so in order to tell the story about my last morning in Barcelona, I have to communicate some background information. as many of you already know, my birthday was at the very beginning of our trip. before I left, my sister gave me a letter (actually, she gave me a letter to give to Kat that contained a letter to give to me). enclosed in this letter was a cut-out photo of Gwyneth's face taped to a wooden skewer, and the instruction to take pictures of it in cool places, specifically the Tour. at each Tour stage we have seen, I have taken out this contraption (which shall henceforth be known as "Gwyneth-on-a-stick") and taken pictures with it. however, due to the excessive speed of the riders and the slowness of my camera shutter, I have thus far been unable to get a clear picture of Gwyneth's face with a cyclist.

flash forward to the final morning in Barcelona: I had ventured off to where the Tour started alone (after Kat declared resoundingly that she wanted nothing more to do with the Tour, if not forever, at least until the final stage in Paris), and positioned myself somewhere behind the starting arch in the hopes of catching pictures of the cyclists as they left their team buses. so I'm standing there with my hand stuck through a gap in the barriers, holding Gwyneth-on-a-stick and taking her picture with any cyclist who comes by (and a few tour buses when I got bored), when this man with a camera and a microphone comes up to me and asks me if I speak French. once I reply in the affirmative ("juste un peu, et très mal"), he asks me what exactly it is that I am doing. I explain ("my sister loves the Tour. perhaps more than she loves me"), in my only moderately broken French.

before I know it, he has borrowed my camera and my sister's head on a skewer, and has run off into the thick of the riders and is taking pictures of them. I watch rather anxiously, as it has suddenly occurred to me that giving your camera to random strangers to hold is one of those things you are not supposed to do when travelling. meanwhile, all of this activity has apparently attracted the attention of a Spanish journalist, who comes up to me and starts asking me questions (in French, because she appears to be under the impression that I actually speak this language. she is mostly wrong). I end up doing an interview for the nice French man first, because he has to leave when the riders do ("bonne chance, Alyssa! au revoir!"), and then the nice Spanish woman (the former in French, the latter in English).

the Spanish reporter told me at the end of the interview that my sister will be famous in Spain. I'm not sure I believe her, but I must admit I am intrigued. unfortunately, I was so flustered that I didn't ask which networks this footage might be on. so if anyone feels like scouring Spanish and French human interest pieces about the Tour for clips of me holding a skewer, please do so, and send me the link.

but anyway, that is the story of how my sister and I may end up on French and/or Spanish TV.