We arrived in Barcelona (24/08) at last. The one night stopover in Hong Kong was well worth it to refresh, stretch, eat and relax. We picked up a rented van at Barcelona airport to transport our 14 boxes (only T Chest size) of personal effects to Canet En Roussillon (France) where we will join Mat-Lau III on 4 September. It was a bit stressful driving on the right hand side of the road in this big, busy city. Thank heavens for the TomTom, we wouldn't have found our hotel without it. Even then a lot was left to luck and chance!

Barcelona is a vibrant city, mixture of beautiful old and new architecture, really great food, and if you happen to be a shopper you would be in heaven. The underground railway and public transport is as good as any in the world, easy to get wherever you want and at regular 3 minute intervals. We bought two folding bikes over the Internet and they were delivered to our hotel before we arrived in Barcelona. The bikes look unusual to say the least, but WOW, have they proven very good to ride - and ride we have across most of Barcelona. Apart from the day we drove to Canet En Roussillon in France to checkout the Marina, the van has stayed in the car park. If we had known clearance of our personal effects through Customs would take a week, then we would not have hired the van until our goods were cleared.

Our goods have now cleared Customs and are in the depot. I can highly recommend Flippers International as an agent in Spain. They did a really great job in getting our goods cleared without taxes and the other hassles one hears of. We did have to pay a small storage cost at the airport.

Mobile phone voice and data communication has been a real learning experience. Global roaming charges are expensive. You can get global roaming SIMs but they are also quite expensive. We found the only cost effective solution was to use pre-paid SIMs specific to each country. Using these SIMs across boarders is also expensive because of global roaming, so the answer is a SIM for each country. Skype is also fantastic if you can get a wifi connection.

Apart from having my mobile phone stolen at a Barcelona cafe, everything has gone like clockwork so far and the Spanish people are so friendly and helpful. We are looking forward to getting on the boat at the weekend and starting our great adventure. Our broad plans are to spend 3 - 4 years cruising the Mediterranean, 6 - 12 months in the Canaries, and then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. No doubt our plans will change along the way.

Cheers and happy sailing.

Kevin and Patti