When we started this day we both said we had no desire to go into Barcelona. Traffic, expensive hotels, nowhere to camp. Who needs that, we said, we’ll just go along the seafront and camp on the otherside. Well, apparently the 50km or so of heavy traffic in the run up to Barcelona wore us down because where are we now? Yup, smack in the middle of the city in an expensive hotel. At least it has free internet! And we did enjoy a nice bit of tapas and beer in a local bar as a treat. Although we try and stick to a budget of 10 euros a day, or 20 euros if we are staying in a campground, every once in a while it does the spirit good to splurge a bit. Especially after the mess of highways and developed coastline leading up to Barcelona. It is amazing how you can take a gorgeous string of beaches and ruin them by building miles of ugly apartments parallel to them and topping it all off with a three-lane highway and no alternative minor roads. The only thing that saved our sanity was a bike path that actually ran alongside the beach about 10km outside of Barcelona. We are hoping to find the same thing leaving the city! It was also a nice treat to finally put our shorts on, after weeks of cycling through Europe in all our winter woolies.