After an awesome time in Villeseque des Corbiers, we all headed down to Barcelona. We took the scenic coastal road following the cliffs from South France, back into Spain. We all checked into our backpackers after organising some ridiculously expensive parking, cleaned ourselves up and headed into the town in search of paella and sangria.
The Barcelona night life is amazing and the architecture is also stunning. We headed down Las Ramblas (the main tourist street in Barcelona) and found a nice restaurant where we had a delicious paella and a couple of jugs of sangria. The night continued in this fashion, pub crawling and drinking sangria by the jug, until we eventually stumbled back to our backpackers after a stop at the 24 hour bakery....
We woke up the following morning still feeling very tipsy, exchanged a few details of the night before and headed down to complimentary breakfast. We were hoping to make a guided walking tour but we missed this by about 30 seconds. Instead we decided to do our own walking tour, so we picked up a few pamphlets and maps from the backpackers and headed off.
The Barcelona architecture is inspired by Antoni Gaudi. His most famous design is the Sagrada Familia, where construction was started in 1882 and is due to be finished in 2041. The detail in this building is unexplainable and pictures barely show all the finer details, so I recommend that you go to Barcelona and have a look for yourself!!!
The gothic quarter is the old part of Barcelona and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk through the narrow, winding streets. The Barcelona Cathedral, Arc du Triomf, Christopher Columbus statue and all the other museums and monuments really were fascinating.
After the walk through the town, and a bit of tourist shopping, we found a pub/ restaurant for some dinner and more drinks. For some unknown reason, none of us were really keen on drinking sangria so we drank beer instead. We managed to watch the first half of the Bok - Argentina rugby game and then made our way back to the backpackers after a very mild night. We were all feeling very tired from all the walking... and Friday night might have had something to do with it as well.
Waking up fresh on Sunday was a nice change and after breakfast at the backpackers, we said our farewells to Brenno, Caitlin and Stuart and headed down the coast. Thanks guys for an awesome week. We really had a great time with you all. Our collarbones are still hurting from all the laughs....
Our next stop was unplanned but we had 2 night to spend before getting to Bunol for the tomato festival. We stopped at a small campsite in Benicarlo, about midway on the coast between Barcelona and Valencia. There was a nice beach in front of the campsite so we had a good 2 days of chilling out and recovering. We had a nice braai, restocked our camping supplies, went for a small bicycle ride, got sunburnt, swam a lot and really enjoyed some time out.
Our next stop, La Tomatina....