Outstanding Tapas

Today, our last in Barcelona, we wandered around the narrow streets of El Born and Ravel. These streets were great because they were cool, on a very hot day (30 deg at 7.00pm), and because they had neat shops that you just stumbled across.

Around lunchtime we stumbled across Taller de Tapas (www.tallerdetapas.com) where we had lunch.This place served great food, had menus which were also written in English and no smoking signs, which is quite rare here.

We had Andalucian squid, patates braves (chips with smoked paprika sauce and garlic mayonnaise) and chorizos braised in cider along with the standard tomato bread and cold beers.

You must go to this place at 51 Carreer de l'Argentaria at Santa Maria del Mar, just down from the Picasso Museum.

Before that we attempted to go to the Catalunian Museum at the harbour, but it was closed for technical reasons. We did try!

We spent the next few hours in the wonderful narrow streets of El Born and both sides of Las Ramblas. Leigh bought some bracelets for her and others and some shirts for Thomas and Sam.

We stumbled across a whole street and environs dedicated to musical instruments and records and CDs. I could have spent hours there, but Leigh hurried me along. Shopping doesn't seem fair!

We metroed back towards our hotel which we had already checked out of to collect our bags. We then walked the 15 minutes to Sants Estacio (rail station) and spent a very hot 25 minutes on the platform. Leigh was looking a bit stressed so I sent her back upstairs into the air con telling her that if she missed the train I would see her at the airport.

Getting to the airport was without drama other than politely dealing with bloody rude people who push in all over the place and don't understand the rules of good manners that I live my life by!

I'm now at the airport waiting for our 10.30pm flight to Gatwick, which will be followed by a 5,55am flight to Pisa, then a train ride to La Spezia.

We have just heard that our flight is delayed an hour. At this point there is no need to panic as we have 5 hours at Gatwick anyway. I'll keep you posted if it gets interesting.

I haven't written a full diary for the last couple of days. I'll see about doing that at Gatwick if I can't sleep.