Sunday 18 November

Not a great deal to tell about this day, as we only got up at dusk. (Well, we’d spent a further four hours after we’d left the club, blissfully, wonderfully, awake in the hotel room.)

We had a so-so dinner at SantaMonica on Place Reial, then called in at EasyEverything on the Ramblas to check email and write brief gloating blog entries.

Our guide book told us that Poble Espanyol was open till midnight on Sundays. Not in winter, it ain't. All the bars and clubs were shut, but the security guard let us wander around. Poble Espanyol [Spanish Village] was built for the Exhibition of 1927, and is a collection of buildings representative of the architecture of the various regions of Spain. There's a Castillian street, an Andalucian barrio, a Dominican church, etc. It should be very tacky, but it's been done with such attention to detail that it's really charming. On summer weekends, the place is alive with trendy bars and clubs.

Because the following day was to be our last full day in Barcelona, we had an early night. Well, early-ish, anyhow, getting home at about 2am after a few drinks in Dietrich and Atame.

Monday 19 November

A busy day, packed with sightseeing.

First up, Gaudi’s La Pedrera, the apartment complex with the melted, flowing shape and the groovy chimney pots. We also took a tour of one of the apartments. The apartment was huge – about twenty rooms, all spacious and airy. Once again, Marcus and I changed our minds about where we’d like our summer home.

Then we took a walk to La Sagrada Familia, perhaps Barcelona’s most famous landmark. Marcus has a real fear of heights, but I managed to force him up the spiral stairs. He was a bit wobbly when we finally reached the top of the spires.

As it was a glorious, cloudless day, we decided to take a trip out to Tibidado, one of the two mountains overlooking the city. There’s a cathedral with a large statue of Jesus at the top, and a funfair too. To get there, you need to take a Metro, then a tram, and finally a funicular. However, on the day we tried to go, the tram was replaced by a bus, and the funicular wasn’t running at all, so we didn’t make it to the top. We did consider walking up, but instead drank in the view - and a couple of beers - in the glass-fronted bar on the edge of the hill.

After a siesta back at the hotel, we had dinner in a restaurant near the Picasso museum and bid our farewells to Barcelona by having a last tour of the [thoroughly empty] bars.

Tuesday 20 November

Up at 8, last-minute packing, check-out, panic at the Metro station about which train to take. Our flight was delayed by an hour, but soon we were flying over the snow-covered Pyrenees, on our way home.

There is so much we didn't manage to do on this trip...

The zoo

The funfair on Tibidado

The illuminated fountains on Montjuic

A few days in Sitges

A trip to the monastery at Monserrat
... that we will simply have to go back in the summer!