Barcelona baby!

We had an early start this morning as we walked towards Maccas for our usual pilfering of their WiFi, only to find it closed but we still managed to get some internet access. After a brief stop, we continued onto the train station for our trip to Barcelona.

It took about 6 hours to get to Barcelona as we made our way across the Spanish countryside. Arriving at Sants Estació, we had to conquer a new metro system and make our way to our hostel. With a short train ride and our printed directions in hand we found our place and checked in.

We had some time to freshen up before we made our trek out to Las Ramblas - Barcelona's most popular street. Luckily this was only just around the corner! Woot! There was a lot of hustle and bustle with street vendors, buskers, tourists (ourselves included) all occupying the centre strip of Las Ramblas.

After walking a short while and seeing lots of restaurants with tables and chairs set up in this busy area, we decided to sit down and grab a drink. We ordered a stein of beer and a large margarita style glass of sangria. Ouch! Almost 27€ for two drinks. Well they were massive and it was basically the same scenario as having a drink or food on the champs Élysées in Paris.

Sipping our drinks and watching everyone go about their business we managed to see one of those statue-like buskers set up for the day.

Rich: He was a dressing up as a bronze cowboy and took his time to get ready. At one stage before putting his make-up on we saw him psyching himself up in the mirror.

We moved on and chose to walk the distance to where Ray and Lyn were staying, as this was our only other opportunity to meet up again on the entire trip. They were travelling clockwise and us anti clockwise. This was a fair distance in the end and some power walking may have come into play to make the 7pm deadline! This also gave us a chance to really test the durability and comfort of our thongs.

We met a few of their travelling companions and had a drink and a catch up with them. A really friendly bunch and we could tell that Ray and Lyn had been having a great time with these guys.

Tan: The area where mum and dad was a bit of a ways from the action. We ended up finding a restaurant, but our best choice in their area was Italian. We were hoping to find a nice local restaurant, but this area was very limited!

Anyway, dinner was really nice and it was brilliant catching up in Barcelona with the others! This is something that we will never forget.

We got back to the hostel (our first ever hostel) and it was pumping! We were pretty full from dinner but decided to have a drink anyway. Two massive drinks and only 5€...that's more like it!!! We are in a great location here and it looks to be a few greats days ahead.