Day 16 - Barcelona

But 1st a few observations from the past few days.  We've been travelling with Greg's little Dell netbook (a tiny little laptop that he uses to record laptimes etc in his car!) for this trip and it has been a holiday saver!  We wanted it to be able keep up with any urgent emails and to log our holiday blog but it's also come in useful as a back up for precious photos.  However; from the moment we were told our flight to BCN wasn't on, this thing has been a holiday saver! 

At 2am in a dodgy dive of a hotel in the even dodgier town of Tangier's, we happened across a flight taking reservations from Malaga to BCN; BCN had just re-opened!!  This would save around 9 to 10 hours of driving time and time was insanely tight at this stage.  We brought our ticket and reserved our seat on line and there were plenty of seats available. By the time we arrived for this flight however; it was jam packed! The queue at the airport to get on one of the rare flights operating was huge! We didn't get to Malaga with a lot of time to spare so had we ended up in the queue we would have missed the flight and more than likely have missed getting to BCN and the F1 experience.
A funnier moment was sitting in Marrakech train station, using Segafredo,s (cafe a few 100 mtrs away) wi-fi when a Pom comes up asking for the IP address we're using - every Westerner travelling was making plans on the move - so we get up the IP and he takes out his IPOD and takes a snap shot! It just seemed an insight into the future of travel!

On the train from Casablanca to Tangiers, there were 4 other Westerners all taking phone calls and texts with travel options for the next stage of their trip.  They were hoping there trip back to London could be done in about 4 days! 

But we're back on track now. Needless to say we didn't end up with any time to see BCN but we did manage a stroll along both the port foreshore and up La Rambla to a fantastic tapas bar.  So we've seen enough to know that it's a great looking city with a very active nightlife and amazing Tapa's bars!  Mo-vida isn't a patch on this style of eating - the bar is just lined with great looking, colorful plates of food, there's a whole section of fresh seafood that when selected, disappears into the kitchen for a few minutes and comes back as a dish that makes your mouth water!  And it's cheap! Definitely have to come back here.