en England, oui?"

Bless him. Anyone with any geographical knowledge of England know that Cambridge and Birmingham aren't particularly close :P But he was so cute.

There were also a fair few amusing moments. For example, my dad is absolutely appalling at languages. We went into a pharmacy to get something to treat my sunburn, and my dad went, "What is sunburn in French? Salle de bain?"
Anyone with even a tiny grasp of French knows that 'salle de bain' is bathroom, not sunburn :L
After that, we tried to keep him quiet, but we still has a few mishaps - like when he asked for 'the banknote' instead of 'the bill' in a restaurant.

I think the part of the holiday I most enjoyed were the trips to Spain. It's funny, really - as soon as we crossed over the border and into Spain, it was as if we'd arrived home; we just felt so much more comfortable in Spain than in France.
Upon my request, we paid a visit to Barcelona. I'd been to Barcelona before, but that was over two years ago, and we weren't that far from it.
We actually visited it twice over our holiday. The first time, we all bundled into the car and went. We got miserably lost, and only really saw the Sagrada Familia (the huge Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, which is still being built).
On the second visit, however, just my dad and I went. I was the map reader, and if I do say so myself, I was a lot better at it than my mum was on our previous visit.

Our first stop was the Nou Camp, FC Barcelona's football stadium. We went on a tour of it, and then went into the enormous shop. My dad bought me a Messi shirt (: Only at the till did we realise that is cost €93.. ah, well, I love Lionel Messi.
We then went to La Rambla, a street full of street performers and all sorts. We also looked in all of the designer shops, and looked around the Boqueria market, which is pretty amazing.

As this has become an absolute essay of a post, I apologise. I am very glad to be home now; we picked up our puppy on Sunday, I spent another amazing day with Andy yesterday, and it's my 16th birthday tomorrow. Things can't get much better.