Goodbye to Catalonia (Barcelona)

Thom and I will be leaving Barcelona with mixed feelings today.  Part of us has enjoyed this wonderful vibrant and historic city and part of us will also leave with the bad memories of being robbed on our second day.  It was hot again in our hotel room overnight and there seem to be constant emergency vehicle sirens going off all through the night.  I woke relatively early and had a shower before beginning the packing.  Thom was up much later and helped put together a few things in the cases.  We decided to walk to Glories Shopping Centre and I drank a mug of cappuccino while Thom had some freshly squeezed orange juice - beautiful oranges.  We chatted about how we would spend the day and decided that we would return to the hotel, complete the packing and then deposit the cases with the hotel's staff in the secure locker room.  quite a number of American tourists had just arrived from the overnight flight.  Being a hotel operated by an American company this is not surprising.  We took the tram to Glories and then the metro (Ligne 1) to Catalunya where we walked down La Rambla stopping to purchase a key ring for Mary.  We wondered around the maritime area and watched as the bridge opened to allow some private yachts to leave the harbour for the sea.  The weather today is warm and we sat outside MacDonald's to eat a fast lunch - albeit leisurely!  We return up La Rambla being careful to keep our hands on our possessions.  We returned to the hotel at about 2.30 p.m. after a quick call in to Carrefour for some Spanish brandy to bring home (a favourite tipple of mine) and had a beer whilst watching the V in the lounge.  We eventually said farewell to the hotel staff and set off for the airport via the tram to Glories, metro to Clot and finally the train to the airport.  Arriving at the airport in good time we found that we had to walk nearly half a mile to another terminal (C) to board our easyJet flight back to London.  Our flight left about half an hour late and we didn't arrive into Gatwick until about 9.20 p.m. and then we arrived at the wrong terminal (South instead of North).  This delayed us somewhat as we needed to catch the Shuttle to the North Terminal in order to be able to pick up the car.  Eventually we left Gatwick at just before 10 p.m. and set off on the long journey back to Wiltshire.  There was ice on the car and we had to swab it in order to see our way out of Gatwick.  We returned home via Bolney, Pulborough, Chichester and the coast road home arriving quite tired at just after midnight.  I eventually flopped into a cold bed at around 1 a.m.