Starting our Spanish Sojourn

The next chapter of our travels takes place in Spain and Portugal.  We are travelling to Barcelona, where we will meet up with friends, Lorraine and Bill, before hiring a car and driving a full circuit back to Barcelona.

Our flights from Canberra were with Qantas/Emirates via Adelaide, Dubai then Barcelona. We were lucky enough to bump into Bronnie's friend, Nori, at Canberra Airport, who arranged for us to be bumped up to Business Class for the Canb-Adelaide leg - very nice, thanks Nori!

The Emirates flights were excellent - mostly on time, plenty of room, comfortable seats and well serviced.  No complaints.

We arrived in Barcelona, where we were very happy to reunite with our luggage (haven't seen it since Canberra), then caught a taxi to our home for the next week - a 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of Barrio Gotico, near La Rambla.  The location is excellent, plenty of restaurants, bars, supermarkets around, so I think we'll be OK for a while.  We did a bit of grocery shopping, and wandered the streets for a while before heading home for a rest.  Travelling is soooooo tiring!

Later in the evening we wandered out to find food - plenty available, and we stopped in a little tapas bar a couple of streets away where we had the tapas 'set menu' of three tapas, paella or fish for 11 Euro pp.  Topped off with a half litre of sangria, we are finally in Spain!