We are on holiday!

Having spent the last 10 weeks or thereabouts travelling around we have decided it is time to take a holiday, so are we now firmly ensconced in Sitges, just south of Barcelona.
Sitges is a vacation town with large hotels, golf course and many well equipped camp sites. As we have learnt from Stephen (Rachel’s Dad), many years ago it was just a small village… but with the lovely beaches, sunshine and so close to Barcelona it is not hard to see why it has grown. There is still an old centre and lovely church, but there is now a promenade that must run for about a kilometre or so all along the beach.


The first (or was that the second) night here we went down to the town on our bikes and we treated to a fantastic sunset through the palm trees that line the promenade. The sunsets around here really are brilliant as I had learnt sailing in September (see previous posts).
Yesterday we ventured into Barcelona, about an hour away on the bus. We arrived around lunch time, so after a bit of a walk down Las Ramblas (the main drag) – great market, lovely balconies and side streets, good street entertainment and some rather interesting pets to buy – we headed for a restaurant to try out the local paella, which was very good. Looking around the posters in the restaurant of various beautiful sites around Europe we realised how much we had seen from the coliseum, to the leaning tower of Pisa, Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Rialto in Venice… OK so the restaurant had a bit of an Italian theme, but was easier to find somewhere that served pizza for Bex and Tash’.


From Los Ramblas we continued down to the port and then took a circuitous route around to the Cathedral. The front of the cathedral was swathed in netting as they are doing some major restoration (a common trend across southern Europe, but still the inside was beautiful and the cloisters were truly special (I think the best we have seen, and we have seen a few) with fountains, waterfalls and palm trees.
Today we are staying put, but tomorrow we will do the open top bus tour thing around Barcelona and really see the place. The day thus far has been spent working, washing, reading, juggling, cross-stitching and other such leisure pursuits.