An amazing city day - Wednesday in Barcelona.

A gentle start after yesterday's exertion, leisurely breakfast, with Merce already at work in the Parliament. First up was to see the modern covered market where Matt makes his purchases for putting out on eBay - all sorts of house clearance stuff as well as cut-price goods - a real Aladdin's cave of stuff! Then walking on, seeing the Frantia station and walking round the park with its interesting trees, roots etc, noticed a swallow, before meeting Merce at the Parliament building for a tour round with her supervisor Rosa.

Interesting experiencing a more relaxed kind of parliament, seeing plenty of meeting places and not over ostentatious. Then off to the fish restaurant where you choose your fish which is cooked for you, we having fish soup and variously squid, monk-fish and tuna - all pretty full by the end. Saw the adjacent foundations of medieval Barcelona, then wandered on our own round old boutiquey area, spending time in the peaceful Santa Maria del Mar.

Wandered on, seeing more Kokua shoes in their massed colours, before meeting Roser, home for a week from Beijing, at Catedral. A wander through to the Ramblas food market, then via contemporary art forum with building giving a roof-top reflection out to the sea, to Roser's university, where she guided us into the inner sanctum of the Faculty of Philology with its courtyards, then up into the library.

From the university it was not far to go to Catalunya to meet Matt again for the increasingly packed train to Les Corts for the Camp Nou where we arrived in good time for Barca v Almeria seeing an enjoyable game from a good vantage point above the goal that Barca scored 3 goals into in the second half - Messi, Suarez (2) and Bartha. Visitors from all over the world were explicitly welcomed, Germans seemed to be there in great numbers but we had a group of 10 young Indians behind us. The journey back could have been quicker, but the crowd inching down into the Metro remained very good-humoured. A great day getting behind the scenes of things not everyone sees, and rounding off with one of those things it was great to do!

Then the next day was Thursday for the journey back - and we hit the French air traffic controllers strike, lucky to get back on the same day (well, just after midnight), when we expected to be back early afternoon. Others had much worse stories to tell