Later, we headed back to La Rambla to wander around the Mercat de la Boqueria, a fairly large market where you can find anything from fresh fruits to meat and seafood. That is if you can stomach the pungent scent. Vegetarians, be warned; this is not a place for you.

After a short nap (surprise, surprise) back at the hotel, we ended our night with a flamenco show at the Tablao de Carmen (50 Euros each) where we enjoyed tapas, unlimited wine and sangria, and of course the great flamenco dancing and music. Finding this place was not easy. The restaurant was located at Poble Espanyol, a village built solely for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and intended to be demolished shortly afterwards. It still remains however and serves as an open-air museum consisting of buildings representing the architecture, style, and culture of various locations in Spain as well as shops and restaurants. What’s sad (yet funny in hindsight) is that mere hours earlier, Lil and I had taken pictures of this village on our way down from the Olympic Park but somehow we didn’t make the connection and wasted time walking around trying to find it – oops!

After the flamenco show, which we really enjoyed, around midnight we headed over to the rooftop of a mall nearby and shelled out a Euro each to get a 360 degree view of Barcelona from the centre. Here’s that one word we like to use a lot: breathtaking! We were still not ready to head to our hotel so we wandered the streets some more and ended up at a café nearby.

Having mastered how to order tea Tamil style in Spanish (con leche por favor), we enjoyed some delicious desserts with tea and boiled milk. By the time we chatted about anything and everything under the sun including boys and careers, and decided to hit the sack, it was about 3:00 AM. Not too shabby for a Tuesday night! We will definitely miss this city as we head out tomorrow for Rome. Buena noche Barcelona!

Wednesday, September 21st 2011 – Barcelona, Spain to Rome, Italy

Never again will we give self-satisfied smirks when we see people running through airports and think, “Should have left earlier!”

Never again will we kill time before a flight by spending three hours in a bar downing sangria and trusting that the clock is accurate.

Most importantly, never again will we find ourselves about to miss a flight running a mini marathon in the airport in a mad dash to catch it.

Today, if you haven’t already gathered, was a very interesting day. It was also a very expensive lesson in travel.

It started out innocently enough. Check out was not until noon and with our flight being at 5:20 PM, there was time to kill. The first lesson in travelling on a budget occurred as we were checking out. Turns out that delicious breakfast buffet that the hotel listed as one of their “inclusions” wasn’t how we interpreted it to be. It was included… but you would be charged for it later in the day for 10 Euros each! Had we been aware of that, we would have had more Spanish omelettes!

Duly noted and at our hotel in Rome we will be sure to clarify beforehand.

Happy to have learned a tidbit to share with our fellow aspiring travellers and with plenty of time to kill before our flight, we set out to our favourite area in Barcelona to grab some food and hang out. Sant Antoni is a nice area we had stumbled upon the first night of our stay when we got lost. We settled down at a bar that offered free WiFi and between emailing friends and catching up on trending topics (Charlie Sheen’s character on Two and a Half Men was killed off by a train in Paris), we spent a few hours there. But those few hours were still keeping us on track according to the bar clock so we decided to drink a pitcher of sangria to celebrate our wonderful stay in Barcelona.