Yesterday's activities have worn Issy out and she says she wants to spend the day sleeping. She tells me that I should go out on my own, so I do, to the convenience store to buy some laundry detergent. We're all out of clean clothes and I'm not confident that I'll know how to operate a laundromat if I go there on my own, so I wash the clothes in the bath. There's bright sunshine outside so I drape the wet clothes over the chairs on the terrace to dry. When Issy wakes up it's after midday. She looks outside. It's now raining, and the clothes aren't too dry any more. Issy points out that there's a clothes line in the light well outside the bathroom window and that all the apartments have them, and I ... read more

This morning we've booked a guided tour of Park Guell. We arrive very early, so we walk around the streets near the entrance to try to kill some time. Issy says that she has heartburn, so we need to find a chemist. She's a bit worried that she might not be able to explain to the chemist what's wrong with her. I tell her that I think I know the Spanish words for "heart" and "hot" and that the chemist should be able to work out "heartburn" from that. I get the look; she tells me that if she says that the chemist will probably think that she's having a heart attack. The chemist is a very friendly lady, and we ask her if she speaks English. She says only a little bit, but then tells ... read more

The owners of the apartment seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that they've catered for all tastes. There are four books on the coffee table; three of them are guidebooks on Barcelona and the fourth is a text book on nuclear physics. They must have some interesting guests. We've heard from several sources that we need to be very careful of pickpockets here in Barcelona. I try on several different pairs of shorts with a range of pockets. Some of the pockets are deeper than others; some have buttons and some don't. Issy tests them all out to see how easy it might be to take my wallet out without me noticing. I think it's just as well for us that we don't have to rely on her skills in this ... read more

It is of course still crazily hot, so we spend the morning lazing around the hotel's lukewarm pool. We've booked late afternoon tickets to go up the Burj Khalifa, so we head off to the adjacent Dubai Mall, which we read is the largest mall in the world. Of course it is. Judging by everything we've heard to date, I'm sure that if any other mall somewhere had the temerity to try to outdo it, the Dubai Mall would just quickly tack on a couple more floors and restore the natural order. It is indeed massive, and we need to get a map to try to get our bearings. There's a two storey high thirty metre long aquarium in the middle of the mall, and one of its walls is a single pane of glass. That's ... read more

We decide to go exploring, and head off towards Dubai Marina which only looks to be a few hundred metres from the hotel. It's ridiculously hot and uncomfortable. My iPad tells me that it'll be 42 degrees here tomorrow with 91 per cent humidity, and that means it will "feel like" 59 degrees. 59 degrees! That really is ridiculous. Apart from us the streets are largely deserted, which we suspect means that we're the only people here stupid enough to be wandering around outside when the temperature feels like it's somewhere north of 50 degrees. We stagger into an air conditioned mall and perhaps unsurprisingly discover that this is where all the people are. We take a few minutes to cool down before heading outside again where it seems to be even hotter than before. We ... read more