Dear Europe

I guess there must have been a time when the idea of turning the entire continent into one enormous construction site in the middle of your summer peak season actually made sense.

France and Switzerland were impressive enough, but digging up the main road into and out of Granada to build a subterranean parking building was an act of pure genius.

A Visitor Who Can´t Wait to See What It Looks Like When It´s All Finished

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Dear Residents of Paris

I´m dying to know what you do with your fat, ugly women. Do you, perhaps, herd them underground and detain them in specially-designed compounds until they´re humanely despatched and their blubbery remains are rendered down into priceless skin treatments?

Or (more likely), do fat, ugly women simply not exist in Paris? Is there some sort of genetic shielding over the entire city that acts as an in-built contraceptive in the event of a fat, ugly little girl being created?

And, most importantly of all, why does this quality control not extend to your men?

A Fat, Ugly, Woman Tourist

Update: Ah, now I see what you do with them. You ship them off to (LOCATION CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF FRENCH NATIONAL SECURITY.)

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Dear Pigs of France

If it´s any consolation, you make the best bacon in the world.

A Satisfied Gourmand

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Dear Buildings of Paris

Wow. I don´t know for how many centuries people have been peeing up against some of you, but you sure are whiffy.

Someone Who Wishes She´d Never Stopped Smoking and Got Her Sense of Smell Back

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Dear Parisian Street Loonies

My, there certainly are a lot of you around the place, aren´t there? All happily going about your business of mumbling and ranting and publicly shitting on the pavements. It´s a tough decision but if I had to name my favourite it would be you, Bag Lady on Rollerblades. You totally rocked.

An Admirer

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Oh Dear, Switzerland

If you made an effort to somehow integrate the design of all those new apartment blocks with the design of the gorgeous chalets you already have, your towns and cities wouldn´t look such a mess. Then people might actually forget your horrendous cost of living and decide to stay put, instead of buggering off to other countries at the first opportunity.

Your food, however, is outstanding. And your women are beautiful too. Bitches.

A Friend of the Supreme Being (who´s Swiss, beautiful and lives in Zurich)

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Dear Residents of Zurich

The Supreme Being told me that you lot were unfriendly. I didn´t really believe her because we´d heard similar criticisms of Parisians and it turned out they were no better or worse than anyone else living in a big city anywhere in the world (they don´t exactly welcome you with open arms in Sydney, for example). Besides, the Dreamboat and I concluded a long time ago that we´d never met a Swiss person we didn´t like.

Much as it now pains me to admit it, the Supreme Being had a point. Parisians might come across as a little haughty (and who can blame them ... they´re gorgeous and they´re surrounded by gorgeousness) but you guys were downright morose.

Mind you, if I had to drive 45mins to Germany to buy razor blades because the ones in the shops at home were so exorbitantly bloody expensive, I´d be pissed off too.

A Sympathiser

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Dear Cars of Granada

I´ve never seen so many dings and dents in my life. You sure take a hammering, don´t you? We reckon your owners are even worse drivers than the French. And that´s saying something.

Someone For Whom the Right Side of the Road Will Forever Be the Wrong Side

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Dear Dogs of Granada

I love the way you don´t shit on the streets where the tourists go but then really let rip on streets that you and your owners judge too dark/steep/uninteresting for we visitors from foreign climes.

A Lover of All Dogs Except the Ugly Ones

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Dear Alhambra

I´ve wanted to visit you ever since I was eight years old and saw a picture of you in a book. When this actually happened a couple of days ago, you exceeded my wildest dreams.

I might´ve cried in Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Pantheon and a little church in the Loire Valley because I was overwhelmed by their beauty, but you´re the only place where I cried twice.

An Emotional Girl

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Dear Granada

I love you. I love your narrow cobbled streets. I love your food. I love your dark little tea houses with their Arabian music and hookahs. I love your friendly people. I love how your middle-aged blokes are enchanted by the way I torture your language.

I used to love your cervezas (beers) but that was before the Dreamboat and I drank them until 3am in a hip little place that turned out to be what´s probably your only gay bar.

I used to love your sangria too, but then yesterday we sat outside in 43degC heat and drank two jugs of it, after having just polished off a bottle of Rose with lunch, and now I don´t love it quite as much as I did.

I don´t love the gypsies who ripped us off on the steps of your cathedral yesterday morning. I´m still angry about that. And I don´t love the North African hawkers who interrupt our meals every ninety seconds in their efforts to flog off pirated DVDs. I just feel sorry for them.

A Fan Forever

P.S. More beautiful women. Don´t you Europeans ever get bored with perfection? Crave the occasional freckle or dimple on the thigh?

No, I thought not.

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Dear Worst Busker in the World

You thought I´d forgotten about you, didn´t you? No way, mi amigo. I´m just holding off on your story until it gets the post of its own that it deserves.

The Woman Who Laughed

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Dear Everyone at Home

As you can see, we´re having a ball spending all our money and getting drunk and being ripped off and eating constantly and taking afternoon siestas like real Spanish people.

We´ve only had two disagreements and both involved the reading of maps and driving on the wrong side of the road in the midst of maniacs, so, if not justified, they were at least understandable.

The fashionistas among you may be interested to know that the following are in vogue in Europe:

1. Espadrilles (shoes - usually canvas tops on a wedge base - that tie around the ankle)
2. Harem pants
3. Micro mini skirts
4. Near nudity (females only)
5. Pouting
6. Headgear -- hats, scarves tied in turban-fashion, etc
7. Being French (at the moment, I think there are more French people in Spain than Spanish)
8. Little dogs
9. Oversized sunglasses (still)
10. Skirts and dresses with pin tucks around the hips and layered, handkerchief effects
11. Being young and beautiful (for ever)
12. Suntans (always)
13. Long, straight hair (still)

It´s off to Glasgow on Tuesday, where we´ll be able to enjoy delightful summer temperatures of 19DegC -- a drop of twenty degrees on what we´ve had since we got off the plane. Looks as if we´re going to get our taste of a sort of winter after all ...

Update: Another very popular fashion item here is pants with ruching up the sides but unless you have thighs the width of celery stalks, I´d think very long and hard about wearing them.

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So here we be, the Dreamboat and Your Correspondent, waiting to board our flight to Dubai at Brisbane Airport's International terminal.

I wanted to post regular updates over the last few weeks, I really did, but other stuff kept getting in the way ... like the bloody iPod the Dreamboat gave me last week as a surprise 'present'. Trying to master this beast has been the most time-consuming project I've undertaken in recent memory. Even up to last night, I was still frantically trying to re-load the 700 songs I'd somehow managed to wipe from my iTunes library.

Tempting though it is to whinge and moan about the flight from Townsville ... how we had the loudest man and naughtiest child in the Southern Hemisphere seated behind us and how the one spent the entire flight hacking his lungs out while the other amused himself by kicking the back of my seat in complex syncopated rhythms ... I find I can't really get too bothered. After all, we'll end up in Paris, for god's sake. How can I possibly think I've got the right to moan about anything?

I'll try to update if/when I can over the next seven or eight weeks. If nothing else, there will be photos. Gigabytes and gigabytes of photos.

Make sure you eat all your greens while I'm away.

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