After Steph's recommendation of the area to stay in Barcelona, Leigh booked the Barnys Hotel in the old part of Barcelona. This also turned out to be the best part in terms of facilities, attractions, ambiance and transport not to mention the architecture.
We took Dave's recommendation of must see spot and headed to the top of park Guell with a picnic tea and watched the sunset with the amazing view over Barcelona. Thanks Dave, see photo. On the way back we took the escalator, yes escalator down a narrow steep street towards the main road, how amazing!! We couldn't find the metro so asked a couple of older Spanish ladies with no English and our Spanish is non existent, (Chris where are you when we need you? Lol). They walked with us to show us the way, how kind. One of the ladies, recalled a few English words, and kept repeating and giggling 'oh my God' a few seconds lapsed and she repeated the phrase again a some seconds later again. It took us a few minutes to work out what she was saying in her broad Spanish accent is sounded like omegosht.
Also on Dave's recommendation we went to see Sagrada Familiar, a Catholic Basilica, and got the lift pass to the top of the interior. Pre purchasing the tickets meant we didn't have to queue in the heat of the day with a hundred other people. This is an amazing and very different catholic Basilica designed be Gaudi. Gaudi's vision was to design a basilica that could be added onto by subsequent generations He designed the overall concept and each generation were left to design and build various aspects including the entrance. The ongoing work is privately sponsored by gate takings. This is really worth the visit. See photos.
You can't be in Barcelona without walking the famous downtown laramblas and eat tapas. We did both and enjoyed our stay.
The next stop is Italy, we checked out of our hotel, leaving our luggage there till we fly out in the late afternoon. We walked around the area we had been staying in and discovered a beautifully steepled church, the one we could see from our room. The whole plaza area was lovely.
We walked back towards our hotel and stopped at an outdoor cafe for some lunch. We had some time to kill so took our time to enjoy lunch. At the next table 2 or 3 meters away were a couple of young women who looked like tourists like us. A young man handing out pamphlets approached the girls giving them one, and as he leaned over the table he picked up one of the girls mobile phones and walked off. I saw it happen and shouted out, 'quick he's taken your phone!!'. The girl jumped up and he handed it back. That was close. The girls were from Holland and had just started their holiday loosing her phone would have put a damper on the holiday. The girls couldn't have thank us enough and were so grateful, i was chuffed and pleased with myself for having contributed to the positive outcome.
We walked back to the hotel to collect our luggage before heading to the airport to catch our flight to Rome.
All our love xx