Travel Pig

I have been a travel pig recently. Tonight I will finish the Barcelona trip report and post it; over the most recent weekend I was in Italy with 3 friends. What a riot! Will write that one up and post before I go away this coming weekend, to Paris. Love living here and being able to travel.

Anyhow, to finish Barcelona:
Thursday May 18th we took the bus up to Placa Catalunya (stopped at Uriquinoia, beautiful shops of clothing but all “to the trade”! Bummer.)

Stopped at La Bocaria, again, after, got more strawberries. Then we wandered the Barri Gothic which was mostly closed by then for afternoon siesta. Good idea, so we did it too.

We went to Del Born to the Teller de Tapas we’d located the night before, had a great dinner there and then went across to Bubo for dessert.





Took the train up to the University district, passed a club called Copa. We went in, it was packed and there was a great band. Lots of people dancing. Darkly handsome men, dancing. What a revelation – in this country men can dance, and do! Maybe I should learn Spanish instead of German. We continued on to La Paloma, but it was not really busy yet and Ewa didn’t like the sound of the music so we called it a night.

The weather had been great – some days started overcast, high fog, and the sun burned through by afternoon, with evenings clear and cooler. A couple times the evenings were cloudy with a few rain drops falling. Great temperature, warm days but not hot – yet.

Friday was tourist day. We started at Casa Batllo and then toured Padrera, 2 of Gaudi’s buildings. Fantastic. My pics just don’t encompass enough to make sense of them, I can remember what it really looked like from them so I’ll keep them but they aren’t good enough to post.


I finally got to the beach. Europeans are very different than Americans. Beautiful topless women everywhere, no big deal. I only stayed for an hour, then back to the apt to get cleaned up.

We met Gina & Tyler by Santa Maria del Mar cathedral, took a look inside the cathedral. It’s very open and Gina say’s it’s her favorite. Then we went to their favorite bar, El Xampanyet, for cava. Old, crowded, not too smoky and the cava was wonderful.



Ewa, Gina, Tyler, me




From there, we went to Txakolin, across from Estancio Franca, for tapas. What a beautiful dinner. They had quite a selection of cold tapas out, to grab. The hot plates come out of the kitchen one by one, and they walk them down the bar. If you want a piece, you grab it.

Gina contemplating what’s available.




Ewa, Gina and Tyler


We ate & ate, the food was superb. Had one bottle of wine, one glass of cider (to try, yeech – thin and acidy tasting, to me) and lots of tapas. Then we went off towards Del Born area again, stopped at a café & had Mojitos (what a mistake) and then to one of Tyler’s coworkers apartment, to a party. Late night again.

Saturday we were movin slow. We went back to Del Born for more shopping, had great pizza at Pizzeria Del Born, worked our way up to Placa Catalunya. Shopped there, then hit Bocaria for more strawberries. We had salad at home for dinner, watched a movie on the English cable. Then we went to Placa Espanya to watch the fountains. Quite a light show, with music. I was glad we got to see it, it’s the best water show I’ve seen. We made an early night of it.

Sunday was a clear, fine day. Starting to get hot. We spent the morning at Parc Guell, wandering.





Found a great café between it & the train, stopped for coffee. We ate again at the creperie under the fish sculpture (on the beach at Port Olympic, Gina had recommended it and the food was very good and inexpensive.) I got to the beach again this afternoon. Spent a bit too long in the sun, the sunburn has just now faded. But before it felt too bad, we wandered back to Del Born and Teller de Tapas for one more dinner.

Monday morning( May 22nd) we got up and finished packing. We went to the local supermarket for more water, as Christina and Andreas were due in that morning to take over the Nicholas-sitting duties. They showed up around 12:00, we gave them a whirlwind orientation and caught a cab at 1 to take us to the airport.

The time just flew. I expanded my list of things to see in Barcelona as I was seeing it. I will go back – after the heat of the summer fades a bit.