On the Barcelona bus

WE went to Barcelona last week for a jolly, taking advantage of our island residents’ discount on flights.

The last time we went was when La Gidg was three months old and we (deludedly) thought that it would be easy to do a pit stop in Barcelona on our way back to Mallorca after her christening. It was hell, she didn’t stop crying for the whole 48 hours of our visit and we could not wait to leave the hotel and get home.

With that in mind we knew that we wanted to visit Barcelona again, but when she could express herself in other ways that weren’t ear piercing screams. So, now that Gidg is nine years old and very good at making her feelings clear, it was with reasonable confidence that we booked again to go. But this time not in a hotel but in a funky Barcelona crash pad with www.barcelonacheckin.com/en.

The apartment was very nice, big enough for the three of us, with all the bits that you might need including one of those fancy coffee makers and it even had some TV in English.

But we weren’t there to stay in, we were there to go out! And out we went. The apartment was right in the middle of Barcelona which was very exciting! I know it sounds a bit odd coming from someone who voluntarily lives in a village: I really love the traffic and the buzz of the city, but I’d forgotten how tiring it is. So we went around the city on the tourist bus which is nice to be able to flop on there, instead of walking and just be driven around and told what is what.

We were in need of some expert advice on the Saturday morning when we had to make a quick pass by a health clinic, so the guys at Barcelona Check In told us where to go. After that we awarded ourselves the rest of the day to eat tapas at ‘The Best Tapas Restaurant in Barcelona’ Cerveceria Catalana (can’t be sure it’s the best we’d have to go round them all in the interests of fairness, but they were definitely very good), take a disco nap back at our crash pad, and then later we met up with a very old friend to have something called ‘Flexitarian’ food (that’s veggies, oily fish and more veggies) at Flax and Kale (http://www.teresacarles. com/fk/). 

We all felt very cosmopolitan whilst drinking our cold pressed juices.

Then it was Sunday, and time to go back to sleepy village life. We didn’t really find our city legs in the time we were there; perhaps you can take London out of the girl after all. Or maybe we just have to go back for longer and soon! 

www.familymattersmallorca.com