Arrival in Spain, rather warm bus journey on Aerobus (pronounced - aye-row-booz). Then a very busy introduction to Barcelona followed when arriving at Plasa de Catalunya. There were a great many people there. Many with luggage. When walking to the apartment, although not far away, I was very glad to have a backpack hold-all rather than wheely luggage. The temperature difference was quite stark in comparison to back at home and the plane journey. So it wasn’t long before I was trying to find a place to put my hoodie, feeling especially like a backpacker with my hand luggage on my front like a baby.

The building itself was a sharp introduction to Spanish layout, the central elevator was very similar to that of the one we had while in Rome - though significantly more sturdy. There is a ‘Principle’ floor before the first floor, which was where we were met by the person who had buzzed us in from the street. It was soon clear that his English was very limited and he had in fact been expecting to buzz in someone else. So after a brief and beffudling exchange we established that we needed to go further up. We were still a bit unsure as to whether or not that was the host, despite looking nothing like their picture.

After some serious deliberation about which doorbell to ring - there appeared to be two close together, and one further away, all looking like light switches, so one was picked and we rang it. The Airbnb hosts were very friendly in greeting us, but with some surprise as they hadn’t actually let us in the building. They gave us a quick run through of the rooms. The place was much larger than it looked in the pictures online. The kitchen was just as lime green. There was going to be plenty of space to rattle around in for a week!

After briefly unpacking our things we went to the local mini supermarket (Supermercat, from this point on always referenced as ‘Super meercat’ by myself!). We made sure to stock up on plenty of beer and Gin for the next couple of days. Chris was confidently saying that he had looked up that the Markets would be open on Sunday, however later on he was slightly ridiculed for this and was branded with having the reputation for saying the opposite of the truth.

We didn’t really fancy cooking at all, so we had a skim of the plethora of food offerings that Barcelona had to offer on Google Trips, I settled on a Tapas bar called BETLEM - Miscelánea Gastronómica. We shared a bottle of wine and tried the Pork Dewlap, which is now the stuff of legend.

After all of the travelling we all got an early night - grateful in our decision to buy some bottled water, the tap water had a very pungent scent of chlorine, although we looked up online - after a lengthy task of typing in a huge password to use the WiFi - that it was quite safe to drink. Being techy, Alex and myself were pleased to see that the download speed was ample for us.