The Spanish beach town Road Trip continueth, this time in a tiny chiringuito on one of the main ramblas of the town called Bar Pay-Pay. I have no clue as to what "Pay-Pay" might mean in Spanish or Catalan, but if the legs of my waitress and thus my tendency to keep ordering drinks from her are any indication, the bar may actually have a clever English name. :-)
I continue to be amazed at the manner in which life is lived on the streets here in Spain. The dinner hour really doesn't begin for another hour and a half, but the streets are *filled* with people enjoying that simplest and most overlooked of human pleasures, walking around. Interestingly, quite a few of the people "taking the air" and walking around this Sunday night seem to actually be into the Zen of Walking. They're not just mindlessly walk- ing, they're mindfully walking. Their attention is often quite visibly *focused* -- on the passersby, on the male or female companion on their arms, on the "look and feel" of a street that many of them have seen thousands of time, on just how *good* it feels to walk. Seeing these people, and the joy with which they walk, makes me rather joyful myself, but at the same time I cannot help but feel a bit of a "pinch" for those who live in environments in which walking around just for the hell of it is *not* an every- day part of everyday life. Walking a lot may not actually be feasible for many of them, because of climate, or fear of crime, or whatever, and that's just so sad, because they're missing out on so much. So, a question to the Fairfield dwellers here amongst us: do people walk much in Fairfield? For pleasure, that is, just for the sheer joy of taking a stroll? It would seem to me, from the one time I was there for a few hours back in the mid-80s, that it would be that kinda place. That question asked, I'm off to join the walkers...
