Barcelona is a city that many people have raved about in conversation with us, so our expectations were high when we arrived. It's in the region of Catalunya, and they're extremely independent. If things go their way they could end up separating from Spain one day in the not too distant future.

We took a very good walking tour of the city, given by an Australian guy, which put Barcelona's past and present into context. Later in the day during our roaming we stumbled upon a macaron shop belonging to a particular pastry guru who had in recent times been on Australian and Spanish versions of the TV show Masterchef. They were selling macarons there for an exorbitant amount, though for some reason we can't figure out, a very nice waitress at the café just decided to give us four for free, so we considered that a major win. In hindsight we think she might have thought we had come all this way just to find the famous chef so she didn't want to disappoint us.

Barcelona's "must see" monument is Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia. Not being completely up to speed with our famous churches we were unaware that there was still so much still to be built, so arrived a bit disappointed to see it covered in scaffolding and cranes. Still, both the outside and inside are very much worth a look, we were quite impressed with the architectural style inside, which is very different to other famous churches in Italy.

On the whole, we were slightly underwhelmed by the city, which could have been due to the amount of hype surrounding it.