Day 97, 9 October 2012. R.I.P. Wormy the iPad - First day with feet properly on the ground in Barcelona. Maite came to visit at 10 am to take us to the local metro station. (Wow. Rave, rave, clean, brilliant, fast, cheap and, as it turns out, so easy to use an infant could do it.) We emerged 20 minutes later at the Apple Store in Passeig de Gracia, downtown Barcelona - only open for 2 months but swarming with people. And Apple products. We queued, we explaine...

Day 96, 8 October 2012, Lazed in the gardens then got on the fastest train ever to Barcelona & Badalona - We puttered this morning. James hunted chocolate croissants and coffees and brought them back to room. Reading, snoozing, all good stuff. He even found our local grocery store so we coughed up €5 for lunch goods and made our way to the botanic gardens for lunch. Not actually in them because €3 each is daylight robbery - but in the gardens outside ...

Day 95, 7 October 2012, El Rastro and The Prado, Madrid - We were both moving quite slowly this morning. Can´t begin to imagine how many miles we covered with our hiking about yesterday, but can sure feel every one of them. Not ones to let sheer physical exhaustion get in our way however, we headed off to the biggest flea market in the world, El Rastro. With sign language demonstrations and warnings in Spanish echoing in our ears about the near certainty of h...

Day 94, 6 October 2012, Madrid - In three days or less! - We ventured along the Paseo de Prado and were overwhelmed with the lushness of the public buildings and sculptures everywhere, for example Plaza de Cibeles. Eventually we took a left and meandered down to Plaza Mayor (remember, that´s Pla-tha with a "th"). Our goal today was to check out a free tour provided by a company called Sandemans. It is the first of hopefully many tours as they operate in most ...

Day 93, 5 October 2012, Relaxing in downtown Granada by day... train to Madrid by night - We returned to downtown Granada at midday after checking out (loving this civilised notion of a midday check out as standard). We took a different route and headed down through the gardens with chattering channels of water following us downhill. Turned out we were in the Alhambra Wood and we managed to trip over an incredible exhibition of photographs of marine creatures g...