Our flights were uneventful, they fed us average food and we were very comfortable. We both managed to sleep quite a bit so that was a bonus.

We travelled with Qatar this time and had a two hour stopover at Doha airport. From Doha we flew north initially over Tehran then arced around towards the west and travelled just south of Istanbul, north of Athens then across the bottom of Italy's foot. The best geography lesson is had watching an airline flight screen as fly around the world. The pic was taken near Tehran. We were amazed to find all that snow where we thought there would be desert.

Clearing immigration at Barcelona airport was a bit of a drag. It was obvious that a couple of planes had landed at the same time so there were hundreds of people. We grabbed our bags and walked straight through the 'nothing to declare' door without stopping.

We took a bus in to the city then walked about 10 minutes to our hotel. The hotel is old but clean and comfortable. It's right on La Rambla which is the busy tourist drag that runs from the city to the 'Columbus Monument' down at the port. It's 60 metres high (and almost impossible to photograph!!) and has really interesting designs in stone, granite, concrete and metal and was built for the Exposicion Universal de Barcelona 1888. We wandered around for a few hour checking out the harbour area and la Rambla and its side streets. The architecture is fascinating but only a taste of what's to come methinks.

La Rambla is a wide street with narrow road lanes either side of a wide promenade in the centre. There are lots of touristy stalls selling souvenirs and flowers. We ate at one of the many pop up type eating places that are along la Rambla. The kitchens for these are in the adjacent buildings where there are more formal restaurants. We shared a huge jug of sangria that had several very long straws (about 45 cm) so we could share.

We stayed up as late as we could but were in bed by 8 I think!!!