Arrival in Barcelona was straightforward, the bike arrived without issue, but leaving the airport was unnecessarily complicated. Errors on my part, mainly. Totally?

I tried to order a taxi online but paying by card didn't seem to be an option. And I only had 25€ in cash, which was insufficient to get to my hotel. So I went to an ATM inside the hotel – where my Wise card was declined. Had I entered the wrong pin code? Could have, I rarely use the card unless travelling. I tried again, in case I'd mistyped. Then again with an alternative number. And got a lock out message for too many wrong attempts. Tried my Visa card, but, apparently, my bank declined the transaction. It was a flaky looking ATM machine. Across the hall to the currency booth where I 'bought' 100€ for 112€ and sat down to regroup.

Getting up to speed when travelling again takes more time than it used to! I went into the Wise app on my phone, where I could inspect my pin (is that secure?). I also had to reactivate the pin, to unlock the lock out. I should be fine now; I'm pretty happy, in general, with the Wise setup.

The dozen or so kilometres to my hotel cost about 40€ which compared badly with the 60€ I expected to pay the next day for a bus ride to Santander of around 700 km. But it was a carefree journey and I was soon in my tiny room and lying down for a recuperative nap. Then, around 9 pm, out for a walk about in search of dinner. I was tired and unable to decide where to eat but finally lucked out at a Peruvian place where I had the tenderest rabas, breaded squid.

The bus to Santander was fully booked for the following day so I spent Sunday 4th May wandering around. Lots of pavement pounding, in search of Gaudi architecture.

The first was Casa Battló with its distinctive exterior.

The adjacent building was also distinctive but not, as far as I could tell, a Gaudi creation.

The second, La Perdrera/Case Milà, was not so far away, less attractive (to my taste) on the outside). There was a healthy seniors' discount so I stumped up the 19€ to view the inside. The family/owners lived at the top and it was quite elegant, I'm sure, for its time.

The attic was more interesting to me, a layer between the hot sun and the living quarters. Hundreds (a little less than three hundred, I recall) of narrow brick catenary arches supported the roof. Gaudi designed them by suspending a rope between two points (which describes a catenary curve), added loads at appropriate points to simulate roof loads, and then measured the vertical distance up to the two suspension points, at the end of the rops, to design the shape of each arch. Gaudi was apparently quite proud of himself for devising this method. It would interest me to see how closely this would approximate to arches designed with modern engineering methods.

Then on to the roof, high above street level. A fantastical collection of fans and chimneys made me think of Middle Easterners dressed up against the desert. Presumably the chimneys were for both fireplaces within the many rooms on the buildings nine floor and for ventilating the attic.

And visible from the roof, not too far distant, is Gaudi's last/latest creation: La Sagrada Familia. The cathedral is supposed to complete construction in 2026, one hundred years after Antoni Gaudi's death.