Food relieves frustrations

Our overnight flight from 1am in Singapore on 30 March to 3pm in Barcelona – it was a beautiful sight going over India, I was surprised at how populated it seemed, so many lights like a blanket of stars, some scattered but many quite dense - very pretty. We had two legs via Dubai, had a bit of a challenge finding the bus shuttle from Barcelona airport to the city so in the end took a taxi, pleasant driver but silent, no social comment from this one, unlike our nice man in Singapore. We had a wander round early evening, found some fruit and Spanish pastries at the big and busy fruit/meat/fish market a couple of hundred meters away, and were in bed not much after 9pm, we really needed a good night’s sleep.

Our hotel is directly across from the Gaudi museum and there have been a dozen or so people lining up most times we've gone in and out. Not tempted to go in ourselves, we went to the Batllo Gaudi house when we were in Barcelona in 2017 and really liked it, pretty, colourful, and Gaudi influences are everywhere of course.

We’re staying at Hotel Gaudi https://www.hotelgaudibarcelona.com/en/, 100m from La Rambla, 200 from a Metro underground stop, not far to the cruise port for our start on Monday. It’s a good tourist-grade hotel, obviously fairly recently renovated with the rooms freshly painted white, upgraded very good bathroom (excellent shower), comfortable bed. We’ve got the cheapest room I think, a window that opens into a fire escape courtyard but it has a grille outside so happy to part open it when we’re in the room during the day and you don’t see a view when you’re asleep. Breakfast was typical cereals, fresh and preserved fruit, cold cuts, hot bacon and sausages, bread and a toaster, rolls, jam – all we needed, served in a light bright room with a comfy sitting area/library next door.

Friday 31st was a ‘life admin’ morning, as Jen calls it. Pete went to the laundry along the street, did a wash then found the dryer didn’t work, the place didn’t have any on-site staff (all coins and self-programmed) so he came back for breakfast then went to another place further up the street – success second time round and nice dry clothes. He thinks he’ll try again on Monday, can’t lose that new-found skill! I did a bit of sorting out and reorganising bags, emails, and it was a productive morning.

Next task was to find the tourist information office but on the way we popped into a church on La Rambla, the organ was playing and on the face of it the church was quite plain but it actually had some lovely stained glass and the Stations of the Cross were pottery plaques, quite unusual. This may be a theme in the blog – I’m not religious (Pete is the Catholic in the family) but I love old churches and the ritual of Mass so am always keen to have a look around. In Europe they seem to be very ‘anonymous’, often just a door on a street, but when you go in you find several hundred years of history, gold, paintings………..all sorts. However, at the end of ten weeks let’s see how I’m doing.

Anyway, we were off to buy an all-in-one ticket to Montserrat, taking in metro, local train, gondola from station to Montserrat Abbey, Montserrat museum ticket, interactive display ticket, café meal. A bargain, and we wanted to go to the Abbey again having had a morning tour from Barcelona back in 2017. Lesson learned – don’t always trust Google maps implicitly, accept that English is not the first language in Spain, realise that hand waves don’t necessarily point in the way you think they do, don’t have a hissy fit when things don’t work, and…….go with the flow (eventually). Oh, and policemen are handsome and kind, not very good at giving directions to the nearby (apparently) station, but when they’re standing next to KFC and you’re hungry and cross it’s a good idea to have late lunch. Be warned – KFC Barcelona in Placa Espana tastes good but the wait is every bit as long as KFC in Tahuna.

And long story short-ish, the multi ticket isn’t being sold at present so, having worked out how to buy Metro tickets, we headed off to check out the meeting point for our ‘Devour’ food and history tour, had a walk through the Gothic quarter then back to the hotel to decide what to do on Saturday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Quarter,_B…
https://devourtours.com/tours/barcelona-tapas-t…

The food tour that night was great from start to finish. The company ‘Devour’ has tours in various European cities, we’d been on one in Madrid. The guide, Alex, English 40-ish, and a trainee young woman, Benedetta was Italian and they tag-teamed through the evening. History/food – what a great combination. We had a group of six Canadians (two brothers, sister and spouses), a couple from Detroit and the Gillins from NZ. Everyone was really friendly and the Canadians’ first question was ‘what happened to your Prime Minister? We heard she quit!!!’ They couldn’t believe it.

I’ve put in a photo of the ‘Bishop’s Bridge’ which we’ve seen a few times as we’ve walked around, and it has a bit of a story – the architect in 1928 had submitted several plans for Barcelona’s new buildings but only this one for the bridge was accepted. Apparently disappointed, he secretly incorporated a hidden skull (a real one, not stone) with a dagger inside it, and supposedly anyone who crosses the bridge and sees the skull will have bad luck. On the other hand, if you walk backwards under the bridge while making a wish it will come true.

I’ve attached a link to the tour website. It was fairly fast-paced and the main things learned were: don’t eat on La Rambla because it’s pretty much a rip-off; and always go down quiet dodgy-looking alleys because you’ll quickly come to a little square with at least one small place to eat, local food, local prices, great value.

The food was excellent apart from (in my opinion) deep fried skinny fish, too ‘fishy tasting’ for my liking, but Pete ate it all. At the first place they lined up the cava on the bar when we walked in, and after eating they brought out glasses of vermouth. And so it carried on! We got the history of the bars, the history of the general area, info about food, we ate lots, drank a bit, and at the third place we had an actual meal, three small courses, the dessert being crème Catalan which is flavoured with orange, cinnamon and nutmeg – crème brulée is apparently a distant second best because it’s ‘only flavoured with vanilla, very bland’.

All very delicious, and we rolled back to the hotel after a very satisfying evening.Read more