Dylaaaaan the supermodel

He will probably hate (or love) me for posting this, but he is just so ggoooooorrgeouuuuuus so I had to share it with the world - Carly, I reckon you will love my 'sooo Aztec right now' jumper!??

Courtney's last weekend

Who needs an excuse to dress up?! Lots of sparkles and a lovely italian dinner! Then off to the WestEnd!

Our little party @ home

Courtney and Dylan in the 'front room'We cooked up a storm darlink!

Wednesday 8th March 2006
Another beautiful day – perfect for an adventure to Park Guell. The stairs from the Metro to the actual park seemed at first glance worse than the Covent Garden stairs – then there was relief – escalators up the middle of these slender suburban streets!
I think the pictures tell 1 million words (inflation and all) so I wont go into details. The walk up and the view across Barcelona were awe-inspiring.

Tonight, being our last, we planned to go to a Flamenco show, but the timetable didn’t tell us most weren’t running on Wednesday nights! Booo! See pictures anyway.

Mercat Bouqeria


Tuesday 7th March 2006
Went for a massif! Walk along the man made beach and harbour area. Again it was a lovely day and there was lots of bars and restaurants along the beach – perfect opportunity for a pub/bar/beerfest crawl (Spanish style!) Unfortunately we chose the wrong place to stop to eat – Baja Beach Bar (the name should have given it away) it was an English tourist’s haven, even the staff looked like they came directly from the soccer – the Brits have more taste than this place provided. The only consolation was the sunny outside tables on the beach – without this major draw card, the place would have shut down ages ago.

On the way back, we ventured through the Mercat Bouqeria (food markets) – they are so much like the Adelaide Central Markets – a place I miss so dearly and all you South Aussies (although you love it) probably take this world class sanctuary for granted!

Very coincidental, but because we were there, we thought we might be able to secure some tickets to watch Chelsea play a crucial game against Barcelona. Alas, the ground holding aver 100,000 people was sold out. So we headed for a pub where we acquired to stool with good views of the plasma screen! I won’t go too much into detail, but Chelsea didn’t score and they needed 2 goals to continue.

Olympic Village (top) and Sagradia Familiar






Monday 6th March 2006
Today was so beautiful! Perfect for the bicycle trip around Barcelona with Fat Tire Tours. We met the guide around midday and headed to get our bikes. The guide was excellent, telling us stories about the history of Barcelona, Spain and the Catalonians – without boring us in to oblivion. It took a leisurely 4.5 hrs and we stopped at sites such as The Cathedral, Olympic village and beaches, the old town and many Gaudi buildings/houses, including Sagradia Familiar.

Sunday 5th March 2006
Woke nice and early – to be met by dark clouds full of rain! This didn’t not faze us – and as informed by Alex, not much is open on a Sunday, so we went for a wander. We headed down La Ramblas to Port Vell, crossed the dodgy jetty and arrived at a large shopping area – much like Darling Harbour in Sydney – just not as big! Unfortunately for us, it started bucketing down so we had to take retreat inside the mall. I did buy something too. A bright orange top, which I just happen to be wearing today! (Everyone at work is quite thankful for that!) I was so in awe by the colour everywhere – some of the shops were like art galleries with something of a ‘flamenco dancer meets gringo in tapas bar’ inspired outfits. Made me think of how Carly and I had all these ideas of cool outfits, but just couldn’t find anything remotely close in Oz.

We found a trusty tapas bar where the waiter apologised for thinking I was English, not realising that Pete has the biggest cockney accent even on London terms. Oops! The food was great and Pete charmed the waiter by ordering the first vodka for the day (sorry Pete, it was a moment that had to be described).
We then headed for a bar – um, now, ‘when in Rome……’ they don’t have bars as such! You buy your drinks at the tiny tapas bars, which feels kind of weird seeing you have just eaten – so we unwillingly headed to an Irish bar – just to escape the weather of course, and to watch the footy.
After that, we headed, to another irish bar (sooo many Irish bars!) then to an Australian Bar (those of you who have travelled overseas will know exactly what I mean when I say that by ‘Australian’ I mean there is Fosters served behind the bar and… well maybe an Aussie flag perched somewhere) to watch some more footy. By that time (and sangria and shooters later) it was time to eat again. We headed for a great seafood place – yum! + more wine etc! How did we get home!??

Sat 4 March 2006
After arriving in Reus Airport (south of Barcelona) we interpreted the Catalan bus timetable and jumped on in time to trek the 1 or so hour trip into the city itself.
The scenery is just what I imagined - with a lot less colour. Spanish housing (you know the white rendered walls, pom-tan orange roof tiles all set like steps up the mountainside.

After a few hesitations as to which way to head towards our accommodation, we put our heads together and found the Catalunya metro stop was easy enough to navigate via the very reliable and cheap tube system. All going as one so organised would expect, we followed the easy enough directions. I was aware that I needed to call the apartment people on arrival to meet to get the keys. Bit of a major problem when the phone number is not on the email confirmation!!! Anyway, we planned to head to the ‘Informacio’ (for those of you who don’t speak Catalan that means information) to look up the accommodation – to no avail. We then headed for the internet café and got the phone number. Lucky the guy was just around the corner! We met Alex and he provided a lot of helpful information about touring Barcelona and the Apartment RamCat accommodation, which I might add if you ever go, great price, kitchen, brand new (thanks to Ikea) and perfect location – and not where we had originally headed for! Thank god – this was much nicer! The only thing we achieved the first night was walking down to the supermercado (supermarket!) to purchase bevies and begin our culinary adventure into Tapas World! (Did I mention that EVERYTHING goes with Sangria?)