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We took the bus from Catania to Palermo. That takes about 2:30 hours. I was surprised to see that there is nothing inside the center of the island - only the motorway, some sheep and green hills... You can also find snowy mountains there - but no cities, no towns, no people.

Other than Palermo.. Palermo seems to be a noisy, narrow city. Many allays, but no nice places to sit down and relax. There is also a lot of traffic. After arriving at the train station we went to the sea. We walked through a actually quite nice garden, but unfortunately it was located besides a busy road. At the sea there was much concrete but no place to sit down and no sand... So we decided to have a coffee. We found a coffee bar - but no place to sit down. So we ordered a coffee - and got espresso! We did not know that for the Italian coffee always means espresso... Then we walked around the city a bit, becoming frustrated about the traffic. In front of the theatre we found another coffee bar. Now we ordered a coffee with milk with the hope to get a (at least for us) "real" coffee in a big mug. Nevertheless again it was only an espresso with a milk froth hat... Ok, so now we definitely know that Italians only drink espresso.. After that we decided to go back to the train station and take the bus to the airport... an interesting fact is that all airport buses have free wifi. The bus took about 50 minutes. It felt like we were driving through whole Palermo to pick up more people. But after leaving the city the view outside was really nice. We drove along the coast, saw many cliffs, small houses and the sunset. Arriving at the airport was a bit strange - the building looked really old and it was quite cold inside and even the security person did speak only Italian... But nevertheless our flight left in time and after two hours we were safely back in Stuttgart.

We spent two days in Barcelona. The connection from the airport to the city center is very good. A bus is running every five minutes.

Our hotel was located at the famous road "La Rambla". On our first morning we visited the historic city center with its cathedral. From there we passed a nice garden and went to the beach.

In the afternoon we went back to the city, visiting Casa Mila (where Gaudi lived) and Sagrada Familia. Sagrada Familia is a huge construction area and said to be finished aroud 2026. Nevertheless you can still get a good impression of its style. We were a bit surprised to see Star Wars figures on the front of the church. That contributes to the fact that many people say that Gaudi must have been crazy.

After seeing this interesting church we walked back to our hotel passing the Arc de Triomf.

In the evening we took the bus back to the harbour to enjoy some really good paella there.

From Barcelona we took the train to Sitges which is about 30 minutes away. Sitges has a nice beach and a historic center. We walked around and found a very nice place for a coffee. After enjoying the sunshine at the beach we took the train back to Barcelona.

We spent our second day in Barcelona on the Montjuic. The Montjuic is a small hill close to the harbour. You can walk up there and have a great view of the city and the sea. On top of the mountain is the Castell de Montjuic which was a military fortress in the past. After spending some time walking around we continued in the direction of the old Olympia area. In 1992 the olympic games were in Barcelona. Afterwards we passed the Museo Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and took the escalators (in a public garden!!) down to the Plaza de Espanya. On our way back to the La Rambla we stopped at a Spanish looking Tapas bar and tried different tapas...

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