Star of the West by the Sea

Or Hesperia del Mar, my hotel in Barcelona. An interesting place, while I have been typing, water has starting pouring through a light fitting and killed the power to the whole restaurant, better move to my room

Now then, what do you make of this menu, I'm starving, but I think I need to choose carefully, otherwise I might be ordering myself a kicking. These more humorous items are quoted exactly from the English language menu, I really am not kidding.

Entrants
Cesar Salad
Rosbeef, foam of cheese, compote of pear cardemomo and sweet fresh quince
Fresh tagliatelis and octopuses in sauce of handle

Fish
Tuna, creamy rice, broth of noras and cloud of idiazabal

Meats
Tail of stewed bull and noodles of sepia
Carre of lechazo roast, shitake, peas yoghurt and reduction of modena

Hmm, not sure what any of that is, so what about the Executive Menu?

First Dish
Salad of outbreaks with shitake and vinaigrette of honey
Artichokes attacked with mash of rucula and powder of ham

Second Dish
Chinstraps of veal with with tortilla of chocolate and Chinese noodles
Loin of cod with vegetables, creaking of leek and green oil

Well, this all sounds very mysterious and not entirely edible, err, Sandwiches?

Sandwich Mixo
Toasted of back with cheese brie
Tortilla to the pleasure

Starvation it is then. By the way, Spanish telly which I witnessed in my hotel during my last week in Redmond is in places EXACTLY how the Fast Show parodies it, especially the quiz shows. Chicks in hot pants and jiggling titties, stupid boinking sound effects, seemingly unachievable and worthless goals and very very stupid contestants. I laughed my nipples off, but not half as much as I laughed at this. There is a burger on the menu, but I can't keep a straight face to order it.

Ate it

Freak weather, the earliest snow at Crystal Mountain for 28 years, meant I was fortunate enough to enjoy a day's boarding on my last weekend in the US.

I learnt to board on artificial snow slopes which only usually had around a 5cm snow depth and made turning hard work, but starting out tough meant it was easy to get the balance, stops and turns right, because here I had about 25 - 30cm of snow to play with.

Starting out on the shallow trainer slopes was a great warm up. Despite me investing in some decent goggles, the snow was coming in fast meaning frequents stops to clean them and whiteouts once I got to the higher, colder slopes. I had to follow a few people down to guide me back to base. I also made it off piste, thanks to some sloppy steering and screamed into a snow drift, landing on my front, looking like a toy soldier clamped in polystyrene. Pinned into the drift by my body weight on the soft, giving snow, I spent 10 minutes trying to reach down my inconveniently long gangly body to my bindings to release the board. Exhausted, I got hold of the board and dragged myself out of the drift. Had a small heart attack, then wrestled with the accursed rental boards quick release mechanism to get back on. Had to spend another 5 minutes digging out compressed snow from the machinery. Avoid these unless you've road tested them.

I ache all over and will be walking like a cowboy for a week or so, but it was all worth it for the 60 seconds where it all came together and I got to shoot down a real mountain at huge speed without tumbling.