Bye bye bang bang Barcelona

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Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Repeat....ad infinitum. Then talk really loudly. And all before 7am. Git. Not sure where the racket was coming from but it did mean we didn't have a lot of sleep last night. But we still got up early for our last morning in Barcelona and walked, yes walked, across to La Rambla before venturing into the gothic quarter that we were taken through on our walking tour yesterday.

We basically just walked up and down alleys, stumbling across graffiti 50ft in the air,(....come on, how??) Gothic buildings, fancy tiles decorating alley walls and then the Arc de Triomfe. There's a lot of celebrating victory going on around the world with the building of arches isn't there?

I mean every time I win at Monopoly I don't grab all the houses and hotels and glue them together in the form of an arch. Each time I win at heads or tails I don't rustle myself up a little archway to remember my victory by. Claire tells me that these big arches of triumph here, in Bucharest and Paris for example are apparently monuments to bigger things than racing a top hat around a board. Wait till we next play snakes and ladders sweet wife of mine!!

After a quick visit to a park full of loud schoolchildren we were soon headed back to our hostel to check out before going one tube stop to catch the airport train. A 500 mile walk, or thereabouts, finally got us to the right platform and we were soon on our way to the airport.

Checking we were in terminal 2 we went in and went through security still with our hold luggage. Not the first time this has happened but then Claire had a little multi-tool extricated from her main luggage by a security nazi who wouldn't listen to her or try and get someone that could speak English. It wasn't until we got inside that we had not only bypassed check-in but were in the wrong part of terminal B.....why did no-one tell us instead of letting us go through and nicking Claire's stuff??

Our part of Terminal B was quite a walk away so it was a good job

Oops!

Just nearly missed our flight I was so busy blogging I only just noticed the queue had disappeared and there was only us left! Just made it thankfully. A good job we were early I was saying!

So, yes, we are on our way home. I quite liked Barcelona after the first night. I've always been vigilant abroad but never been so close to being robbed as here and never been so on edge even in third world countries with real poverty. Lesson learned without serious consequences but it will make me less trusting of people who are just trying to be friendly and want to talk about football.

You never know we might even come back here one day, maybe once the Sagrada Familia is completed (but I bet they still cover up some of it and put up scaffolding when we do come!).

Lots of other places to visit first though.....

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