Day Four - Sea, Sand and Sunburn

Morning everyone! Our last morning in Barcelona today - we fly back to England at lunchtime. When I was younger I used to hate flying back from holidays (my poor parents had a lot to deal with with 'teenager Lucy'!!) but today, whilst I'll be sad to leave Barcelona and our honeymoon, I'm looking forward to seeing our children again and getting on with life...so mixed feelings but ultimately a smile :)

Anyway, sorry for the lack of posting yesterday - I slept past 9am!! :) So this morning I will write about Thursday (Day Four) and then look out this evening (when I'll no doubt be trying to avoid unpacking suitcases!!) for a post about yesterday - including the spectacular magic fountains!

So, Thursday. I tried to limit the breakfast cake consumption by starting with a savoury plate. Note to self: this just adds another plate to breakfast, you still eat cake!! Plate one - grilled vegetables and potatoes, scrambled eggs and 2 bread rolls...

Plate two - chocolate cake and two mini apple custard muffins...

Plate three - melon, cheese and two more mini muffins (random plate I know...this was 'a bit of everything I fancied')...

The mini apple muffins were so good - they had a layer of custard baked into them, delish!

After breakfast, we made our way on the metro to this place...

Bliss. The hotel receptionist had directed us to a part of the beach mainly used by locals, so whilst it was busy it wasn't too busy, although I'm sure that will change in time if all the tourists keep discovering it! It was a bit of a trek from the nearest metro station, but so worth it.

We spent time relaxing on the sand...

and swimming in the sea...

before deciding it was time for lunch. We ate at the beach bar, which surprisingly was pretty good value.

How is it that Liam looks like normal whereas I clearly look like I've just stepped off the beach?!!

Haha, wet tops and cheesy grins aside, lunch was really good. I had a tomato, mozzarella and pesto sandwich (although I took the tomato out after this photo - not a fan)

Unfortunately, we had stupidly let ourselves get burnt on the beach (typical tourist eh!). We were there from 12-3pm, and despite applying suncream it obviously wasn't enough. Annoyingly, I think I only got burnt in the last 20 minutes or so - the front of me is fine, it's just my back, and I felt the back of my legs tingling as I was lying in the sun to dry off after my last swim. Grrr, so so stupid. Liam on the other hand is uniformly pink all over, but at least his long swim shorts meant he can still sit comfortably - the back of my thighs are my worst part so sitting has been agony. I'm pleased to report that it's a bit less painful this morning (another reason I didn't attempt to write a blog post yesterday!) but still, so so stupid, we are so annoying with ourselves. Anyway, moving on from the self-hate, the point of this little rant is that on the way back from the beach we stopped to pick up some after sun lotion, and I also picked up a bottle of this...

Banana juice/nectar! I've tried other flavours of this brand before (indeed they stock peach, pear and possibly mango in Waitrose I think) but had never seen a banana version! This is delicious, although only for those with a sweet tooth! I haven't checked this bottle, but I'm pretty sure they have sugar added to them, so only for an occasional treat :)

Once back at the hotel, we had a quick turnaround before heading out for the boat trip we'd booked. A "live jazz cruise" on a catamaran, although in reality there was music playing in the background the whole time and a man playing live for only about half an hour. No matter. It was nice to be out on the sea...

for the first half an hour anyway. Then I began to feel nauseous. Noooo. I don't get sea-sick normally, but I think the sunburn + dehydration did not have a good effect. I was convinced I was either going to pass out and/or have to throw up in the tiny on board toilet. Not good. Luckily I managed to sway into the central bit of the boat and put my head on the table to pretend to be asleep. This helped, and whilst I spent the rest of the cruise in the centre bit, I was able to look up on occasion to admire the surroundings. Liam carried on taking photos for us all to enjoy, including oh-so-kindly taking one of me when I wasn't looking...not particularly appreciated but I'll post it anyway in case it's helpful to anyone else...this is how I avoided embarrassing myself in front of a boat full of people (!!)...

well, apart from being thought of as the weird girl with her head on the table of course (!), but better than the alternative!!

Some photos you might enjoy more... luckily I did get to see most of these myself, as the bit where I felt worst was when we were in the open sea, rather than coming in and out of the dock...

Leaving land

Big shopping centre/cinema

The live music

There was graffiti all along both sides of the harbour wall...quite impressive

Sensible, non-burnt, people getting to enjoy the boat trip fully!

Mini Big Ben!

 

Once back on land, Liam wasn't feeling too great either ("stupid, stupid, stupid" has been our motto for the last two days) but we forced ourselves to have dinner a) so as not to waste an evening and b) in the hope of making ourselves feel better. We chose an Italian restaurant in the big leisure centre by the docks, and actually by the time we sat down, I was pretty hungry. I had pasta stuffed with gorgonzola, in a white cheese sauce with asparagus...

This was really good, I loved that the asparagus upgraded it from a normal plate of cheesy pasta.

After dinner, we decided to walk back to the hotel rather than pay for a taxi (I'm not sure if this was a sensible decision or not considering our sunburnt state), so once near the hotel, we "rewarded" ourselves with cakes from Starbucks to enjoy back in our room. I had a cinnamon roll, yum.

And that is the end of Thursday. I'm now off to wake Liam up (he didn't sleep well because of his sunburn so I decided not to drag him down to the computers this morning!) before going for our final breakfast of our honeymoon! :( our flight isn't until 2pm so we have time to check out of the hotel and make our way to the airport in a leisurely fashion. Hoping to do a bit more shopping there too - we've already bought a few presents for children etc, but I want to buy them more a) as I love present shopping and b) because daughter won class prize at her ballet yesterday (bless her!) and baby has chicken pox!! What bad timing! Although at least it was after the wedding - not even something I'd considered as daughter didn't get it until she was 3.5 and he's only 1.5. Apparently he's doing ok, but getting to the itchy stage so we might be in for a grumpy few days...welcome home to us!!! 

Also, thank you so much for all your comments on the honeymoon (& other!) posts...I'll try to reply to them when I'm back in England, but I have been reading and enjoying them...thanks! :)