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Creative Musings

Adventures in Italy (and maybe a few other places)

Amazing Tapas!!

08 February 2008

After seeing the Sagrada Familia by Gaudi we were absolutely starving. We found a great Tapas place (traditional Spanish type of meal consisting of many small dishes) and we were very glad to be able to sit for while. All I have to say is, I love good tapas. They were absolutely amazing. Betwen the 5 of us, we got 11 dishes: fried potato wedges with a cream sauce, calamari, mini hamburger patties with mustard/cheese/onion toppings, a feta cheese and cherry tomato salad, lamb and vegetable skewer, sauteed mushrooms (my favorite), vegetable tempura, spanish tortilla (which is sort of an omlette made of egg and potato) and a few more. Plus we got a pitcher of Sangria to share which was amazing. This was the first great meal that I had since I left the US!! The Sangria was so delecious that we even ate the lemons afterwards, and took pictures of course!
Tonight Erin and her roommate Megan wanted to take us to an awesome bar called "Ice Barcelona", aka IceBar. We got in free, because of some special password that Megan had, which is why we went of course. So we were getting ready to get in, and the lady that mans the door hands the girls who have thin jackets on a big puffy coat, and we all got white faux-fur hats with ear flaps and mittens. Then she opened the door into the bar. Well, they wern't kidding about the ice. The room is between -3 and -5 degrees celcius: the walls, bar, benches and tables were made of ice. There are even square ice glasses. The room can only hold 40 people, but there were probably only 15-20 when we were there. Naturally no Spanish people frequent this place, only visitors, so we had fun taking pictures. We actually got pretty cold, mostly our feet and legs since they were not covered with any kind of heavy covering.

The next day, and our final day in Barcelona we walked everywhere. After we got up and checked out of our hotel, somehow we managed to squeeze all our luggage into 6 storage lockers that are larger than they look. We walked down Las Ramblas to the column/statue of Christopher Colombus. Then we headed back to the market for some breakfast, coffee and picture taking. Besides the amazing selection of fruit and meat, what I found most interest was the egg stand. Yes, egg stand.

We walked around the city more, saw an old church that had battle wounds on the facade from their civil war. The city decided to leave it there in remembrance. There was also a school in this courtyard, and since it was Carnival (the spanish Mardi Gras), all the children were dressed up! Not as spiderman and purchased costumes but real costumes!! One boy was dressed as Charlie Chaplin. Next we made our way to the Parque Guell by Spanish Architect Gaudi. This park is amazing. It's huge, and a good majority of surfaces are covered by mosaic tiling. The best way to describe his architecture is Dr. Seuss stories come to life. But not scary.
After that we went to the national palace of Barcelona, which was beautiful, and behind it was where the 1992 Olympics were held. It started to get dark at this point, so we headed on to our next destination which was the Casa Mila by Gaudi. This is an entire apartment type building that wraps around a corner and is also very interesting. Now we were starving, and didn't have much time before we had to find our ferry, so we ended up eating at a Chicago style pizzaria! It was actually really good. Then comes the whole ordeal of the ferry ride, which will be in an entire posting of its own.

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Day 1 in Barcelona

02 February 2008

Today was our first full day in Barcelona. Being that we were affected by jet-lag, we did not get up until about 10:30, (after going to bed at 4:30am). Meghan's sister Erin met us at our hotel and acted as our guide for the day. First we walked to the open air market, and my heart was warmed at the sight of real meat: the entire pig legs covered in sand hanging from the ceilings. I was amazed at the selection of tropical fruits. My favorite being the bright pink fruits with a white center and black dots. We discovered carts that carried many different flavors of fresh fruit juices, which I will say was amazing. I got strawberry-pineapple, which was like drinking a strawberry.

After that I got a yummy looking pastry that had sugar and roasted pine nuts on top, then found a cafe and I had my very first Spanish coffee (or European coffee of the trip) which was delicious. After that we headed out to see the town.

I love large cities because of the metro systems. They may not be the cleanest places, but they allow you to get most anywhere in the city pretty fast. We did a lot of walking today, saw a lot of the city by foot. The Picasso Museum was interesting, although the one in Paris has a better collection of his most famous works. The amazing thing about the museum was the building. It was in the middle of the city, and they melded these 5 old beautiful pallazo type homes into the museum. They are all made of beautiful sand colored brick with giant archways.

We made it all the way over to the Gothic quarter of town, saw the old church, and finally got some lunch. We stopped in a nice cafe and got sandwiches, and of course, a "cafe con leche" - coffee with milk. After this we hopped on the metro and made it to the famous cathedral by Art Nouveau Spanish Architect Antoni Gaudi called the "Sagrada Familia". This building is AMAZING! It was already dark when we were there, but I had no idea about this place. First of all, it was started in 1882, and has yet to be finished. Secondly, this place is massive. I think they had to alter the original plans because they would have had to take out an entire city block.

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