Leaving Barcelona

Four weeks and 1800 photos later and we're about to hand back the keys to our rented apartment here in Barcelona and jet off back to sunny (or not so, as the case will probably be) England. We've had a thoroughly excellent time although both my wife and I are feeling that it's high time we were back to our homeland, looking forward to our exciting move to our new flat in a couple of days time and getting on with 'real life' again. 

Over the last four weeks we've seen a fair bit of what Barcelona has to offer, delighting in all the Gaudí buildings, walking round several museums and exhibitions, and throwing in a decent number of beach trips for me too. 

As a little taster of the fun times and sights we've had and seen, peruse the following photographs, but don't worry, I shan't put them all up!?

Roman ruins of Barcino

La Pedrera

The Gràcia Festival

Monastery of Pedralbes

Amazing dolphin show at Barcelona zoo

Maze in the Jardins del Laberint d'Horta

Nova Icaria beach

The Sagrada Família

Park Güell

We found Gaudí!

Yummy tapas and sangria

The 'Magic Fountain'

All in all, a wonderful stay in this city and I've almost no doubt that at some point in the future we'll visit again.  

Toby Fox

At the beginning of 2011 (although it feels much longer ago) my local fabric and haberdashery shop was announced to be closing after 40 or so years. There, as there always is, was a closing down sale, which I inevitably went to several times to try to catch me a bargain. While looking through the various leftover items at one of the later stages of the sale, I found a fair number of Woodland Folk cross-stitch kits. I immediately thought they were super cute and decided that the four smaller kits I'd seen would be mine. 

I started one pretty much at once, but then with packing-up and moving a couple of times since, the cross-stitch I'd started was packaged in a box in our storage facility along with the majority of my wife and I's belongings.

Feeling a little more settled over the summer, since returning home from France, I recovered that started cross-stitch, knowing that it was smaller and therefore more portable than the 'Sampler des 4 Saisons' I'd started in France this year. 

So, out came Toby Fox. Over the course of a couple of weeks, stealing time in the evenings after my youngest sister had gone to bed, or weekends when everyone else was out, I made progress with Toby. Finishing all the cross stitches, but not all the backstitching, I decided that Toby and the other cross-stitch kits would be useful to bring to Spain as standalone projects to keep me occupied here. I figured four weeks without any kind of crafty hobby to do might be a bit hard to maintain!?

And, here he is, in his finished state, just waiting to go back to England and for a frame to be found for him.

Buying art in Barcelona

For the past week and a half, my wife and I have been in Barcelona as the Spanish part of her year abroad. For the first week we also had my 17 year old sister with me, to give her a holiday! All in all, we'll be in this city for 4 weeks (!), so have got plenty of time for sight-seeing, beaching and also some breathing space for just being. 

So far, we've managed to see quite a lot, although we also have plenty planned for the coming two and a half weeks. 

Last Friday, whilst at the Park Güell, we walked past a man selling art, and happened to like one of the paintings he had placed on the top of his pile. For 10€, we thought it a bargain, and picked it up. Yay! :)

So, here's the painting we bought, which is currently resting up against a window in our rented apartment:

Of course this now means we'll have to add yet another frame to our 'to buy' list, bringing the total up to five now, I think!