Please bear with us on this - french keyboards, different keys make this a long process so punctuation and caps etc are a no go!

After the madness of the tomato throwing we got a train to barcelona later than planned and arrived at 10 at night, easily enough though.

barcelona was much like madrid and valencia, in the sense of the buildings and little apartments but barcelona was much more hiper and trendier. parts of the city are dirty but it was good to get a variety in seeing spain. The city is based around its port so in some ways similar to home. As far as what we saw.....

La ramblas is the main tourist st and is LARGELY OCCUPIED BY CAFES, RESTAURANTS, STALLS SELLING bird cages; birds, rabbits, lizards, guinea pigs, and flowers - plus the st is full of buskers - goofy ones, scary gothic ones and crazy old men juggling footballs. la ramblas also joins on to la boqueria market and heads towards the port.

close to la ramblas is the barri gottic area (gothic quarter) which has one of barcelonas two main cathedrals - shame it was covered in scaffolding and had a 20m by 20m banner across its front!

alot of the architecture around barcelona is to do with Gaudi and things he built: La pedera is a building he built which is shaped like a curvy building and has what is referred to as the most photographed chimneypots in the world, on its roof. they look a bit like giant mushrooms crossed withchess pieces.

la sagrada familia (also gaudi) is probably barcelonas most visited attraction. huge cathedral and is amazing to see the level of design in the building. gaudi died before it was completed though so you can see the different designs through the building.

Parc Guell is a parc that gaudi designed and it is full of amazing architecture, walkways, buildings - this wzs somethinh we only went to on recommendation from someone else and we both loved it. when you enter the parh there are two big 'gingerbread' like houses and as you walk around you come across compleltey different types of work. our favourite part of the park wasa big courtyard area surrounded by a curving mosaic seat - our description doesn't do it justice!

our lqst night we also saw a flamenco show - it wzs good but less than what we expected (hqlf hour as opposed to 2 hours)

highlight - parc guell
lowlight - dirtyness of so,e street (and the smell of pee)

Valencia entry is coming, we have just been a little busy being tourists (and finding internet that is quick). the tomato throwing was crazy though, had an amazing time.