"Ladies and gentlemen,

this is your captain speaking, we will be landing at Dublin airport in approximately 10 minutes, please make sure that your cardigan is securely fastened and that your woolly socks are in the upright position."

So there we go.
A week has gone by in a flash.
It was great to see Justin and Monica, and get to meet baby Joel for the first time.

As you can tell from the photos, there was shag all cultural stuff going on.
It was mostly loads of trips to and from the beach, ice cream places, supermarket for more rabbit/gambas/chorizo/Estrellas.
Lovely evenings on the roof top terrace, listening to the neighbourhood slowly going to bed.
Except for that baby on the fourth floor in the big building across the road, below the woman who dances naked in her living room.
It's sort of fun to listen to from a comfortable distance (the baby, not the dancing - which is more of a visual than auditive thing - great memory, it's about getting immersed into the local culture as I explained to Mrs Raheny), but the poor parents must have been driven demented. I know a thing or two about that.

The trip was not cultural. But we still learned a lot of things.

It is hot, hot, hot in Barcelona in August. It makes you thirsty...

Them wasp-coloured taxis... They may be fast, they won't take 5 passengers. Even if most of them have sweated to about a quarter of their Irish size...

Travelling came make you feel tired...
But you will always find someone who is even more tired and fed up than you...

Quick airport anecdote. Two actually.

On the way out last Monday morning, we got to the airport a respectable 90 minutes before departure. As there was no gate assigned, we let the kids play on the Noddy toy car for a good while. And it seems that the gate went from assigned, to boarding, to closing in a very short space of time.
But I knew that I would not get a chance to visit the toilet for another while and that the seatbelt sign would stay on for a good while in the event of turbulence. When I emerged from the toilet, Mrs Raheny looked decidedly stressed as there were hardly any people left in the boarding area. The kids were quite concerned as well and as we were walking down the jet bridge and got the 30 or so people bottlenecked at the door of the aircraft, they kept asking me where I had gone. I told them that I had a bit of an emergency. Luca was straight away alarmed as for him emergency automatically means nuclear incident. Or air plane crash. Possibly piled up of cars on the M50. He was getting alarmed. "Dad! DAD!!! What's the emergency?! Is it dangerous? Are we going to crash?!" I had to lower my voice to about a 100th of a decibel to explain the reason of my disappearance. And as he did not get it, Mimi felt compelled to broadcast to the gathered stragglers that "it's ok, Luca, DADDY JUST HAD TO GO FOR A POO"

Second airport anecdote:
We got back at Dublin airport on Sunday night at half past midnight. Kids woken up from a deep sleep on the flight, zigzagging unsteadily towards passport control, Mrs Raheny rummaging in her bags to find the passport.
Immigration officer: where are youze coming from?
Mrs R: Barcelona
I.O.: off you go, you have enough on your hands there
Selene: ah, here they are
I.O.: nah, it's ok, just get these three in bed fast, welcome back, it's actually not pissing rain today

This reminded me very much of all the times I had to go through immigration at Miami Airport. NOT!