Monday saw massive snowfall in throughout Catalunya, cutting power to 220,000 people in the province of Girona from 4pm and still unresolved 24 hours later.

The snow also caused widespread chaos elsewhere, with drivers unused to driving in winter conditions, authorities unprepared for snow clearance, and pedestrians fearful of slipping on icy pavements. Buses were cancelled, arterial roads closed and traffic gridlocked.

Although it does occasionally snow in Barcelona, such conditions are unheard of; however, 24 hours later the snow has gone and the sun shining brightly.

The Formula One Circus has landed in Catalunya for the final pre-season practise sessions before the first Grand Prix of the season in Bahrain.

This season promises to be one of the most exciting in recent memory, with Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula 1, Fernando Alonso joining Felipe Massa at Ferrari, and last year’s Champion Jenson Button joining Lewis Hamilton, the previous Champion, at McLaren.

If those changes weren’t enough, there are the new teams. In comes Mercedes in its own right after buying out Brawn GP, while doubts remain about whether some of the new teams; there has been some concern about the viability of Campos, but there is strong doubt whether Us F1 will even make it to Bahrain. And added to that is Stefen GP, which picked up the old Toyota team; although they don’t have a place in this year’s championship, they are planning on taking their cars to Bahrain as they believe there will be a place for them by then!

First of all I tried at about 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. However the booking engine appeared to have crashed. So, Sunday morning I booted up a laptop and tried to book online.

Although the booking engine didn’t actually crash, it didn’t actually do anything either – I was unable to book so I reserved my ticket by phone – phew, one part of their reservation system actually works, they even sent  a text message with my confirmation number.

Arriving 15 minutes before the train was due to depart I confidently strolled up to a ticket machine and inserted the credit card I’d used to book the ticket. Nothing happened, and then my friend pointed out that there was a message telling people NOT to insert their credit card until they had entered their confirmation code. DOH!

Luckily the problem that I couldn’t get my card out of the machine was swiftly resolved thanks to my trusty Swiss Army Knife. However, we now needed to speak to someone, time was running out and the queue was a few too long for my liking.

Luckily Graham jumped in and went up to a window that was closed. When they told him to join the queue he told them it was urgent because the confirmation code didn’t work in the machines one of them was good enough to print out a ticket for me – that kind of attitude is, unfortunately rare in Spain.

After that I boarded the train and the journey was without further incident. But it does illustrate how far Spain has to go with ecommerce.

I was thinkiing about the problem and decided it must be something to do with Internet Explorer versus Firefox – I’d been using a Mac with Firefox. However, I’ve just tried booking tickets on Renfe in both Firefox and IE7 – and IE7 fails very early on, but it does APPEAR to be working with Firefox on Windows XP, although since I don’t actually need a ticket I’m not going to enter my credit card details.

But the question remains… do they actually make ANY sales from the Renfe website?

Check out the video below to see the build up to the concert and opening song.

A great concert – seeing them again in Valencia next weekend.

The competing boats are sister vessels named ‘Estrella Damm’ and ‘W Hotels’ each with a Spanish and North American captain to make the competition completely equal. The regatta starts at the Ambrose Light mark (Sandy Hook, New Jersey) between 5th and 12th April 2010, arriving at the W Hotel in Barcelona’s port some time between 20th and 30th April – the exact dates are determined by weather conditions.

The event takes place between Thursday 18th March and Sunday 21st March 2010 and you can win a $7000 prize package that includes a $2500 buy in for the main event, 4 nights accommodation at Hotel Arts, breakfast and dinner for two, a $700 flight allowance and access to the private party being organised for March 18th.

The event is being organised by Titan Poker and you can read more details on the EC Poker Tour website.

Ryanair’s claim was based around eDreams’ practice of “scraping” content from the Ryanair website in order to provide price comparison data with other airlines. The practice is widely used, but Ryanair claimed their reputation suffered.

The court considered that contrary to Ryanair’s claim that the practice was anti-competitive, in fact it help promote competition by allowing consumers to directly compare the air fares from different airlines.

Music wasn’t the only thing used to wow the crowd on Saturday 5th Dember in Badalona, as Franz Ferdinand’s singer Alex Kapranos greated the crowd in Catalan with a hearty “Bona nit!”

However, what the crowd had really crossed Barcelona for was to hear the band play songs such as “Take Me Out”, “No You Girls” (below), “Ulysses” and “Do You Want To?” and they weren’t dissappointed. After rattling off song after song to an enthusiastic audience, the four-piece from Glasgow did start to flag a little, but the musicianship was always tight.

But the encore provided some surprises such as when all four members came out to play the drums (see video below) – according to Kapranos their last album was inluenced by African drumming – and finally said their good nights with a superb performance of “Lucid Dreams”, a track that suffers on their last album for being too trance-like but worked live as the sequenced synth just drove on and on while each member of the band departed the stage.

All in all a great gig which managed plenty of television news time of TV3 – Barcelona will definitely welcome back Franz Ferdinand, whenever they choose to come back. And with a seven thousand strong audience, a long way to a gig they played in Razzmatazz years ago in front of just 40 people!

In addition to the parks, beaches and architecture, the holidaymakers lied the warm weather and easy accessibility.

However, flying to Gatwick the other day I realised that the rules have changed completely. In the old days it was easy:

• Arrive at the airport early to get priority boarding.
• If you don’t board in the first group, board from the back.

Thee days the game is different for several reasons:

• Online booking means that you may be the first at the airport but still not board early
• Easyjet used to bus/walk passengers between the terminal and the aircraft. These days you usually board from the front through one of those connecting gangways.
• You can buy priority boarding for an additional fee.

So what are the new rules to get the most out of flying EasyJet?

From my experience I’d say the following:

• Book early and check in online early, otherwise select the option for priority boarding.
• If you’re not in the first handful of passengers and can’t find a good seat, head straight to the back of the aircraft. Most people will take the first reasonable seat they can find, so squeeze past them while they are taking off coats and loading bags into the overhead lockers.

As a bonus rule (that’s kind of obvious) – take your iPod and you can watch the inflight movie of your choice.