Memory Lane: Spain

A few weeks ago we hopped on a plane and headed to Barcelona for a long weekend. Now, I've only ever been to mainland Spain once before. As a child I went to L'Estartit one scorching hot summer with my parents and brother. I really do recall it been scorching hot, probably because we drove there from Yorkshire and cars didn't have air con in them in the early nineties - journeys like that tend to leave an impression. I can still, even now, conjure up the smell of a burning hot dashboard, the feeling of grubbiness from been stuck in a vehicle all day, and the magnitude of driving over the Pyrénées and seeing the sheer drop just a step away from my passenger door.

My memories of that holiday are of dryness and dust, of feeling uncomfortable in the heat, but also memories of feeling awed because the place we were staying at had five, yes five!, swimming pools - I think we'd only ever stayed in places with a "big" pool and a children's pool, maybe two adults pool, at a push. Memories of the islands - Ibiza, Majorca, Tenerife - make me think of Fawlty Towers waiters and salesmen trying to pitch timeshares at us. When I think of the Spain I experienced as a child, it's sleepy but commercial, but it's also a little sleazy...

Barcelona, for me, is Spain for grown ups: it's the sophisticated grown up cousin I never had. (Not that I have any cousins, sophisticated or otherwise!) We arrived in Barcelona late - our flight was delayed, which meant that by the time we pulled up at the Hotel Barcelona Princess we were already behind schedule. (Yes, I'm one of those people.) With only 2.5 days to cram in as much as possible (we flew there late Saturday morning and flew back first thing Tuesday morning), I wanted us to see as much of the city as we could. I'll be sharing over the next week what we got up to!

 City view from the hotel