We love to travel and have been fortunate to visit a great many wonderful places in the world, but one of those closest to home has never tempted us until now. When we saw Barcelona on the cruise itinerary, we felt happy to either tick this one off or wonder why we'd left it so long. We chose our tour - a walk with an architect - and looked forward to our visit.

But it seemed like no-one else wanted to walk with the architect and our tour was cancelled. We needed to choose a new tour from those that still had vacancies. Hmm. We decided that we'd simply take the shuttle bus into the city and get a flavour of Barcelona independently. Since this happened only a few days ago, we didn't have chance to do much research but relied on our maps and common sense.

First bit of common sense…know where to head back for! If we decided to get a taxi back to the port, we'd better know where our ship is berthed, for we are squeezed in amongst the big boys today. So, I took a photo of the terminal and of the shuttle bus timetable, just in case.

The shuttle bus dropped us at the World Trade Centre, at Port Vell from where it was a short walk across a couple of roads to the area of Las Ramblas. We thought that might be a good place to begin.

There were some grand buildings around this area, not that we had any idea of what they might be! (Later identified as the Punta Dobres del Port; the dock offices)

Though I did know that this was the Christopher Columbus monument.

Another grand building gave us another landmark for finding our way back. We'd have to research that one later too! (The Barcelona Royal Shipyard Building)

In no time at all we were in the pedestrian section of Rambla de Santa Monica where we were surprised to find it none too busy.

But then it became narrower, the street cafes and restaurants took up part of the space and it became a little too crowded for our liking.

So we turned right and found ourselves in the Plaça Reial where there were still quite a few tourists, but where there was more space to spread out!

One of the challenges of meandering along/around the Rambla des Caputxins was the works going on alongside. A decision had to be made at each junction about whether we wanted to walk in the centre, on the side of the street or along a parallel street either side. Of course, when we were on the pavement by the shops, we spotted something on the other side of the fence that looked interesting…

and when we were on the other side of the fence, we spotted a grand shop front on the side we'd been walking along until a few minutes ago! Never mind, we imagined that we'd be walking back this way soon and would simply earmark these places for later.

Just as we were getting tired of the hordes of people in the street, I spotted the market, the Mercat de Boqueria, which I had seen on a map and noted as a possible place for a break.

If we had thought that there'd be any fewer people here than in the street we were sadly mistaken. But there was jamon! Oh my word…

There were dried fruits and nuts too…and pigeons underneath the stands and flying overhead and hopping about on the pavement. I was not comfortable!

The colourful drinks on the fruit stand made a great display and prompted us to look for somewhere to sit and take a break for a while.

We found a table, ordered our dos cervezas por favor and watched the world go by for a while. Though we'd not been sitting there long before we were joined by another couple, who had difficulty ordering their two beers. Unmistakeably Scottish, they started to chat to us. They were travelling on one of the big ships, the P&O Arvia, and had had a few rough days, they said. Or at least, we think that's what they said, for they were Glaswegians and their accents were very tricky for us to understand - we immediately realised why the waitress had found it difficult too. Over the next half hour or so, we did what we have discovered Grandparents do, i.e. share photographs of their grandchilden on their phones!

We'd had a head start on them however and finishing our beers, we left them still enjoying theirs, wished each other smooth sailing and we rejoined the masses in the street.

Returning through the market however, we spotted a familiar name: Torrones Vicens our favourite Turron shop, so we enjoyed a sample or two whilst the assistant packaged our purchase!

Back on the street, we remembered to walk on the side where we could look inside the shop with the Art Nouveau front…a bakers/patisserie.

Crammed with people and quite tight in there, I took a few quick photographs whilst trying not to become part of the queue.

From here it was a short and very crowded walk back to Christopher Columbus.

The blue sky brought the Dock Offices to life as well.

We jumped on the shuttle bus back to Terminal B, seeing Voyager there between the MSC Grandiosa, the Norwegian Escape and the P&O Arvia. Getting on for twenty thousand additional people were there in the city today and it felt as though we bumped into every one of them!

Our first visit to Barcelona didn't go as planned then. Would we have felt differently had we done our architecture tour, or been able to plan something independently? Would we have done better to have gone to La Sagrada Familia, which would surely have been just as packed with tourists? Or to a gallery, like the Miro collection in the park not so far from our ship?

We'll never know. Maybe we'll return, or maybe we'll carry on visiting other corners of Spain, which we have enjoyed so much more than this tourist hot spot. We're told Valencia is worth a weekend and we still have Madrid on our “maybe” list. I can't say Barcelona endeared itself to us on this occasion.