G'day from Ol' Blighty

It's right to say G'day here. A distinctly large proportion of the population appears to be Aussie. I suspect none of you are surprised to hear that.

We made it out of Espana, with some mixed feelings - on one hand, it was a fun, vibrant and colourful architectural and culinary mecca. On the other hand, there wasn't a whole lot more cured meat I could stomach, not at the price it was being sold at anyway.

We had expected Spain to be the 'cheap leg' of our journey, and therefore spent up with gay abandon in other countries. But oh no. Touristica have made this place positively the most expensive city I have visited (even Damo says he'll retract his review of Zurich as the most expensive). Two beers were costing us about 16 euros on average - that's nearly AUD$30! I could eat pretty cheaply if I ate 3 small pieces of tapas (not three small hot portions of things on plates - 3 little bocadillos, which are sort of like canapes of tasty things on a small slice of pan) which was on average about 6 euros, or nearly AUD$12. But they weren't enough to last more than a few hours when were trotting all around the city en-foote). Our 1 bedroom apartment was the cheapest option for accomodation (save the dreaded bed-bug ridden hostels) at 800 euros for 7 nights. The Espanolas like to sting you for everything, and I'm surprised there's not a tax on crossing the fucking road. No free museums, tours, or art galleries - they all cost 16 euros to get in. Flat charge. Oh except Park Guell, which I must admit was pretty cool.

Yes I would've laid down my life to see the fab buildings and museums we went to. But it shaved $4.5K out of our bank account without blinking an eyelid. Ouch. When I came to Spain (albeit nearly 10 years ago now) it was SUPER cheap. Was I just not paying attention? Or has it gotten a lot more expensive over the years?

Anyway I'd go back - perhaps not to Barcelona, but I really do love Espana with a passion. It's choca-block full of interesting people and things to do. And some of the most mental of artistas have derived their inspiration from it's old religious ways.

Enough about Espana. An uneventful flight from Barcelona has brought us back to the shores of the mother country, and we have been cruising the streets looking for promised knife fights and postcode gangs. Apparently they've set up a 30-strong team of armed personnel (armed with state of the art semi-automatic weaponry, mind) to deal with the latter. Nice!

Yesterday we did the Sezzlechest Cultural Tour for the Mildly Interested. Spitalfield Markets were zany and interesting. Unfortunately it went a bit pear from there... Sezzle we'll give you a full rundown of our tour from there - you'll be amused. Suffice it to say we abandoned the tour when we got to Blackfriars bridge and decided to get changed and reset. We ended up at The Forge in Soho for a delightful dinner and bottle of wine, which set off my cold and flu tablets nicely (yes, Spain has given me a little gift to remember her by) so we stumbled off home all glassy eyed on the tube at midnight. It's the English way innit.

And we'll be doing more of the same tonight, as we are off to meet Damo's friend Amy for drinks. That's drinks right after our Nicky French tour of Pubs of the Norf. Should be out of control.

Tomorrow we are cruising off in our hire car to Wales and the Brecon Beacons for the weekend, where I will also be meeting up with a very old friend Julie, who I was bestest friends with when I was a young teenager. I should imagine there will be much hooting and singing of Mel and Kim songs when we greet.

Love to youse all in 'Strayla from Ol Blighty land xxxx