A wonderful bus ride along the coast to Barcelona, I thought the driver was just fantastic! Young Spanish dude but he knew the route, the vehicle and he did not mess about. We ran perfectly to time!
Dumped unceremoniously at a bus station, we grabbed our gear and took an Uber to a hostel. 2 sets of bunk beds in a private room with en-suite is costing us upwards of $200 NZD per night! Ouch! Big city problems!
Once we’d explored our building we set about finding a supermarket and were so relieved to see food prices were cheaper than France. Thank. Goodness.
In the evening we went exploring to find the infamous Sagrada familia – it apparently was 10 minutes walk away from where we were staying.
We found it.
What. An. Odd. Building!
I’d seen photos. I’d heard all about it from others that had seen it, but nothing prepared me for seeing it up close! So quirky. So creative. So imaginative.
We walked round the whole block, looking at it from different angles to try and make sense of it.
We went into tourist merch shops, came back out and looked at it again.
We ate some churros lathered in chocolate sauce and looked at it again.
We waited for it to go dark and watched all the lights come on.
Nope. Still bizarre.
So we walked home in the dark – I thought I’d feel a bit unsafe having the family out after dark but it was all good. Lots of ladies were walking by themselves which eased my fears.

The next day BK decided it was buffet breakfast for the family. Cereal to cheese / ham / raw veges to cooked egg / sausages / baked beans to pastries. The boys tanked themselves up!
We ordered an Uber, and we waited and waited….we were meant to be going in a walking tour and the start time was getting closer!
Stuff it!
We hastily made our way to the metro station, and caught the train, arrived at the correct stop and popped up to the meeting place just in time. BK took a photo of me checking us in with our guide “to add to your story” he informed me. So I’ll add that photo to my Barcelona set on Facebook.
Our guide was called Claire she was from Ireland, she’d been guiding for 6 years!! Must love it??!!
The walking tour was mostly in the gothic quarter and it was fabulous. Absolutely loved it. What a pretty city. What a fascinating history.
After a supermarket run to top up on food for the next 24 hours, and to buy a box of ice creams – yep when you travel with me I’m not going to buy you expensive €3 each ice cream, if you want ice cream I will go buy a box of 4 for €2 from the supermarket and you can have one of those! We went to the roof top of our building and ate them there enjoying the view of the city and the water.
After that it was back to our beds for rest while BK punched out some urgent work.
Touristing is exhausting!

The following day we’d booked a car rental to drive out to a mini country in the Pyrenees mountains, Andorra.
We piled on the metro again, smoothly picked up a random car, an upgrade from what we’d ordered! (The same had happened to us in Amsterdam with our car rental there – how blessed we are.)
It was a bit stressful navigating out of the city but once on the motorway we were all good. The views were beautiful. After 2.5 hours we reached Andorra. It was my 45th country to visit! It’s a city/country squashed between two mountains. Not at all what I expected. We parked, made a beeline for the information centre, got a map and directed on the things to see and then went about it! After a few hours we were done. We had to have the car back by 8pm and just didn’t know what Friday night traffic going into Barcelona would be like. We took a different route back, it was more beautiful than the way up – and it had no road tolls, unlike the way up!!! I know you all loved that cruise along the Croatian coast last time with Salmonella Dub so I took some clips for ya. No SD this time though!
Traffic was non existent so we had the car returned 1.5 hours early. I am glad we did the mission out there, it was a big day but so worth it! 

Our final day we packed up our stuff and took it all out to the beach. Our flight wasn’t till the evening so we had time to fill.
I was going to throw DJI up for ya all to look at the coastline but when I went for a wee walk to see where I could take off from I came across true European beach bather ladies, sooooo decided that wasn’t very appropriate and took a panoramic photo from the back of the beach, avoiding particular ladies, for you all instead!!!! You’re WELCOME!
After a few hours of people watching…the ones with their clothes ON, it was time to head to the airport. I found a limited edition baileys ‘Colada’, ahhh YUM! And smelled all the smells in the perfume section 💕
The flight out of Barcelona had been a bit of a sticky point since I booked it. I had CK as an adult fare but it would not take his birthdate, maybe he should have been a teen fare? I thought maybe I’d booked it incorrectly? I had looked for any contact details or social media I could contact with no luck. When I got to Nimes last week I found a number to call and got thee most lovely guy, who spoke English, to explain my situation to. He informed me it was all good, a system error, just check in at the counter he told me.  “Ok” I replied with great relief “you’ve just made my day!” And then hung up and thought nothing more about it….till I checked in! He had upgraded us to row 2 with ‘space plus’ (premium economy basically) given us priority boarding and extra carry on luggage allowance. He’d made my day, again!
How blessed we are.
A bit of a delay on take off even though we were loaded and ready to go on time! (Something about a busy runway) I watched the sunset and wrote this blog as we flew to our next destination.

Thanks for reading team, means so much to me. Yes I’m moving fast and yes my days can be reasonably full but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of home. I’d so love to hear from you and what’s going on in your world. Please keep your comms up, even if just to check in quickly.

Till next time,

Claire.