Today after breakfast we got on a hop on hop off bus to explore the city, first place to get off was the Sagrada Familia, the very amazing unfinished cathedral. Just around the corner from here we grabbed some morning tea with a great view of the cathedral. From here we walked to some of Gaudi's other amazing looking buildings and had a look around some of the shops in the area. I love how spread out Barcelona is compared to Italy, although its still really busy here because the sidewalks and streets are so wide it doesn't feel as busy.Everywhere in Barcelona there are bike racks full of hire bikes that you can just come along, grab one off the rack and ride it around wherever you want and then just drop it off at another rack somewhere else in the city.. a really good idea to help traffic etc although we certainly weren't energetic enough to try this! We hopped back on the bus and headed right around the city and ended up at a Museum on top of the hill that has an amazing view right over the whole city. Whilst we were on the bus today they came over the speakers and said that all of Spain's airports had just been closed due to ash and if anyone had flights to catch that they needed to contact the airlines…. Hopefully it will be gone in 4 days when we fly out of Paris! We were very glad we had another train to catch the next day and weren't flying from Barcelona.

When the bus made its way back to near where our hotel was we got out and wandered through all the market stalls which ranged from old antiques to jewellery to clothes to paintings. There were loads of buskers and street performers again all the way up the street, there was the funniest looking old man and a tiny dog both dressed in multi coloured lycra with the dog dressed in a hat and goggles also who had to sit there with his paw in the air to get money,, soo cute.!For dinner we just wanted something easy so had dinner at a small takeaway type shop on the main street. The streets were really crowded tonightwith all the pubs and bars packed with everyone staring at the TVs as there was a big Football match for Barcelona playing. By the commotion in the streets later that night, it was easy to tell they had won! With only a month or so to go until the World Cup I can see that it would get very crazy around here when that's on!