So it's spring. Nearly. Must be nice in Barcelona this time of year, right? Sunny. Bright. Not too hot, mind.

It rained. Quite a lot.

Apparently you can get some sort of sleeper train, which ought to be better in so many different ways than flying, but Bedminstero Internacional it is. Sorry. Slipping into Spanish, which in spite of Latin lessons, countless spaghetti Westerns full of expendable Mexicans, Pedro Almodovar movies etc. I am rubbish at. Maybe because I half-learned Italian years ago, and now get mixed up between the two. (And what is the appropriate language to use in an Italian restaurant in Spain?).

Anyhoo, you've been there already, so let's dispense with all that stuff about architecture and captive animals on the Ramblas an' all. I merely make some observations:

- This is not a city you can do well on foot. It's too big and there's too many wide, noisy roads. If you do walk, you find a faint smell of sewage at each road junction.

- It's a bastard of a place to photograph. You turn up with enuff memory cards and batteries to shoot several Biblical epics in widescreen and find everything's just too damn big and you're too damn close to it and there's always trees, cars, motorcycles or tourists in the way.
So I decided to collect pictures of chemist's shops instead. I can't remember why. I think the point is that you see lots more pharmacies in Mediterranean countries. This might be because these foreign types require more cosmetics and beauty products than the naturally beauteous British. No, hang on, that can't be it.
It's because these countries haven't always had the same comprehensive healthcare system that there is in the UK. For many countries, healthcare, usually via some form of insurance, is a comparatively recent arrival. Your local chemist is often as knowledgeable as the doctor and his/her advice is sort of free. In Spain, they're even allowed to hand out antibiotics.

- Catalans have the coolest names. In. The. World. Easily. Gaudi's full name was Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet. His fellow architect and sometime collaborator Josep Puig i Cadafalch (pronounced "Poochie Cathafowk") is likely to feature if the present Mrs Byrne and I have any more. Meantime, if anyone has a baby (preferably a cute one) they don't want and they don't mind it being called Poochie, get your people to talk to my people and we'll see if we can sort something.

That's enuff Spanish chemist photographs. Really. If anyone wants more (and there are more!), I'll email them privately and discreetly in a brown paper package.

- But, yeah, woot, Barcelona, yess - a place where people work hard and are right serious and look down on their southern neighbours as indolent ... But where every so often they produce the most insanely weird things, like Casa Batllo, or that cathedral, or Dali or Miro, or, as we spied through one dark doorway, a statue of a polar bear wrapped around the bottom of a staircase which apparently goes nowhere. There would be a picture of this, too, but I don't know the Spanish for "do you mind if I take a picture of your polar bear?"