I slept quite late – a hangover from Download – and missed breakfast. Instead I grabbed some bread from the “free food” drawer and heated up the tin of beans I’d lugged all the way from Birmingham. Beans on toast in Spain – smashing!

I then went for a wander to get my bearings and to trey and find Sharon’s hostel before she arrived that afternoon. I walked for more than three hours in the heat and enjoyed it. Barcelona is a very “random” city with streets of all sizes and at all angles. They all seem to have something down them as well. It would take months to catalogue every one.

One thing that struck me was the proliferation of ATMs. Unlike Jerusalem where I had to walk 15 minutes to get to one that wasn’t locked inside a bank, you can´t spit in Barcelona without smearing your phlegm over three of the things. Another thing is the seemingly mad mix of architectural styles old, new and bizarre. And the final thing is that Spaniards like dogs of all shapes and sizes and will happily walk them – off the lead – around a majpr city centre. Cool.

My main focal point for the day was the impressive Monument a Colom down near the port. It´s similar to Nelson’s Column back home but much more intricately decorated. You can climb it for a shade over €2 but I thought I’d leave that till Sharon arrived.

Talking of whom… I found her hostel and loafed there for a short while until she arrived. Sharon is the very kind person who put me up and drove me to Heathrow on my very last night in the UK before all this kicked off. She dumped her stuff, got changed and we went for a walk along Las Rambles amongst all the human statues and portrait painters. We eventually settled on a Tapas bar called Sinatras and ate very little food of very high quality for a very, very large sum of money. From now on, I´m sticking to fast food and supermarkets.

We bar-hopped until the early hours when I escorted Sharon “home” and then headed hostelwards myself. The crazy American/Canadian kids in my dorm didn’t do as good a job of waking me in the middle of the night as they´d one the previous evening. Thankfully. For them.