Christian and I took three daytrips from Sitges to Barcelona, and each one was fabulous. Barcelona was the ancient capital of Catalonia, and is very much a modern capital, even if Catalonia is no longer an independent kingdom. The people there still speak there own language, Catalan, which is a kind of mix between Castilian Spanish and Provençal French. I found this a little annoying, because it frustrated my efforts to get to grips with Spanish, but Christian at times took it as a personal affront ;o)

We got to Barcelona by train of course, and one of the first things I noticed was that despite the odd no smoking sign here or there, they were being pretty much universally ignored. I looked around, thinking, "why doesn't any of the staff do anything?" The answer of course was that they were all smoking too! How foolish of me.

Our first day was spent wandering around the Gothic Quarter, taking in the mediæval architecture, especially the Gothic Cathedral, which is a fine, dark building, replete with characteristically gorgeous Catholic embellishments inside. It also has a lift to the roof, which afforded a fine view of the rest of Barcelona.

On our second day, we zipped over to the famously bizarre Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, designed by the visionary Antoni Gaudí. It was a shame it was a drab day, but even so, the building is breathtakingly intricate, and such a departure from any kind of architecture that I've ever seen. We circled it, admiring the different features: the Nativity Facade, resembling a sand castle that's been rained on, it's teeming with images of life from land, sea, and air, and of course imagery from the birth of Christ. It has a very soft, rounded look about it. In complete contrast is the Passion Facade. This is starkly angular, and strikingly reminiscent of skeletal parts and the figures from the passion are all bony and gaunt. The Gloria Facade is as yet incomplete, as is most of the Cathedral, but after a few more decades, who knows...

At this point, we noticed an apartment block protesting with banners the presence and smell of a McDonalds at its base. Intrigued, we wandered over and were instantly seduced by the idea of a McGreek Sandwich or something - basically a McKebab of some sort! Feeling a little ashamed, we went in and gorged ourselves before returning to the Cathedral. The queue to ascend one of the two groups of four completed spires was huge, and wound tightly up the interior of one spire, across a bridge, and back down another. The views to be had were quite spectacular, but lost on Christian, who was suffering from a little vertigo attack. We met up again at the bottom and explored the visitor centre, where we found out about Gaudí's ingenious techniques...

Before returning to Sitges for the evening, we swung past Gaudí's house in another part of the city, and were once more impressed by what was at the same time a completely different style, but recognisably his. Marvellous. Snap, snap, snap went the cameras.

Our third day in Barcelona was a glorious hot one. We went straight to Parc Güell, situated on a hillside overlooking the city. Again, designed by Gaudí, the park has some fantastic architecture, from the huge circular plaza decorated with that broken tile style, to the Disney-esque houses, and monstrous columns and stalactites. It was quite a stagger to get up there, but the trip down to the Ramblas del Mar was much easier on our feet.

Once there, we ascended a rather rickety tower in a lift (which easily turned my stomach) to a cable car station high above the marina. With the wind buffeting the tower, it was quite rocky, and stepping foot into the car itself took a large amount of courage. In motion, the car was... exciting. Christian could hardly open his eyes, and my only escape from the terror was to wind him up some more. Nevertheless, we got to Montjuïc safe and sound, and wandered over the hillside to the huge National Palace, now the home of the National Art Museum of Catalonia, which we couldn't be bothered to enter. Instead, we walked down the steps, past the Magic Fountain to the Venetian Towers, replicas of the Campanile in Piazza San Marco in Venice. At this point, Christian's camera screwed up, so it was a good thing that we were returning to Sitges.