Barcelona Trip- {Salou Blog)- 3rd and 4th August 2012

Writing this blog on the train heading back to Salou. Euan is snoring away with his head against my shoulder probably a testament to what we had done over last 2 days in very warm hot weather.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="292"] Waiting for a train to Barcelona[/caption]

Yesterday we left the holiday apartment at 9am, and went to train station in Salou only to find there was a local strike on. - bastards! Typical luck for us. 1st train wasn't until 1135am so we had some time to kill. Never been on a Spanishtrain before. A bit mad getting a seat etc, start stop, start stop. - anyway we got to Barcelona at 1pm.

As usual was a bit unprepared. No map etc but using my phone we located our Apartment and jumped in a taxi. This took only 15 mins from the station. - We booked an overnight stay as thought it would make sense to do more over 2 days than 2 trips. I booked a place through laterooms.com and got a cracking private let that had kitchen 2 rooms washing machine blah blah. Shame we were only staying 1 night as at 90e it was a bargain.

After a daft moan from me about not being able to get into the room as there was no key I phoned the Agent only to find I was on the wrong floor. At the wrong appt. - Should have been the floor up. - Anyway we were sorted eventually, so refreshed , change of clothes we headed for lunch at 2pm before exploring our new surroundings.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="292"] Nou Camp from the Press Box[/caption]

After lunch we jumped in a taxi and headed to somewhere I've always wanted to go - The Nou Camp - home of 1 of if not the greatest team in the world - FC Barcelona or Barca as the are known. A family pass ain't cheap but I knew the kids would love it. You get to see the history of the club see trophies and get into lots of back areas of the stadium. We were here for around 2 and a half hours and had a ball. - many photos as you can imagine lol. You get intro the dressing rooms etc also and get down the front near the pitch. They have set up a great experience and we were there around 4 and place was heavin lol. Anyway magic.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="292"] Me, Andrew and Euan in the Nou Camp![/caption]

Post the Nou Camp experience we headed back to our Apartment to chill for a bit before heading out to explore what the central city had to offer. -Around 830pm and after doing a quick bit of online research via twitter and good old google we headed down to the LaRambla area of Barcelona. - This is down near the port area.

We wandered around for ages and kids were clearly getting peckish, so we settled for a nice place facing the port- fantastic expeirence - Afterwards we explores many of the Market Stalks and from then it was heading towards Midnight so it was home to bed.

We were all exhausted so naturally we were all asleep very quickly lol.

Today - Sat August 4th. - I woke up very early. Probably my new surroundings. Was before 8. So decided to let rest of them snore away and I went out a long walk .... then got the breakfast in. We left the appartment at around 11am and headed to the Sans railway station to store the luggage. We then explored the rest of the main central city. We bought a metro family pass to get about.

First stop was the grande familia barcelona - Superb example of architercture. We the went back down to the La Rambella Area and had lunch. Walked around the port and the usual rack around the shops.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="290"] grande familia barca[/caption]

We decided that we would head back to Salou at around 6pm. We had a far well drink on the LaRambella area -a sting in the tail at 39.40euro for 4 drinks that inc 2 fantas lol !

After that we headed back to Salou... Great visit.... - Photos to follow !