A Spanish omlette of Picasso, music & flemenco

Dave woke up earlier than us lazy lassies and so headed into the city ahead of us. Manuela and I took the opportunity to weave together an intricate "deep and meaningful" on her balcony, whilst basking in the Spanish sunshine; the whole process was carried out quite effortlessly.

Met Dave at the top of "La Rambles" and we started out on our quest to find the Pablo Picasso museum. Unfortunately, however, we got lost and ended up trapped in the chocolate museum. It was terrible; we were forced to drink warm cups of melted chocolate until our hearts were content. We eventually managed to escape but I'm telling you it was a close shave, I had visions of us getting stuck there forever!

The Museo de Picasso was bustling with a curious mix of folk, some appeared to have a genuine interest in his work; others seemed quite blasé about it and a few looked positively bored!

Talk about a child prodigy; Picasso's earlier works are quite incredible - for a fifteen year old boy. I loved the way he painted onto miniature pieces of wood using oils in his early years; there was something about the simplicity of the materials and his actual paintings that reflected a kind of innocence, which seems to get lost somehow in his later work. We both found it interesting to see the development of his work over the years.

Met up with Manuela and her dutch friend Dillo who is so animated that the line between reality and fantasy becomes quite blurred when you're with him - long life batteries and sound effects included!

We all went to listen to Tihki (Manuela's mexican flatmate) play his saxophone. It was great to see him getting into the whole performance side of things; at one point he jumped off the stage into the crowd and played from there; he certainly doesn't apeear to suffer from stage fright anyway, that's for sure!

After listening to a few other Spanish bands we headed towards the outskirts of Barcelona to this huge flamenco festival, which was amazing! It had a real gypsy feel to it. There was so much colour and vibrancy in the music and costumes, it was quite mesmerising! The dancing was very sensuous and passionate and beautiful to watch.

Home by 2:30am -exhausted. Managed to stay up and chat/pray for a few hours; eventually met with sleep at about 5am but our liason was all too brief!