Our morning began with a moan to the hotel. We accumulated about 10 litres of water in our bucket overnight, that’s quite a lot of dripping! But, heh ho we won’t dwell and instead we are off to play a game. X-Door is a cross between the Crystal Maze and the Da Vinci Code – so, bloomin exciting! And, it’s all the rage in Espana. At 11:30 (sharp) we rang on a buzzer at a discreet venue (ooh er missus – not that kind of discreet – more like secretive) where we were greeted by Sergio, the Master Commander, as he instructed us to call him (or just Sergio if we couldn’t be arsed with that).

The premise of the game was that we were locked in a room for 60 minutes and we had to find our way out by solving a number of clues, riddles and challenges. It was Ace!!! Sergio reminded us  that we had to work together and to spot everything. He helped us out a couple of times with some additional clues, but all in all we were impressed to escape with 2 seconds on the clock. Phew! And how very filmic!

Now, we can’t reveal any further info about the game because of course it is all ‘Top Secret’, but needless to say we recommend it. Apparently you can find it in many big cities, but we think it is a bigger hit here than elsewhere.

If you choose to accept this mission this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds…only kidding! (We felt aptly prepared for our game because we’ve been watching loads of Action films whilst we’ve been away…we know, we should have been writing instead, but Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg were calling.)

So, after all that activity we continued our journey to Barcelona. And as the road took us  along some less interesting motorway we decided to make a pitstop for lunch in Vilagrassa. We found a snazzy restaurant called El Catalunya specialising in BBQ and snails. We declined the snails… Karen has issues eating things that she’s written about, and we played it safe  with chicken and pork. So, Karen tucked in to yummy chicken and chips and Dom had three pigs feet slapped on the plate…eeeew not quite what he expected. But, bravely without complaining he scoffed them all up…Karen would have made a noise about eating anything like it and though it looked like a challenge from ‘I’m a celebrity’… these were also really yummy. (Actually, it looked like a graveyard by the end of the shift and I was half tempted to resurrect the skeleton on my plate, but that was a bit David Attenborough for me, so I had a coffee instead.)

Literally everybody else was eating these fellas… (look through the gap in the pillars and you can see a plate of the slippery little suckers!)

Barcelona! “I had this perfect dream…” We’ve hit the east coast at last. We’ve been looking forward to Barcelona as a high point of our trip and had expected to drive into the City with Freddie Mercury in our heads and the memory of Linford Christie winning the 100m in 1992. But of course this week has put a different slant on things. We can’t ignore that, and we will have to see how the next few days play out. It is really hard to predict how such events can impact a place, and how that will in turn affect the way that we feel able to experience it too. However, in our next AirBnB venue there is an element of calm because we are staying in Port Forum Marina on a little boat…the bedroom is a bit quirky and Karen’s already blocked the toilet with a giant poo, and Dom’s broken the table, but the mosquitos are good company…(get more citronella)…and just a stone’s throw away seems to be the hippest DJ venue in Spain (our kids would love it, and on another night Karen might also be throwing some shapes, but frankly tonight we are not feeling the vibe). However it’s a peaceful waterfront idyll

Tonight’s viewing is An Idiot Abroad (just to help us feel a bit better about our travelling selves).