Day 3

This was our day devoted to eating.  We had one last day to eat the things we had seen and read about.  Hold on.  It gets serious.  But we began our day by going back to the Gothic Quarter to see some of the things which were talked about on the tour the night before.  First up was the Cathedral. 

It's vast and quite beautiful.  It was begun in the 13th century and the facade was finally completed in the 19th century.  If you stand in the front to the right hand side you can see almost a thousand years of architecture.  Of course, I didn't take a picture of that.  That would be crazy.

This is the crypt of Saint Eualalia.  Her story is quite sad.  I won't bother writing it all.

I dared Rebecca to go and confess and she almost did!  She just couldn't think of any sins she had committed.

Traditionally geese were kept in the courtyard of the church to warn of intruders.

This beautiful bridge is said to be cursed.

When you walk underneath it you're supposed to go around the corner to this post office and touch the tortoise two times.  Rebecca is good to go.  Turns out, though she didn't confess to anything, the turtle forgave all her sins.

Afterwards we decided to walk to the beach.

 After a long walk back from the beach we hit another place we had looked forward to - La Boqueria - a crazy large food market. 

Our goal was to eat at a place called El Quimm.  It turns out that the rest of Barcelona was also looking for it.  There were people waiting all around the diners waiting for a seat.

To freshen up we had a mango/passion fruit juice.

Eventually the people we stood behind got up to leave and it was our turn.  First things first - Sangria for me, rose cava for Rebecca.

  Fried padron peppers with sea salt

 Scallops with a miso glaze on top of grilled zucchini.  There were two things on top - could have been bacon and rice crispys. It's hard to know.  They're both in my belly now.

 The piece de resistance - two fried eggs with baby squid.  This is before scrambling them.

 This is after.

It was a great lunch and everything we wanted it to be.  Afterwards we had a walk around.  And look - oysters.

Here are some random shots of the market.

Why when there so much cava and vermouth to be had?

 We made one more stop on the way back to the hotel for a siesta.  Hot chocolate and churros.  Yes please

After a 2 hour siesta we were ready to get back out there.  We walked a new route south past the Arc de Triomf


At the end of the esplanade was a park that was almost beautiful but needed much tlc.

There are crazy loud beautiful parrots all over the city.

 We missed this church on our Gothic tour so we did a quick run through. It was surprisingly light and open for a 14th century church.

 This is where it gets nuts again.  We had the idea to do a tapas crawl and so we did some research and found six places to hit.  We knew it was going to be a stretch but we took on the task.

 Drink number one - vermouth. 

 First Tapa - patatas bravas with very hot chili and cream

 Your faithful scorekeeper

 In Spain they do this Christmas thing where figurines poop presents.  It was explained to us but I didn't really get it.  But all over the city you can find almost any politician or celebrity as a pooper figurine.  This was at the Picasso museum so I guess it's for if you think Picasso was a shitty artist - "ah, thank you!"

 Second place to drink -  white wine

 On the left octopus bombs.  Basically octopus in a potato croquet.  On the right - squid in croquets.  One of our favorites of the night.

 Octopus bomb on the inside.

 Squid ink croquet on the inside.

 Anchovies.  Much milder than what I'm used to.

 Score keeper

 This was to be one for cava but it was nuts every time we passed it so we balked.

 More vermouth for me - sparkling apple cider for Rebecca.  The cider is hard to describe.  It's really sparkling wine-ish but it's like a busload of apples drives through quickly on it's journey over your taste buds.

 Hands down our favorite.  The usual tomato bread with raw cod, tomatoes, pickled red onion, herbs and lots of olive oil.

 The couple next to us got up to have a smoke as these (there were 3 before I remembered to take the picture) arrived.  After a few minutes the chef slid them over to us to eat.  I can't really say what they were but they were tasty.

 Score

 They almost didn't let us in to this wine bar because it was closing in thirty minutes but we appealed to a different person and were served two cavas.

 Action shot.

 Satisfied customer.  We had a long talk with an Irish woman with a 2 month old beagle puppy.  She has lived in Barcelona for 7 years.  We had a great chat and she said she really loved living there and that it was quite affordable. 

 The score keeper found a helper.

 Lastly we stopped for a desert.  We couldn't really understand what we were drinking but it was sweet and great.  It wasn't fortified but it was very sweet.  Maybe Spain's version of a sauternes. 

 Closest to Rebecca there is a chocolate mousse.  In the middle was a very chocolaty ice cream with hot pepper.  Farthest are 3 pistachio balls.  Barely sweet chocolate cookie crumbles were scattered around.  I have no idea what the red stuff is.

The last visiting score keeper.  He might be heiling hitler.  He didn't really understand what was going on. 

Barcelona is one of the only cities we've been to in the past few years where we felt like we didn't stay nearly long enough.  I feel fairly sure I could have spent a week there and not gotten restless though if I had there are vineyards close by and the beach is impressive to be right in such a major city.  I feel like in only 2 1/2 days I saw about 5 different cities and barely scratched the surface of any of them.  I hope we'll be back for a longer visit.