Greetings from the Continent!

Today has been our first full day in Barcelona, and being 8pm, the day is far from over. We are very much enjoying the Spanish way of life: sleep late, hu-uge lunch between 2-3, light dinner around 9-10, then off to the bar. It´s like being an undergrad again, without that pesky study business!

We set off this morning eager to explore. In the nineteenth century the city underwent a major expansion, so a lot of the architecture is from around then and is very similar to that in the French Quarter in New Orleans (there´s only three French buildings left in the Quarter, the rest are Spanish), and we love it! We started our wanderings this morning on Las Ramblas, which is like a nineteenth century Spanish version of Rundle Mall and has a big produce market with fruit, meat, bread and chocolate stalls, and makes our Adealaide markets look a little small by comparison (although it doesn´t have Lucias, so clearly not as cool). We then made our way down to Ramblas del Mar, which is the walkway along the harbour, where there are hundreds of boats moored.

We stopped for lunch at one of the many little restaurants dotted along the very narrow, maze-like streets and sampled Menu del Dia, where you get two main dishes, bread, dessert and a karaffe of wine for around 10 Euros--which is incredibly cheap.

This afternoon we visited a chocolate Museum, where the entry tickets were bars of chocolate and then we browsed the shops, where I found a birthday dress! (This is very exciting as I have been wearing rather ugly pants every single day since we left!)

Tonight we are heading out for tapas with Mikey and Anna, which should be great, Alessia has recommended us a few good places to try!

We´ve only been in Europe a few days, but absolutely loving it. Spain is like nothing I could have imagined, and I think we´re going to have a hard time leaving Barcelona at the end of the week! The language thing is a bit scary, although most people in Barcelona seem to speak English, which wasn´t really the case in Malaga. It´s very strange and slightly unsettling to be walking down a street and not understand a word anyone around you is saying, and stranger still when you can´t make yourself understood!

Love,
Margs

xo