![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreyHello. I'm back from Spain. I got back on Sunday evening, even though it was meant to be Saturday afternoon, but I'll explain about that later. It was lovely - we were staying in a town just down the coast from Barcelona called Calella, which had a beach of it's own, and a lighthouse, and a bunch of shops and an old church. We got there on Saturday afternoon, and had a bit of a look around and some lunch, but we went to bed on Friday at about 1-1:30ish, and got up about 3-ish to get our plane, so we were all pretty exhausted, and mostly just went and had a nap and then went and had dinner and a bit of a walk around the town afterwards. On Sunday we had a bit more of a walk around Calella, and went and saw the church, then after lunch tried to go up to the lighthouse, but after quite a while of trying to find the road up there, we eventually got to the gates and found out it was one of those lighthouses they don't let you go look around because, idk, THEY STILL NEED IT TO WARN SHIPS WITH OR SOMETHING. Anyway, we came back down and on the way found a lovely little bay, and then found a lovely little bay next to it where there was naked sunbathing, and then just went back into Calella.
On Monday we went into Barcelona for the first time, aside from driving through it from the airport. We went to see the Sagrada Familia, which is brilliant, and is possibly my new favourite cathedral, except it's not technically a cathedral yet because a) it's not finished, and b) it's not been consecrated, although apparently the Pope is going to do it in November. But anyway, it was great. Then we walked down and saw the Casa Mila, the apartment block built by Gaudi, which is pretty great too, and went inside and did the tour and the roof and top apartment and all. Then when we came out we walked down to see the Manzana de Discordia (Apple/Block of Discord), which is basically three different Modernist apartment buildings, done in three different styles by (I think) three different architects, on the same block. And then it was pretty late, so we just went back to Calella.
However, we realised a problem on Monday that sort of made the rest of the week a bit difficult. I have a couple of pairs of trainers, one pink pair my dad thinks is 'ruined', which you can still wear but which are in pretty bad shape, and a pair of black ones with flames up the sides, which I've had for years but actually look pretty alright. However, before we went my dad said something like 'you're not planning on wearing those black things on holiday are you?', and said I would look like a tramp and he wasn't going to let me. I said fine, but I didn't have the money to buy new ones, so in the end he offered to buy me a new pair. In that he went on the internet, picked out a pair, asked me if I liked them, and then bought them for me. And I tried them on and everything, and they didn't hurt or feel too tight, so we decided I was taking those. However, when I put them on to go to the airport in, they almost immediately started to hurt. I basically sat in the car with them on and it just hurt. But I thought, well, they're new, maybe I'm just breaking them in and they'll be fine in a few hours. Not so much. In a few hours, after walking around in them, they started to rub on what I think is a bit of a bunion on both my feet, and eventually, on Sunday or whatever, gave me blisters. So I think I started trying to walk so they wouldn't rub there, and whether it was because of that or because of the shoes themselves, my feet started to ache whenever I walked around or stood still for a few hours or so. Friends, if you take only one piece of advice about holidays from me, let this be it: if you are going on holiday to a city or somewhere that will involve a lot of walking around, this is not what you want. So basically any day that involved a lot of walking around was a bit of a problem for me, because of the horrible pain, and for my parents, who had to wait around for me to catch up or while I sat down for five minutes or something. Also, on closer inspection of the shoes, it turned out they had a bit of a heel at the back. Not much of one, but definitely a raised bit of the sole. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT, SKECHERS? THEY ARE MEANT TO BE WALKING SHOES. TRAINERS. AND STUFF. Basically, they weren't good shoes for walking around in.
On Tuesday though, we didn't do much walking around. We stayed in Calella and went to the beach. I had on my fancy new bikini I'd just got before the holiday, and I was planning to go swimming in the sea. However, it turned out that in May in Spain the sea is still icy cold, at least in Calella. I went quite a way in, up to my thighs, and thought I might be acclimatising, but it turned out I just couldn't feel my legs anymore. So I came back out, sat there for a bit with my feet in the sea, till my mum came down to swim in it too, and also found out that it was freezing, and we went back to where my dad was and said actually, maybe we should go back to the hotel pool. Annoyingly, it wasn't that long after we'd got our sun cream on and or towels and mats set up and everything. But we did go back, since it was sandy and we couldn't even go in the sea, and basically just stayed by the pool for the rest of the day. I went swimming for the first time since last year in Devon, and it was quite nice really.
On Wednesday we went back into Barcelona, and we were going to see some of the sights I'd been looking up in the guide book, and go down the Ramblas, but when we came out onto the Placa de Catalunya, we saw some sightseeing buses operating, and my dad asked if maybe we should go on one of those. And we got one last year, and they are pretty good at taking you round all the sights, and it would save us walking, so we said yeah. There were two routes the buses took, and you could get on both of them all day, so we went on one first, then the other. The last one we got took us up to the Park Guell (or close to it), which was a park or estate designed by Gaudi (although not finished), which we'd talked about going to on Monday but didn't have time to, so we got off there and walked around for a bit. I found it a little bit underwhelming, mostly trees, but it's probably nice if you go there for it as a park, or have more time to spend there or something. But at some point, either in the park or on the tour bus, we'd seen Tibidabo, which is basically a mountain top just at the North end of Barcelona with a church and a funfair on it. And my parents wanted to do that, and so did I, and it said on the tour bus map that the bus went there, so we decided to not spend too much time in the park and go to Tibidabo before going back to Calella. However, it turned out the bus only actually went to the bottom of the area of Tibidabo, and you had to catch a bus or tram, and then a funicular railway, to the top of the mountain. And we didn't really have time, so we decided to do it on Friday instead, and just go back to the hotel.
On Thursday we stayed in Calella again, with a bit of shopping (i.e. walking) in the morning, which I didn't like, but which did involve me getting some new shoes in the form of flip-flops I'd been looking at and liked but wasn't sure were good for walking around in, but my parents were all 'anything will probably be better than those shoes you have now'. So we got them. And then we went back to the pool and went swimming again. My parents however had had a 'superior' room at the hotel, which basically meant they had a slightly bigger room, slippers and bathrobes provided, and coupons for two free cocktails in the bar and two free hours in the hotel spa. So at four o'clock my mum and I went down to the spa. I had my first experience with a steam room (interesting, not too bad, although it did get way too hot after a while), and which was only slightly terrifying after I found a little cartoony guide on the wall about how to use your steam room (best) in Spanish, which I could only sort of translate. I did Spanish up to my GCSEs, and got an A, and I still remember a bit of it, which comes in handy sometimes on holidays. However, not for translating steam room guide cartoons. It was saying something about how long to stay in for, and to do something with the temperature and then maybe stay in for another 2 or 3 minutes, and to put your feet in cold or hot bowls of water before going in or after coming out or something. I don't know. IT WAS CONFUSING. But I figured out that it was probably just what you should do 'ideally', and not necessarily something that was very important to do. So we just messed about in the shower for a bit, and went swimming in the little heated spa pool, and figured out how to turn the jets and stuff on, and just sort of messed about in there for a bit. It was nice though, quite relaxing. And interesting, as I say.
On Friday we went back into Barcelona, and I knew it was going to be a busy day, because we wanted to go to Tibidabo, and go down the Ramblas, and go see some things in the city around the Ramblas. But we worked it out as the day went on - we got the metro to Tibidabo, then the bus, then the funicular railway. The fairground was closed, or meant to be, but we walked around it and saw it all, and saw the views over Barcelona from the viewing platforms, and then went up to the church. The guide book said it was modelled on the Sacre Coeur in Paris, and 'One To Miss' because 'on close inspection, it's quite ugly'. Dude, it was not. There were mosaics on the inside, and amazing stained glass windows, both in the crypt below and the temple up top. And we got the lift up to the terrace, and you could climb up inside it right up to the top, at the base of the huge statue of Jesus. It was pretty great. And then we went back down the funicular railway, caught the bus back to the metro station, and got the metro back into Barcelona. We started going down La Rambla, the big Rambla, which is basically a street full of tourist shops and hotels, with a kind of a market place down the middle. A market place where you could buy ferrets. And turtles. And doves and pigeons. I WILL NEVER AGAIN BE ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH A MARKET PLACE THAT DOESN'T SELL FERRETS. And there were street entertainers and stuff. We did a bit of souvenir shopping for grandmother, sister and nephews, and ourselves a bit, then carried on down the Rambla, and then turned off to go see the Cathedral. Which is also amazing. Then we tried to go see the church of Santa Maria del Pi, which is famous for a bit stained glass rose window, but it was being renovated or something and we couldn't get in. And we walked through the Barri Gotic, which is the Gothic or Roman area of the city, with little winding streets and stuff, which was great. And then we carried on to go see our last sight of the day, which was the Santa Maria del Mar, which also has beautiful stained glass windows, and is a beautiful building, and beautiful. And then it was pretty late, and I think my feet were hurting even with the flip-flops, so we just walked back to La Rambla, walked up it, and went back to Calella.
But. On Saturday we were meant to be flying home. We had a flight booked for 10 past 12pm, and the check-in for it started at 10:30 am. My dad had hired a car for the week, since we were going into Barcelona so much, and we had picked it up from the airport when we came, driven to Calella in it, and then driven to Barcelona on the Monday, but found out that parking it cost more than train fare would for all of us, so just left it on Wednesday and Friday and got the train into Barcelona instead. My dad had his sat nav with him to help him find routes and guide him round the traffic systems and stuff. But when we tried to use it on Monday, it had tried taking us a different route than it had taken us when we were going from Barcelona to Callela, and the location is was taking us to was apparently somewhere called Barcelona in South London. So we'd turned it off and just followed the signs and used our maps to get into Barcelona. And it had also been a Bank Holiday on that Monday, so the roads had been quieter than usual. So anyway, we were driving back on Saturday, and my dad had to get the car back to the car hire place, and then we all had to get to the airport, so we weren't exactly going at a slow pace, and the sat nav was taking us down the motorway, and through traffic systems my dad wasn't used to, and I think it was a little distracting trying to listen to the sat nav and watch the road. And we ended up having a car accident on one of the motorways, or near one. We were all fine, and so was the driver of the other car, but his wife's airbag deployed and he was rubbing her chest or something after it had happened, and she ended up being taken away in an ambulance. Hopefully she was okay, the ambulance didn't drive off with the sirens blaring and the police didn't really say anything about it, so hopefully she was alright. But basically we had to wait for the police, and call the car rental company, and we tried calling our airline before realising the emergency number they had given us was for the emergency services in Spain, not for the airline. But it became pretty apparent that we weren't going to get our flight.
The police finished up eventually, and all the cars were moved, and then we had to wait for recovery vehicles, and we got taken to a car recovery place. And then we had to call the car rental place again just to say what was happening and try to arrange them picking us up. We eventually managed to google our airline at the car recovery place when someone we were talking with let us use the internet, and find their number, and we called them to let them know we wouldn't be on the flight and tried to get booked onto the next one. My dad was on the phone, so we only heard him say 'Eight o'clock tomorrow?'. Which was bad, but we figured fair enough, if that's the next one, we'll just have to stay in the airport for the night. So we booked onto it, then waited around till the car recovery thing was sorted out, and then went outside to wait for the car rental company to come and get us. Which they sort of did, by sending us another car. My mum wasn't very pleased with this, but my dad said it made sense really, since we had to take the bags anyway, and they'd sent it on a recovery vehicle which they could then use to take the other car back on. So we got back into the car, and my dad drove us to the car rental place, with the sat nav on again, but it went okay that time, and we got there, and my dad went to speak to the people, and they talked for a bit, and then they let him go. Apparently their insurance would cover it, so there was no need for him to stay.
So. All we had to do was figure out what to do until 6 o'clock the next morning, when the check-in for our new flight opened. My dad pointed out that we may as well get to the airport, leave our luggage there, and then get the train or bus back into Barcelona, rather than staying in the airport for hours. So we went, tried to check on our flight to make sure it was flying from the terminal we thought it was flying from, and find our airline to leave our luggage with. It turns out the left luggage place for the airport is in Terminal 1, and we were in Terminal 2, so we had to catch the shuttle bus, then find it, then pay about £4.90 to store them for 24 hours, then catch the bus back into Barcelona. We ended up walking back practically up to the Park Guell, to a shop where I'd seen a t-shirt I liked and hadn't seen anywhere else, which was quite nice of my parents. Especially since it turned out to be quite a long way to walk. Then we caught the bus back, walked all the way down La Rambla, which we hadn't done the day before, down to the Christopher Columbus monument and the port. Then we walked around the port, down the walkway over the water to the shopping centre at the other side of the port, then had a look around there. Then we walked back up La Rambla, went into a pizza place which was basically an offshoot of Pizza Express and had dinner, by which time it was about 9 o'clock I think, and we decided to go back to the airport.
And now my hands are very tired, so you'll have to tune in later for the thrilling conclusion to this story. Sorry.
On Monday we went into Barcelona for the first time, aside from driving through it from the airport. We went to see the Sagrada Familia, which is brilliant, and is possibly my new favourite cathedral, except it's not technically a cathedral yet because a) it's not finished, and b) it's not been consecrated, although apparently the Pope is going to do it in November. But anyway, it was great. Then we walked down and saw the Casa Mila, the apartment block built by Gaudi, which is pretty great too, and went inside and did the tour and the roof and top apartment and all. Then when we came out we walked down to see the Manzana de Discordia (Apple/Block of Discord), which is basically three different Modernist apartment buildings, done in three different styles by (I think) three different architects, on the same block. And then it was pretty late, so we just went back to Calella.
However, we realised a problem on Monday that sort of made the rest of the week a bit difficult. I have a couple of pairs of trainers, one pink pair my dad thinks is 'ruined', which you can still wear but which are in pretty bad shape, and a pair of black ones with flames up the sides, which I've had for years but actually look pretty alright. However, before we went my dad said something like 'you're not planning on wearing those black things on holiday are you?', and said I would look like a tramp and he wasn't going to let me. I said fine, but I didn't have the money to buy new ones, so in the end he offered to buy me a new pair. In that he went on the internet, picked out a pair, asked me if I liked them, and then bought them for me. And I tried them on and everything, and they didn't hurt or feel too tight, so we decided I was taking those. However, when I put them on to go to the airport in, they almost immediately started to hurt. I basically sat in the car with them on and it just hurt. But I thought, well, they're new, maybe I'm just breaking them in and they'll be fine in a few hours. Not so much. In a few hours, after walking around in them, they started to rub on what I think is a bit of a bunion on both my feet, and eventually, on Sunday or whatever, gave me blisters. So I think I started trying to walk so they wouldn't rub there, and whether it was because of that or because of the shoes themselves, my feet started to ache whenever I walked around or stood still for a few hours or so. Friends, if you take only one piece of advice about holidays from me, let this be it: if you are going on holiday to a city or somewhere that will involve a lot of walking around, this is not what you want. So basically any day that involved a lot of walking around was a bit of a problem for me, because of the horrible pain, and for my parents, who had to wait around for me to catch up or while I sat down for five minutes or something. Also, on closer inspection of the shoes, it turned out they had a bit of a heel at the back. Not much of one, but definitely a raised bit of the sole. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT, SKECHERS? THEY ARE MEANT TO BE WALKING SHOES. TRAINERS. AND STUFF. Basically, they weren't good shoes for walking around in.
On Tuesday though, we didn't do much walking around. We stayed in Calella and went to the beach. I had on my fancy new bikini I'd just got before the holiday, and I was planning to go swimming in the sea. However, it turned out that in May in Spain the sea is still icy cold, at least in Calella. I went quite a way in, up to my thighs, and thought I might be acclimatising, but it turned out I just couldn't feel my legs anymore. So I came back out, sat there for a bit with my feet in the sea, till my mum came down to swim in it too, and also found out that it was freezing, and we went back to where my dad was and said actually, maybe we should go back to the hotel pool. Annoyingly, it wasn't that long after we'd got our sun cream on and or towels and mats set up and everything. But we did go back, since it was sandy and we couldn't even go in the sea, and basically just stayed by the pool for the rest of the day. I went swimming for the first time since last year in Devon, and it was quite nice really.
On Wednesday we went back into Barcelona, and we were going to see some of the sights I'd been looking up in the guide book, and go down the Ramblas, but when we came out onto the Placa de Catalunya, we saw some sightseeing buses operating, and my dad asked if maybe we should go on one of those. And we got one last year, and they are pretty good at taking you round all the sights, and it would save us walking, so we said yeah. There were two routes the buses took, and you could get on both of them all day, so we went on one first, then the other. The last one we got took us up to the Park Guell (or close to it), which was a park or estate designed by Gaudi (although not finished), which we'd talked about going to on Monday but didn't have time to, so we got off there and walked around for a bit. I found it a little bit underwhelming, mostly trees, but it's probably nice if you go there for it as a park, or have more time to spend there or something. But at some point, either in the park or on the tour bus, we'd seen Tibidabo, which is basically a mountain top just at the North end of Barcelona with a church and a funfair on it. And my parents wanted to do that, and so did I, and it said on the tour bus map that the bus went there, so we decided to not spend too much time in the park and go to Tibidabo before going back to Calella. However, it turned out the bus only actually went to the bottom of the area of Tibidabo, and you had to catch a bus or tram, and then a funicular railway, to the top of the mountain. And we didn't really have time, so we decided to do it on Friday instead, and just go back to the hotel.
On Thursday we stayed in Calella again, with a bit of shopping (i.e. walking) in the morning, which I didn't like, but which did involve me getting some new shoes in the form of flip-flops I'd been looking at and liked but wasn't sure were good for walking around in, but my parents were all 'anything will probably be better than those shoes you have now'. So we got them. And then we went back to the pool and went swimming again. My parents however had had a 'superior' room at the hotel, which basically meant they had a slightly bigger room, slippers and bathrobes provided, and coupons for two free cocktails in the bar and two free hours in the hotel spa. So at four o'clock my mum and I went down to the spa. I had my first experience with a steam room (interesting, not too bad, although it did get way too hot after a while), and which was only slightly terrifying after I found a little cartoony guide on the wall about how to use your steam room (best) in Spanish, which I could only sort of translate. I did Spanish up to my GCSEs, and got an A, and I still remember a bit of it, which comes in handy sometimes on holidays. However, not for translating steam room guide cartoons. It was saying something about how long to stay in for, and to do something with the temperature and then maybe stay in for another 2 or 3 minutes, and to put your feet in cold or hot bowls of water before going in or after coming out or something. I don't know. IT WAS CONFUSING. But I figured out that it was probably just what you should do 'ideally', and not necessarily something that was very important to do. So we just messed about in the shower for a bit, and went swimming in the little heated spa pool, and figured out how to turn the jets and stuff on, and just sort of messed about in there for a bit. It was nice though, quite relaxing. And interesting, as I say.
On Friday we went back into Barcelona, and I knew it was going to be a busy day, because we wanted to go to Tibidabo, and go down the Ramblas, and go see some things in the city around the Ramblas. But we worked it out as the day went on - we got the metro to Tibidabo, then the bus, then the funicular railway. The fairground was closed, or meant to be, but we walked around it and saw it all, and saw the views over Barcelona from the viewing platforms, and then went up to the church. The guide book said it was modelled on the Sacre Coeur in Paris, and 'One To Miss' because 'on close inspection, it's quite ugly'. Dude, it was not. There were mosaics on the inside, and amazing stained glass windows, both in the crypt below and the temple up top. And we got the lift up to the terrace, and you could climb up inside it right up to the top, at the base of the huge statue of Jesus. It was pretty great. And then we went back down the funicular railway, caught the bus back to the metro station, and got the metro back into Barcelona. We started going down La Rambla, the big Rambla, which is basically a street full of tourist shops and hotels, with a kind of a market place down the middle. A market place where you could buy ferrets. And turtles. And doves and pigeons. I WILL NEVER AGAIN BE ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH A MARKET PLACE THAT DOESN'T SELL FERRETS. And there were street entertainers and stuff. We did a bit of souvenir shopping for grandmother, sister and nephews, and ourselves a bit, then carried on down the Rambla, and then turned off to go see the Cathedral. Which is also amazing. Then we tried to go see the church of Santa Maria del Pi, which is famous for a bit stained glass rose window, but it was being renovated or something and we couldn't get in. And we walked through the Barri Gotic, which is the Gothic or Roman area of the city, with little winding streets and stuff, which was great. And then we carried on to go see our last sight of the day, which was the Santa Maria del Mar, which also has beautiful stained glass windows, and is a beautiful building, and beautiful. And then it was pretty late, and I think my feet were hurting even with the flip-flops, so we just walked back to La Rambla, walked up it, and went back to Calella.
But. On Saturday we were meant to be flying home. We had a flight booked for 10 past 12pm, and the check-in for it started at 10:30 am. My dad had hired a car for the week, since we were going into Barcelona so much, and we had picked it up from the airport when we came, driven to Calella in it, and then driven to Barcelona on the Monday, but found out that parking it cost more than train fare would for all of us, so just left it on Wednesday and Friday and got the train into Barcelona instead. My dad had his sat nav with him to help him find routes and guide him round the traffic systems and stuff. But when we tried to use it on Monday, it had tried taking us a different route than it had taken us when we were going from Barcelona to Callela, and the location is was taking us to was apparently somewhere called Barcelona in South London. So we'd turned it off and just followed the signs and used our maps to get into Barcelona. And it had also been a Bank Holiday on that Monday, so the roads had been quieter than usual. So anyway, we were driving back on Saturday, and my dad had to get the car back to the car hire place, and then we all had to get to the airport, so we weren't exactly going at a slow pace, and the sat nav was taking us down the motorway, and through traffic systems my dad wasn't used to, and I think it was a little distracting trying to listen to the sat nav and watch the road. And we ended up having a car accident on one of the motorways, or near one. We were all fine, and so was the driver of the other car, but his wife's airbag deployed and he was rubbing her chest or something after it had happened, and she ended up being taken away in an ambulance. Hopefully she was okay, the ambulance didn't drive off with the sirens blaring and the police didn't really say anything about it, so hopefully she was alright. But basically we had to wait for the police, and call the car rental company, and we tried calling our airline before realising the emergency number they had given us was for the emergency services in Spain, not for the airline. But it became pretty apparent that we weren't going to get our flight.
The police finished up eventually, and all the cars were moved, and then we had to wait for recovery vehicles, and we got taken to a car recovery place. And then we had to call the car rental place again just to say what was happening and try to arrange them picking us up. We eventually managed to google our airline at the car recovery place when someone we were talking with let us use the internet, and find their number, and we called them to let them know we wouldn't be on the flight and tried to get booked onto the next one. My dad was on the phone, so we only heard him say 'Eight o'clock tomorrow?'. Which was bad, but we figured fair enough, if that's the next one, we'll just have to stay in the airport for the night. So we booked onto it, then waited around till the car recovery thing was sorted out, and then went outside to wait for the car rental company to come and get us. Which they sort of did, by sending us another car. My mum wasn't very pleased with this, but my dad said it made sense really, since we had to take the bags anyway, and they'd sent it on a recovery vehicle which they could then use to take the other car back on. So we got back into the car, and my dad drove us to the car rental place, with the sat nav on again, but it went okay that time, and we got there, and my dad went to speak to the people, and they talked for a bit, and then they let him go. Apparently their insurance would cover it, so there was no need for him to stay.
So. All we had to do was figure out what to do until 6 o'clock the next morning, when the check-in for our new flight opened. My dad pointed out that we may as well get to the airport, leave our luggage there, and then get the train or bus back into Barcelona, rather than staying in the airport for hours. So we went, tried to check on our flight to make sure it was flying from the terminal we thought it was flying from, and find our airline to leave our luggage with. It turns out the left luggage place for the airport is in Terminal 1, and we were in Terminal 2, so we had to catch the shuttle bus, then find it, then pay about £4.90 to store them for 24 hours, then catch the bus back into Barcelona. We ended up walking back practically up to the Park Guell, to a shop where I'd seen a t-shirt I liked and hadn't seen anywhere else, which was quite nice of my parents. Especially since it turned out to be quite a long way to walk. Then we caught the bus back, walked all the way down La Rambla, which we hadn't done the day before, down to the Christopher Columbus monument and the port. Then we walked around the port, down the walkway over the water to the shopping centre at the other side of the port, then had a look around there. Then we walked back up La Rambla, went into a pizza place which was basically an offshoot of Pizza Express and had dinner, by which time it was about 9 o'clock I think, and we decided to go back to the airport.
And now my hands are very tired, so you'll have to tune in later for the thrilling conclusion to this story. Sorry.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-01 06:00 pm (UTC)I AM SORRY ABOUT YOUR FEET.
AND YOUR CAR CRASH.
x
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-02 06:36 am (UTC)I went to Barcelona once. More to see the Grand Prix than anything, but we walked over most of Barcelona as well. It doesn't sound quite as pleasing as your trip (feet and car crashes aside) as neither my father nor I had a word of either Spanish or Catalan and thus found it very difficult to work out what food did or didn't contain meat, and so mostly starved, and also I lamented the lack of public toilets, and also we couldn't engage in any activity, such as entering a building, that required an outlay of funds. But it was a fun place to wander around and point at buildings that looked like blancmange.