Barcelona, it was the first time that we met...

Casa Batllo
Originally uploaded by nerissa_atkinson.

Not each other ( I am travelling with my sister Liorah, and her best friend Naomi) but our backpacks. Having not really considered what carrying up to 20 extra kilos around on our backs might actually feel like, after a while of negotiating the subterranean sewer (I mean subway) of Barcelona in an attempt to get to our hotel, I was beginning to be challenged with upright walking, and from behind Liorah was beginning to look suspiciously like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Luckily, we emerged into the sunlight and ice creams, and once we found our hotel (complete with resident cat), we were ready to enjoy the good life. This in Barcelona, as in the rest of Spain involves copious amounts of food and alcohol, although a suspicious lack of vegetables, although that may have been because of the chocolaterias and tapas bars we tended to frequent.

Other than the food, the main attraction of Barcelona is probably the Gaudi architechture – which is basically everywhere, fine if you like it, but if you didn’t, like Naomi, you had to be content with people watching. I was expecting Barcelona to be very arty and stylish, but I got the impression that it’s far more a small fishing village made big in terms of the way people dress and look. Nomes promises us far more style when we hit Madrid.

After 3 days in Barcelona we are taking the train 5 hours south-west to Madrid. In order to sustain ourselves on the journey, we each took it in turn to race around the amazing Mercat de la Boqueria in order to buy train scroggin – bread, cheese, pistachios, olives, ripe strawberries, mangoes, chocolate covered glace oranges… We were quite the envy of our train compartment, the other occupants of which had to be content with a dry cheese roll from Renfe.