Four hour walking tour of Barcelona today with a n absolutely fabulous guide. Probably 10 or so years older than us, our guide has lived here all her life, studied history and fine art back in the day and has been running personalised tours since the late 90s. She provided such an interesting journey through the streets., filling us in on the political history, including the recent (2017) attempt to secede (spelling?) which is rearing its head again with upcoming elections in May.

We started with the Barcelona food market – she walked us through pointing out the best places for each food- telling us how she prepared/cooked it and different Spanish dishes.

From the markets we headed down La Rambler- through the flower markets- just opening for the day, and on to the gothic quarter, full of churches and narrow streets and multigenerational businesses.

From the Gothic quarter we then moved into the ‘Born’ district – much more avant-guard -all about art and local artisans. In the little narrow side streets shops are only allowed to sell goods produced in Barcelona- many of the little stores had the artist in residence.

Lunched in a ‘stick tapas’ restaurant- a bit like yum cha, where you select the food you want (each item has a tooth pock in it) then at the end they count the toothpicks to calculate the bill.

After more sticks than we are prepared to admit we headed to Moco- the museum of contemporary arts then wandered down to the waterfront before meeting Rick, Bei and Rick’s family for yet another tapas feast.

Arrived back at the hotel 11 hours after we had left- absolutely exhausted having spent most of it on our feet.