"April-2008 stopover, now "just" Barcelona in 2011" Barcelona by Martin_S.

One of the most obvious reasons to visit Spain and Barcelona especially is the great artist Gaudi. His Sagrada Familia, shown here on a postcard, is one of the most well known works (and it is still in the process of being built even though Gaudi is long dead), but there are numerous others such as Guell Park, Batllo, Casa Mila and others. But don't worry there are PLENTY of other things to see and do, like visit La Boqueria (market), shop for souveniers in Placa del Rei, enjoy the beaches in Barcelonetta, or take the cable car to Montjuic.

Barcelona Airport, midnight April 26, 2008

But we made the mistake of flying with a company called CLICK-AIR. We reserved our seats several weeks in advance and had our return tickets ready. Several days before our return we called our travel agent to confirm flights and times. All was confirmed as being "the same as when we got our tickets on April 9. We arrived at the Barcelona airport on April 26th, ready to come home on a 9pm flight, but found to our amazement that there was NO FLIGHT with our number. We checked with the representative of CLICK-AIR in the airport and we had difficulty since they did not have a person who spoke English. We eventually found an English speaker and we were told that there was no flight of that number and we would have to purchase a new ticket even though our original tickets were paid for already. Finally after an hour of checking it was "discovered" that CLICK-AIR had changed the name and number of our flight several MONTHS ago....but had never bothered to transmit that information to their representative in Israel, nor to the people (US) who had purchased tickets. The Tickets were incorrect. We eventually got reassigned to a later flight, but we had to sleep in the airport since there was no transportation at that hour in the airport (only taxis), and wait for our flight 6 hours later. You can see in the photo how "busy" the airport was at midnight (and this is an international airport).

Salles Hotel Ciutat del Prat, Barcelona, Spain

Like all trips, our short visit in April 2008 to Spain had a beginning and an end. The flights from Israel land mainly in Madrid or Barcelona and since we had a better connecting flight to Malage from Barcelona, we chose to begin our trip there. Our flight was due to arrive at 21:00 (thats 9pm) and our connecting flight was at 06:00 (6am) the next morning) so we searched for a hotel as close as possible to the airport. We found the Salles Hotel Ciutat del Prat, only minutes from the airport. An excellent hotel for people in transit, quiet and clean. The room was silent and we opened the windows to find a world of sirens, honking cars and other disturbances outside...but then we closed the window and had quiet.

• Pros:Beautiful country
• Cons:Don't fly CLICK-AIR or Arkia Airlines
• In a nutshell:Wow again and again, go back there in an instant