So yes, nothing move-related happened in Paris, other than me looking at posters, though I did watch a screener of a movie to review in Toulouse in the south of France, which did not seem to warrant a mention on this blog.
Instead, I'm telling you about my second theatrical viewing of the trip, which occurred last night, the first having come back on August 31st. If my current pace of about one every two weeks keeps up, I'll watch one more on the trip, though I could squeeze in two (One Battle After Another?) if I get really ambitious. Most likely the next one will come on our final week in Crete, the last week of September, in part because we will really slow down that week, which will making getting to the movies much easier.
As you can see below, The Conjuring: Last Rites is called Expendiente Warren: El Ultimo Rito here in Barcelona. So, basically the opposite of France, where they kept the franchise title but changed the subtitle. "El Ultimo Rite" translates to "The Last Rite," but as far as I can tell, "Expediente Warren" translates to "Office Hours Warren," which is just hilarious.
Now, I should tell you that it wasn't straightforward getting there, but that's because I was trying to exist only on the maps that I'd had when I was in range of a WiFi. I'm trying to keep my phone on airplane mode whenever possible on this trip, to avoid roaming charges. My wife got an e-sim, so she's on a mobile network when we're out and about and need one. We can connect to her hotspot or other available WiFi, but otherwise, my older son and I am offline. (My younger son does noes not yet have a phone, and you can sense that he might complain about that if he weren't so sweet.)
My experience in America has been that if I plug in a destination on my phone map when I'm in range of internet, the map will keep directing me even after I've gone offline. This also generally worked in Singapore last year. It has not worked particularly well in Europe, the latest example being last night.
When I left the tapas bar where we had dinner -- our second sub-par tapas in as many days, unfortunately -- I had about a 25-minute walk to get me there by about 9:15 for the 9:30 show. I got about halfway through the serpentine streets before the map went to "Waiting for location" and never came back out of that mode. I wonder if this is more of a problem when you're walking than driving, though even the walking worked okay in Singapore.
So I did have to turn on my roaming, and that got me to the theater in plenty of time, by about 9:20. My hope was to get home using only my memory, which was a fairly bold approach.
But first, the movie.
I ordered my large Coke Zero in Spanish, after buying my ticket through a kiosk. I have no idea how close I got to being actually correct, but the guy had no trouble with what I meant, probably because he is an expert at picking through broken Spanish, and also because there was a natural limit on the things I could be asking him for. (Barcelona is very set up for English. Almost everyone speaks it and I heard English being spoken by tourists constantly, much more so than in Paris.) I said "Por favor, me gusteria uno Coca Cola sin azucar, grande." Anyway, he gave me the right thing.
There was a small part of me that worried I might have ended up in a dubbed session, even though I'd check to make sure it was "version original," which would mean in English with subtitles. The trailers were also in this form, though the chain made sure to let us know that it carried both original versions and dubbed versions at all its locations, in a promotional video after the trailers. There were a good 40 other people there, I assume mostly Spaniards, but given the prevelance of English in their city, I doubt most of them even needed the subtitles.
Just a side note to say I continue to enjoy watching English language movies with Spanish subtitles, which I've done a half-dozen times before for one reason or another. It does help with remembering some of my Spanish, but I haven't needed it here, and you get the sense that most locals would prefer just to speak to you in English. That is not the case in Paris, where they only speak English if they really have tto. Anyway, after tomorrow I won't need my Spanish at all.
The movie is not good. I have already written a review but will not be posting it until Monday. You can find the link then if you want to read it.
At the end of the movie, I could not find my way back without turning my phone back on to roam for another day. (At least, I assume it's another day because it was after midnight for much of my return walk.) There has been some debate on this trip about whether my sense of direction is good or bad. I think it's good. Everyone else thinks it's bad. Anyway, the majority must be correct, because I ended up in some intersection that was very unfamiliar to me -- not that anything should be very familiar to me after only about 30 hours in the city -- and discovered that I was, indeed, heading away from El Born rather than towards it.
It's been a week between entries on this blog, though I have gotten you something from every country so far, if you don't count Scotland as a separate country from England, and if you lump in my musings about the offerings on Emirates Airlines as part of my Dubai experience. I'll try to keep it going in Italy, where I will be for the next six days, following three days in Venice with three days in Rome.
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