Just a quick recap before we move on. It seems that we're sliding into a pattern of blogging after each city, and today's our last day in Paris, so we'd best get Barça done before we get behind.
In the end, and a week-ish later, we're still pretty much in awe of Barçelona. We'll have to see whether or not the feeling stays or fades, and I'm well aware that our joy there might be more than a little bit influenced by the difficulties in Rome. But there were just some very nice vacation-y vibes going on. We haven't had a good stove to work with yet, but we pan fried a trout and cooked up some mussels we got at the big Boqueria Mercato one evening. The fish cost us 3 euro, a pound of mussels 1.50. So good!
Here's some veggies, since we ate the seafood before we could get photos :-)
We had a couple of nice snacks along the beachfront in the Barçeloneta neighborhood. From what I read, they actually revitalized the beachfront (as in, they made a beachfront by dredging up sand from the nearby ocean) not too long ago, and it seems to be holding up well. Although my dad says he tried to surf the Med last time he was here, which I'm sure was in the early-mid 70's, we did see one day of waves. That being said, it was a pretty ugly day, weather-wise.
They have a couple of on the beach sort of shack restaurants that serve up uniformly good sangria. I'm a fan of the sparkling kind, but you can't ask for that kind of thing. Either they have it or they don't, and I'm not going to get up and leave just because my sangria don't talk back. Even though it was the Med and Spain and sea level and all, we could feel fall starting to kick in there as well. There was a general feeling that we'd definitely need to consider some colder weather clothing once we got to Paris, so as not to freeze to death from exposure to The Freezing Fog of London. More on that later.
Coffeewise, we ended up with a couple of really good options. First was Cafe Magnificent, which is actually the premier roaster in the city. They recommended Federal [Café] as their favorite cafe in town.
Federal from the street
Federal was pretty good, but, for our money, the shots they were pulling at Magnificent were our favorite, and they were a lot closer to where we were staying. And cheap. Flash forward to Paris, where a double of espresso costs as much as 5 euro!
In the end, we opted out of the FC Barçelona game, but I went to a smoky café and enjoyed it with the rowdy locals. Even that was pretty exciting.
No comments:
Post a Comment