We’re not cycling up there…

‎Having said goodbye to Ozzie the drug dog who has now swapped the wacky Barky habit for Champagne tasting in France, we moved on to Barcelona, the crime capital of Europe, if not the world and for that matter probably the solar system too.

We took no chances and stayed at Stalag 14, a guarded car park with walls so high a pole voter on stilts wouldn’t have a hope of scaling them. On the plus side it was right on the cycle routes and close enough to the centre of the city for us to roll home “Sangria’d up”‎ late at night.

Barcelona is now one of the best cities to cycle in, with protected two way cycle lanes having been installed on many one way streets and ‎main roads. We pootled about all day, flitting from Gaudi building to park to cafe and had a marvellous time. Our cycle map doesn’t have contours on though and when we arrived we had seen the hill that the parc Guiel was on and decided to avoid that, but in the end due to a slight miscalculation on my part found ourselves slogging up it being greeted every 5 metres by Americans going “Gee Honey looks it’s a tandem”. Clearly the Gaudi buildings didn’t have a patch on us. But when we reached the top it was well worth it, lovely views and free entrance due to our late arrival meant we had a great stroll around the park before tearing down the hill overtaking cars buses and formula 1 cars on the way.

Getting on a bit now we like to be tucked up in Taffy early which in Spain is a recipe for starvation. People like to eat late and ‎restaurants seem to open around 9pm. Which in our book is roundabout time for a hot chocolate before turning in. But we were in luck and found a Fondue restaurant open! Well, when I say open, the door was open, the staff were in, but they told us they weren’t actually open for another 45 minutes. Quick thinking Linda spotted a wine bar opposite and after chaining up Tilly with so many locks you couldn’t tell whether it was a bike or a pile of scrap metal we adjourned to the wine bar and started to work out way through the local wines. We missed the fondue restaurant opening by quite a substantial margin as by the time we turned up most people were leaving. Still, we had one of the best fondues we’ve had (made with British cider too), a fabulous pudding and then dug Tilly out and wobbled home.