Barcelona Ole!

'Hola' (Hello), beamed Manjeeta.

'Ole!' (Hurrah!), I responded.

Okay, my Spanish sucks, but at least she was polite enough to just raise an eyebrow at me. We decided to rent a penthouse apartment just around the corner from Plaza de Catalunya. It was spacious, with sweeping views of every TV aeriel south of Calle Fontanella.....it also had a faint smell fo sewerage to it.

We had travelled to Barcelona to meet up with my brother Jaakko and his partner Alessandro. They were staying at a funky little boutique hotel deep in the Gothic lanes - it smelled of expensive aftershave.

Finding it was always going to be a challenge. In fact, if my brother's street directions had any vague similarity to the actual layout of the city it would have been difficult, but as he was probably studying a map of Mexico City when he gave me directions to the hotel it was actually a bloody miracle that we found it.