Out of office on……

We're not long back from a lovely long weekend in Barcelona 🙂 Temperatures were around 20 degrees C so it was nice escaping the cold and being able to wander around in t-shirts and flip-flops! We stayed in the centre of town in a nice hostel (that was more like a hotel) called Hostal Martinval. Although we had initially planned to take one of the bus tours of the city, the hostel was centrally located so we ended up wandering around town and walking our way around the main sites on the tourist route. While we were there we saw some of the main Gaudi architecture for which Barca is famous, and got down as far as the beach and dipped our feet in the Mediterranean Sea 🙂 The city is really lovely - although busy with tourists there's a nice relaxed feel...sitting out at the little cafe having our cheese and ham baguettes for breakfast there were people around us sipping on Sangria, wine and even Guinness! We really enjoyed just wandering around and soaking up the sights and atmosphere...stopping to look in the little shops or get a coffee/ice cream/drink depending on our mood (and the time of day!). We tended to walk through the busy 'Las Ramblas' area which was full of market stalls and cafes for the tourists and the Placa de Catalunya street which was the main shopping and hotel area and instead headed off through the little side streets to the Gothic Quarter. This area had little winding streets which every so often opened out into a little square where there were cafes and bars with seating outside and interesting architecture in the form of churches/cathedrals/old buildings to look at. The atmosphere here was nice and we would find a nice cafe somewhere round 5pm and sit playing cards and people watching 🙂 We also ventured outside of the main city streets while we were there - walking up to the Montjuic area to the west of the city where we saw the Barca Olympic Stadium and the Montjuic Castle which had views back over the city. On our last day we got the bus up to Parc Guell - large park built on a hill in the Gracia area which was designed by Gaudi which had some interesting architectural 'stuff' to look at and also sights back over the city. I would definitely go back to Barca, and it was a good choice of location for the time of year...not so nice arriving back in Edinburgh to see people scraping the ice from their cars!!