It was halfway through January exams when I decided that I was sick of England. I wanted out. I didn’t care about missing lectures, seminars, cricket training; I wanted to go somewhere. I was even happy to delay my Wessex Scene editorial duties. The main issue I had to overcome was money. So I clicked on Ryanair.com, and within minutes I had found the flight for me - Bournemouth to Barcelona, £2.50 each way. I enlisted two friends, and started to get keen...

I had never been to Barcelona, and this excited me. Since I started roaming Eastern Europe three or four years ago, I have been searching for the one country, the one city, which really suited me. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to expand my search into Spain.

We were in Barcelona for three nights, and we were determined to fit in everything possible. One thing that we chose to omit was a meeting with Barcelona’s favourite son, ‘Charlie’. Everyone coos about Barcelona’s beautiful mile and a half long main street La Rambla, and whilst in the sunshine it would prove to be a lovely promenade, after sunset swarms of drug dealers and prostitutes crawl out of the drains. Whilst at first quite intimidating, don’t let the dark underbelly of Barcelona put off a visit. Using a little bit of common sense, and keeping your wits about you, will ensure no harm is done. Unfortunately, I did neither of these and soon found myself 25 euros down, with none of the things being promised to me by the lovely senorita ever materialising...

Anyway, on to Barcelona by day. We were staying in Ciutat Vella, which housed the gothic quarter (Barri Gotic), the aforementioned La Rambla, as well the Cathedral. During the day La Ramblas was indeed worthy of the title many have bestowed upon it as ‘the greatest street in the world’. Built on an old Roman gutter (ironic?), it is packed with all sorts of shops, tapas bars and restaurants, although the inflated tourist prices didn’t really fit our student budgets. Almost as interesting as La Rambla are the side streets that weave their way across Barri Gotic, the tall, narrow alleys evoking thoughts of Diocletian’s Palace in Split. At the end of the street is the beautiful harbour. Complete with its own shopping centre, the area has been recently renovated and was at its best on the sunny day we visited. There is also a cable car, which thankfully wasn’t running during our visit. It’s not that I don’t like heights, but after embracing Spanish nightlife the previous evening I’m not sure how I would have fared at altitude.

A short walk from the harbour lies Barceloneta (‘Little Barcelona’) and the beach. The Mediterranean in March didn’t really appeal, but the seafront was a lovely area to sit back and soak up more of ‘Barce’. A boardwalk lined with swanky looking bars ran just behind the beach, but a grassy bank proved to be just as relaxing, and also kept Mr. NatWest happy. It used to be said that Barcelona turned its back to the sea, and the city has the 1992 Olympic Games to thank for redevelopment that opened the city to the seafront. Nowadays, it is possible to look back onto spectacular vistas of the city and mountains. It was also a prime location for some ‘senorita spotting’, although I doubt my limited Spanish vocabulary, consisting of "Everything is good" and "One waffle please", would have got me any further than gawping.

No trip to Barcelona however, is complete without learning about one man and his works - Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi is the man who, by enlarge, is responsible for giving Barcelona its own, distinctive image. Much like Plečnik in Ljubljana, a great deal of Barcelona bears marks of Gaudi. Gaudi’s great work is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (yes, I used Wikipedia to look up the full name - it’s known by most as Sagrada Familia). A huge Roman Catholic Church, Sagrada Familia is still decades off completion despite Gaudi devoting forty years of his life to the project, with construction beginning in 1882. The church will eventually include eighteen towers, and it is worth a visit to marvel at this man’s huge vision, even if it does look like a building site at the moment. Other worthwhile Gaudi-related trips are to Casa Milia, a house with no straight lines, and to Park Güell, a Gaudi designed park. Just spend an hour walking around Park Güell to try and figure out what was going through this guy’s head. Even if he was a little bit crazy, Gaudi was also really a student at heart; he never finished anything and was so scruffy when he was killed, run over by a tram, no one recognised him.