Weather: 23º C and sunny Today was the first day that we used the metro. Very easy system to use for us. There are at least 5 different metro lines in Barcelona. All of them went through the station we were using to get on and all of them went through the station that we wanted to get off, which was also the last stop for each line. Could hardly get it wrong. Typically with large cities the metro seemed to be a great system and inexpensive. Today we went ...

Weather: 23º C and sunny This morning we farewelled David and Lesley as they left for the train station and their high speed train trip to Madrid. They are staying in a great location very close to where we stayed. They have 3 days in Madrid before they join their tour of Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Morocco before heading for Ireland and Scotland. We then headed for the Sagrada Familia. You may recall that we tried to go there a couple of days ago b...

Weather: 20º C (18 at Montserrat) and sunny A hearty breakfast and off to the station for local trains for today we are off to Montserrat and the home of the "The little dark-skinned one" or “La Morenata” or “The Virgin of Montserrat” or “The Black Madonna” etc. Having researched (thanks Lesley) the ticket options that can be purchased at the station, we picked the one to Monistrol which connects with the Mountain Train ...

Weather: sunny till 4pm then intermittent showers 18º C Got back on the hop-on/hop-off bus to go to “the Rambla”. It is a promenade consisting of market stalls (on the weekend only we think), flower stalls, restaurants and street performers. The promenade had bricks laid in a very unusual design that played with your head and made you think you were walking on an undulating surface when in fact it was not. From there it was back on the bus to...

BARCELONA… BARCELONA Weather: wet and then sunny 20º C Yep, you guessed it, we had rain today – more about that later. There are 2 hop-on/hop-off bus companies here (red and blue). We chose the blue company which has 3 routes – blue, red and green. Having paid the deposit (the hotels commission we think) on a discounted 2-day pass at the hotel we had a 20 minute walk to the nearest bus stop. Just as we got on the bus the skies opened...