Aki and Nei

Aki and Nei, our current Airbnb guests are lovely and Aki requested a photo this morning to show to his parents when they return to Hong Kong. Given that they arrived with no plans or tickets bought in advance they've managed to do quite a bit, often just deciding in the morning with some advice from us while they were having breakfast. In fact, it seems like Oct is quite a good month to visit the city as they didn't even have to queue for the Picasso museum and the weather's been sunny with blue skies.

Bb and I were up early this morning to spend time with Thomas (who’s stayed overnight with us last night) before he left at lunchtime to head home to Norway from what he described as balmy weather here!

Bb did breakfast duty this morning for the guests and actually just met Aki and Nei for the first time as he returned late from Madrid the day they arrived and yesterday morning he was up and out to work before they got up for breakfast at 9.00am. Bb, Thomas and I went out for coffee in Plaza Concordia and then after seeing Thomas off at Sants station, we headed into the centre to a 'plant event' that I was keen to go to. We bought several plants, resisted many others, had a light bite to eat then home for a siesta before meeting our friends Claire and Phil for drinks at night in El National and then dinner in a little Catalan restaurant with French touches in the Gothic area, just off Via Laietana. We experienced first-hand tonight the demonstrations in the city when we had to stand in a doorway to let the riot police run and demonstrators run past and then had to show the restaurant our online booking to the National Police who had blocked the street where our restaurant was! It hadn't crossed our minds when we suggested Phil and Claire introduced this place to us that it was right in the heart of things. Great little restaurant, every dish we shared was high quality and fresh and we finished the night by sharing a Catalan cheese board.

We both commented tonight that it had felt like a mini holiday today as we were in different parts of the city!