7 July last day with Panda

Full buffet breakfast at the hotel which was nice for a change, then pack up and head out on the road again. This time to Barcelona and our last day with the Panda.

We did drive through part of Valencia on the way out so that we could at least see some of it. First of all we drove past the amazing Arts and Science centre.

and their big wheel and over the Alameda bridge over the Rio Turio, eventually meeting up with the main route north to Barcelona.

We then relied on Karen for the last time, to get us on the road to Barcelona. We opted to avoid any Autopistas, hence we travelled along some interesting country roads, but arriving in Barcelona in only just enough time to drop our bags off at the hotel and get the car back to the drop off point by its due time.

A lot of the route took us along the coastline beside the Mediterranean past many resort towns and busy beaches, where they appeared to also have quite a few very nice looking tree covered camp grounds, and through some little country towns

It gave us once more the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the country and the effort the Spanish have put into beautifying their country – for example all the oleander bushes that are planted on the roadside

We passed quite a few serious cyclists (training for the tour de France maybe!!!)

Every now and again we passed a bikini clad girl sitting beside the road in a chair, sometimes under an umbrella, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We could not work out what they were doing. There was often quite a few miles distance between them. We couldn’t work out if they were there as support for the cyclists or selling oranges as they were most times in between orange groves.

Something that the Tom Tom has been useful for is the fact that it beeps when a radar is coming up and actually shows where the radar are on the screen. I finally managed to catch a photo of one as we flew past at hopefully within the speed limit. A very ordinary looking grey box on the side of the road.

We discovered that Tarragona has its own Dreamworld

We were due to return Panda at 5pm. We arrived in Barcelona at 4pm and fortunately Karen got us safely to the Hotel Atlantis in Pelai near Plaza De Catalunya where we had booked. There was client parking right outside the hotel too, and the Europcar centre was not far away at the Estacion D Sants.

So 4087 kilometres later we said goodbye to panda, who had served us well.  

We got the car back in time but then proceeded to spend ages trying to sort out what line to catch on the metro and how to get a ticket. We did get a ticket only to find when we couldn’t get it to work through the ticket barrier that it was for the main line and not the metro so we had to go back and get a ticket for the metro from the correct vending machine!!!!

We passed a Subway on our way back to our hotel so we decided to buy Subway for dinner and wash it down with a bottle of wine we had bought previously, back at our hotel room and watch BBC world news – the first time we have had chance to watch any news in English.