Today was a day mostly for Tom. He was happy to have a chance to go and visit the huge football stadium and pick up some souvenirs. This meant another journey on the Metro for us. However, as we weren’t joining him in the stadium visit we were planning on spending some time at a café. Just outside our Metro stop I spotted a local market, which we briefly went into. It was more of an everyday local market, but there was still plenty of variety on offer.

After this we went off in search of ‘Green’ on Google maps. We found one to be lightly lined with flowers outside a school. But all in the shade. I wanted to make the most of the sun while we were there so I ‘gently’ encouraged the others to sit in a spot in the sun. We had not been sat there for long before the flies had become a nuisance and we moved on again.

We had given Tom instructions on where to meet us after he was finished. We gave his Phone some much needed TLC so that he was able to download the area for offline use. The café was called ‘The Family Room’. The seating, it turned out, was actually on a slow road, with a small amount of traffic passing through. There was no curb either, so it felt rather like you needed to breathe in as the cars and vans went past. I had opted for the seat with the most sun, but it was not long before the shadow had crept over the table. We ordered some nice food and I spotted a lovely looking tea infusion, which turned out to be what Steph had her eye on too. Rooibos and Vanilla were the prime flavours in my palate, which I kept the cardboard tab of (Manhattan - Sansisans).

Steph suggested playing Bananagrams just as the food was ordered. We managed to get through one game as the food arrived, which took up all available space on the small tables. We shared some of the bread and Humous that Alex ordered. This was much nicer than the ‘Tesco Express’ restaurant. Rather than risk my Kindle being stolen I had taken the Wired magazine that I had liberated from work as it was on offer! Alex, the great eater, also ordered a quinoa burger to much on. Not long after that Tom appeared around the corner - just after we had begun to speculate when he might arrive.

The plan for the afternoon was to visit the Gaudi cathedral. It turned out that on Wednesdays and Thursdays it was half price entry for under 30s so we fully intended to capitalise on this. It took a while to get there despite taking the Metro. It looked very much like an active building site from the road side. We set off to walk around the outside to take it in. The detailing was very intricate, but to me it looked like quite a combination of styles which was further accentuated by the different ages of the materials it was made from. Sadly our journey was in vain. The number of tickets available each day was limited, which meant that we really needed to pre-book, which would give as un allocation for entry time.

After a brief visit to the gift shop for some postcards we returned to the apartment. Being British, expert queuer it was a little saddening to be pushed in front of three times whilst in the queue to pay, amplified by how the others were waiting for me outside.

We spent some time relaxing at the apartment before heading out again to the ‘LOCAL’ restaurant, a rather difficult name to search for online. The food there was lovely and the staff were friendly. There was even a brass band door (the squeaks it made were uncannily like the a trumpet). We shared a bottle of wine between us along side a plethora of Tapas dishes. One interesting ingredient was a pickled carrot on some serrano ham on toast. I managed to pick an olive, chilli, and pepper bravas sauce which was quite in contrast with the other bravas sauces that we had enjoyed so far on the trip. It’d be nice to find out how to make it back home to bring some more variety to my cooking.

We ended the evening with a trip to Bar Centro, opposite the apartment. They claimed ‘Craft beer and eccentric food’. On walking in there was a mild, but definitely present smell of sewage, but in seeing that many tables were occupied I took it as a sign that it would be worth it. I tried a Russian Velvet stout, which had a lovely vanilla aroma. I thought it would be the best as it was; not only the most alcoholic, but it was also made in Spain itself. I pocketed a coaster as a souvenir, as the monkey logo was fantastic. We ended the evening with more codenames before heading to bed.