Bye bye Barcelona

We´re onto our final night in Barcelona, and this is a truly saddening fact. We cottoned onto the nightlife a little last night - after a delicious meal in a tiny side street restaunt called LÓlivia we had cocktails and shots at some bar we got conned into with the teaser of free shots and the best Mojito maker in Spain. The Mojito was awesome but the two Euro tip he took from us (by not giving change) compensated for the free tequilla slammer.

This morning I finally found churros - basically deep-fried donut batter twisted into a curl and served with sugar - but the meal was soured by the staff taking some mysterious dislike to us and refusing to bring the bill. But shaking off that annoyance we took a huge walk around the dock and beach areas of Barcelona. The beaches are pretty ordinary compared to ours - dirt rather than sand and very packed - but there´s no shortage of activity and the architecture around the boardwalk is amazing. It is all very modern and adventurous.

Returning to the Colom (a tribute to Columbus) we headed through Las Ramblas and got a train to Parc Guerell. This is one of Gaudi´s masterworks - a former farm turned into installation art en masse. It boasts massive halls, statues, view points, winding tracks and the works. It´s bloody amazing really. Getting there is half the fun - from the train we got we clambered up this madly steep hill which had about 5 escalators along the way to assist struggling tourists. On our return to Las Ramblas we got straight into the booze and food. Pretty much the first place we saw we settled in and got ´cervaza grande´which turned out to be a stein each, and a stupid amount of tapas for lunch. We´ve since had a bit of a siesta ourselves and will soon head out to meet my dad to farewell him - he´s off to Frankfurt tomorrow.

While I think of it, when we were on top of one particularly high and crowded view point at Part Guell we heard this massive explosion coming from somewhere in town. No idea what it was but everyone turned to look. Weird.

Anyhoo, that´s our day so far. Thank you for your attention.

PS. Things you MUST do if you come to Spain:

Spend as long as you can in San Sebastian before it turns into a tourist nightmare - it is unspoiled and completely beautiful.

Drink good sangria - we´ve had and we´ve had bad but the dryer it is the better it is.

Eat sole fish and as much ham as you can get. The Spanish have a love for their ham that rivals our love for Iced Coffee, but there´s so much more choice and it´s actually good. Really good.

Go to La Sacrada Familia and bring a bottle of wine if you´re allowed - if I could have I would have sat looking at it for hours.

Try the lemon beer - it sounds poo but it´s really nice, a good change down from litres of the local poison.

When you see fresh, tasty-looking tapàs, don´t hesitate, just eat it. Although tapas is everywhere, good tapas is hard to find.

Farewell. Next time we report will be from Italy.