Last Day

Woohoo – a sleep in this morning. A nice relaxing start to the day with our flight not departing until 6:30pm tonight. We decided to walk up to the two Gaudy apartments to see them close up. Luckily the predicted rain held off and with it being Sunday there was only a handful of tourists wandering the streets. The first building with its tree looking facade was used as the basis for the Casper the friendly ghost house. The entry fee to see inside was 23 Euro pp which we decided to pass on. We continued to walk further up to see the facade of the other Gaudy building – this one looked like the side of a mountain with lots of little caves dug in the side.

We then headed back towards town with our destination being the Palau de Musica – the Opera House. We had been told by the local guide that this was a magnificent place to see inside and English tours left on the hour. We hot-footed it to try and make the 11am tour, and with the help of a local, got there on time to find that there were no tours on Sunday morning due to a scheduled concert. Oh well. We looked through the gift shop to see pictures of the inside of the building – it would have been amazing to see it – Gaudy inspired cracked ceramic columns and magnificently decorated ceilings.

A very long day of travel..

A casual walk back passed the Cathedral and up through the Rambla bought us back to our hotel where we did our last minute packing. With lunch on our mind we headed down to a place we had seen called the Pita House, that served chicken and lamb pitas with salads. Here we enjoyed a “small” 500ml  tankard of Sangria each, a tapas plate of spicy meatballs (cause that’s the Spanish thing to do) and a couple of wonderfully yummy pitas.

We headed off to the airport at 2pm, just as it started to rain. Before we knew it our luggage was being checked through to Sydney and we both cursed ourselves for not packing for overnight in London in our carry-on. The flight from Barcelona went smoothly and this time we had no hassle with our hotel booking in London (first in four times).  We retrieved our two small bags we stowed in the hotel on our way through, which at least gave me a clean change of clothes (from my US purchases).

Our departure from Heathrow was at 11am, and the 12 hour flight down to Singapore gave me time to watch three movies and be kept awake by a barking dog in the hold. I thought I was going crazy to be hearing a dog barking, but one of the stewards confirmed one of the six dogs in the hold was barking non-stop. We both felt washed out on arrival in Singapore and a 45min walk around the terminal did not help. As soon as we were back on the plane bound for Singapore we both went straight to sleep. We were met at the door stepping off the plane to be told that our bags had not made it on the flight. We wondered which two bags these were – the ones checked in at Barcelona, or the two small bags in London. Not long after our two small bags appeared in baggage claim and we left the airport for our stop-over once again without our big bags.