Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Summer Holidays

For the last 2 months Gill and I have been promising ourselves a holiday in September, preferably in Barcelona. In all that time we have managed to book nothing and any effort to do so has been met resistance in an “I can’t take in all this info, so I’ll not look” kind of way. No names mentioned but it has frustrated me on a couple of occasions. This problem is becoming almost critical with time rapidly running out.

Over the years Gill and I have succumbed to the finer things in life and I’m afraid a 5* or very good 4* is a pre-requisite. This tends to have a soul destroying effect on our Bank Manager and the longer we leave it the more the poor bugger is likely to suffer. A cursory glance at a couple of websites this morning reveals we will be very lucky to get away with anything less than a grand for the 7 nights we had planned. Despite having all of September to play with this price seems fairly constant for all dates.

To further complicate matters there are several gigs throughout the month that we would like to attend such as Jeff Scott Soto on the 6th, Gov’t Mule on the 11th, Budgie on the 15th, Waysted on the 19th plus a Philip Pullman lecture on the 27th. Add to this the Heritage Open Days on the 8th-11th you can see something might have to give. My personal preference would be to see Gov’t Mule (we already have tickets), Waysted and Philip Pullman but we’ll have to see, Gill/the Gods (same thing?) might have other ideas.

So I think tonight we will be looking for 4-5* hotels in the centre of Barcelona that have large rooms (junior suite?), sun terrace/outdoor pool, bar, restaurant, and are in close proximity to the Metro system, all for less than a grand. Should be a piece of cake then! I have a feeling the price we want to pay will have to become somewhat elastic, 1.3K would be my guess. It sounds like a lot of money but we both love the city and its laid back pace of life. It is one of the few places we find we can both fully relax and because we have been a number of times before we don’t feel pressurised into trying to cram as much as we can into our time there. Let’s hope tonight is as stress free, I’ll not hold my breath.

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