After two big days of sightseeing we had another lazy day today. This morning we read our books down beside the pool. We went around to the No. 1 pool which is much nicer and very quiet. There are three accommodation blocks here at the Estival Park and each block has its own pool area. All guests are allowed to use any of the pools so we have been over to Block 1’s pool a couple of times. Mind you, I was reading my book when a bird flew over and dropped a bomb! Somehow it managed to drop it right between my legs and only the sunbed was soiled rather than me!! I still had to do a bit of poo removal though - it’s lucky I am used to picking up doggie do otherwise ... read more

Well, we didn’t fall asleep on the train trip up to Barcelona this morning … and that would be because we had to stand all the way. Sort of like catching the train from Warragul to Melbourne and not being able to get a seat!! I was footsore before we even arrived in Barcelona for our day of sightseeing! From the RENFE station at Passeig de Gracia we switched to the Metro to catch a train to the hotel we booked in the Barri Gotic district. We found Line 4 (yellow) without any trouble and two stops saw us coming out of the Metro just metres from our hotel. Even better they could check us in straight away even though it was only about 10.30am. We took our small overnight bag up to the room and ... read more

Well, we just managed to fit in a trip to Barcelona during our first week in Spain! We were up early this morning and hit the dining room right on opening time at 8.00am so that we could grab a pastry and a piece of fruit to eat on our way to the bus stop. We caught the local bus into Tarragona and then walked from the bus station to the train station to catch the train into Barcelona. Even though the train line runs beside the sea for most of the trip we both snoozed on an off for most of the journey! Not the best thing from a security point of view, but then most of the other passengers seemed pretty drowsy too! We arrived in Barcelona at about 10.15am and walked down Passeig ... read more

We had to get going about an hour earlier this morning to make sure that we were at the bus stop in time to purchase our tour to Montserrat. We arrived at the bus stop at about 9.10am and the bus selling the tickets for tours to Montserrat and Barcelona arrived at about 9.20am. After we bought our tickets there was a considerable amount of radioing and telephoning as the Plana staff worked out how many people they had going on tours today. Eventually there were three busses for Montserrat, but it was an absolute shemozzle getting everyone boarded. The staff were just calling out Montserrat, Montserrat and everyone was milling about between the three busses. It was only when we ended up almost boarding the Russian bus that it became obvious that there was a ... read more

Rosemary rang at 6.00am this morning to let Bernie know that the email has now been sent???!! We thought that was what she rang to tell us at about 4.00am on Tuesday morning?! Anyway, when Bernie logged on he found that he does now have the link. Now he just has to make the time to do the test before the end of the week. It is a nuisance really as it would have suited us for him to do the test yesterday morning while we were killing time waiting for the welcome session! Ah well, c’est la vie, I am sure we can find an hour before the end of the week for Bernie to do the test. After breakfast we caught the bus into Tarragona to have a look at the Roman ruins. When ... read more