The Barcelona vacation is blogged with pictures and links. It took me a while, but it was nice to relive the trip a while after being home instead of immediately. The posts start here and continue forward, one for each day of the trip. Enjoy!

I didn't finish any socks in March. I knitted one sock from toe to mid-foot in the possum yarn. then I did a second one toe to mid-foot in the possum yarn. Then I had to figure out some stuff about the pattern that I wanted to do. I opted to put a cable up the center and have the gussets fall from that (Cat Bordhi's Ridgeline sockitecture for you New Pathways fans.) So that meant that doing the arch expansions involved tracking both increases and gussets; no big deal knitting at home, but not something I want to do while on public transportation. I've done about half the arch expansion since coming back home from the vacation.

So I wound up some different purple/green yarn that I wanted to use for a plain vanilla sock, Creatively Dyed Steele yarn, lotus colorway.

Then came our trip to Barcelona. We took the Megabus from Burlington to Boston. I planned to knit on the bus. Well, the bus was packed completely full (end of spring break for some folks apparently) and the seats are pretty narrow. So I ended up not even trying to knit on the bus. I usually don't knit on the plane either. So we got to Barcelona and I hadn't knit a single stitch on the new socks.

While in Barcelona, we had a rendez-vous with our friends from Canada who are stationed in Budapest for three years, Sandy and George. Sandy is a knitting buddy of mine; we met on Ravelry, both being fans of Three Irish Girls yarn. One of the rainy days in Barcelona, we took the train to Figueres to the Dali Museum. It was a 90-minute train ride each way, and Sandy and I had our knitting. I knit a sock from toe to mid-foot

So, my sock tally for March is less than two, so I'm a little behind in my self-imposed sock club. I'll play catch up at some point.

Here's the highlights of vacation:



March 18: Boston stuff
March 19: Flying.
March 20: Barcelona arrival.
March 21: La Boqueria market
March 22: Dali Museum in Figueres
March 23: La Sagrada Famila
March 24: Casa Botlló and Picasso Museum
March 25: Sardana dancing, the Mediterranean Sea, and Flamenco at the Palau de la Música Catalana
March 26: Tourist Bus and an epic dinner at Speakeasy
March 27: Flying.
March 28: Travel adventures and home at last.

I'm going to do the travelogue the way I always do. I will blog each day separately and backdate the posts. I'll post again in real time when the last post is up and you can read about the trip in chronological order.

If you can't wait and want to see All The Pictures without captions or descriptions, you can find them here.

And this is one of my favorite things: Barcelona

I woke up at 6 AM and then dozed off and on for a while. What time is it? What day is it?

We went out for coffee and then checked out of the hotel. We had time to kill since our bus was at 3 PM. We did some shopping and got caught in the rain. We took refuge in the Crane paper store that we discovered was going out of business. So I bought some good bargains while keeping dry!

We had a lovely lunch at Atlantic Fish, which was participating in Boston's Restaurant Week. We had salads with shrimp, arctic char with Brussels sprouts, and a tasty Nutella mousse. Then back to the hotel to pick up our bags and on the T to get to the bus station. We hurried a bit, but we arrived exactly on time.

Except that there was no bus!

It turned out that they'd changed the schedule for the Megabus and had sent an email, but between being offline and then jet lagged, we didn't read the email correctly. So instead of the bus leaving at 3:30 PM, it had left at 11:00 AM. Oops. We poked around a bit at the bus station and figured out that there weren't any really good options for getting home that day. I needed to be back to work, and I figured that spending another night in Boston with hotel and restaurant costs, we'd be better off renting a car.

I made a few calls and got us a rental car. Bruce was kind of in a funk about having not read the email properly. But it all worked out. We drove home. We got to stop at the New Hampshire liquor store, which we couldn't have done on the bus. We got to sleep in our own bed. Yay!

And it was still cheaper than driving to Boston and paying for parking for the whole time while we were gone. But next time we'll read the emails better!

We had some public transit adventures getting to the airport. We got on the same bus that we'd taken from the airport and when we got on and were moving, we realized that there were two buses, one for each terminal. We figured, "Oh, well. We have a 50/50 chance of getting to the right one." We didn't go to the right one. So then we had to walk a pretty far distance to get to the bus that went from one terminal to another. Whew! Glad we allowed a lot of time.

Then we got to the right terminal and there was a huge group of people clogging up the one line for check-in for the cheap seats. Luckily we were the second ones back from it all, but it was an exercise in patience waiting. I can only imagine how antsy and irate folks were who ended up being 50 people back in the line. But we made it through everything in plenty of time.

We flew to Munich first. The views out the window of the alps were gorgeous. I wonder if we flew over Mont Blanc. Then it was on to Boston and gaining six hours back. It seemed like a very long flight and I was ready to be done about two hours before it was over. I did finish the third book of the Hunger Games. I also watched the Tin Tin movie, slept, listened to opera, played some games. There was wi-fi, but it was very expensive, so I didn't pay for it.

Back in Boston we again took public transportation to the Hotel Commonwealth. Dinner was at Island Creek Oyster House, which is attached to the hotel, so it was easy to be jet lagged and still get some good dinner. We were so very tired, having been up for twenty-two hours. I took a quick bubble bath to ease my aching muscles and then crashed into the big comfortable bed.

For our last day in Barcelona, we decided to do one of the tourist bus tours so we could see a larger overview of the city and at least view the outside of some things we weren't going to have a chance to see in depth. We started the morning touring the northwestern route. The line was pretty long for it all since the marathon the day before had disrupted the tourist buses for much of the day. The couple behind us were Russian I think; they didn't speak much English. She was knitting something and so I pantomimed that I was a knitter and then showed her the socks I was wearing. She pointed at them and then at me. I nodded and made knitting motions and pointed at my socks again. She told her husband, I guess, that I had knitted my socks and then they both laughed. So I guess men don't knit in their part of the world.

We tookteh bus past La Sagrada Familia and got a different view of it. I love this picture that I got there. Check out how the bird looks eerily like an angel!



We saw lots of interesting architectural details on many buildings. It was very cold up on top with the wind. There was a convent where it was the local custom to bring the nuns eggs so that it wouldn't rain on one's wedding. And there were other reasons why one took them eggs as well. We made so many jokes about it that we just laughed and laughed and laughed.

We made a pit stop back at our hotel and then walked down to the Plaça Réal for lunch. We found a little spot, La Crema Canela with a wonderful prix fixe menu (9.95 euros): a glass of wine; Catalan spinach cake with Romesco sauce; sausages with samfaina sauce (caramelized onions in a tomato reduction with eggplants, zucchini, and peppers);


and for dessert, B had a huge dish of chocolate ice cream and I had a toffee cake with crème anglais.

In the afternoon we dressed a bit more warmly and got on the bus for the second route, seeing the Plaça d'Espanya,



and views of the city from Montjuïc,


the Olympic stadium, the waterfront, and back up into the Gothic quarter. We got in a bit more shopping before returning to our hotel to pack our bags in preparation for our departure the next day.

The folks at our hotel recommended dinner our last night be at a place called Speakeasy. We wanted something different from the usual tapas fare and to go a bit fancier. This place was rather incredible. The front is a bar called Dry Martini. When you go in, you walk to the back of the bar and there's a door, obviously to the kitchen. On it, in very small letters, it says "restaurant". We'd been instructed to go directly through that door and keep going. One must walk through the kitchen and through another door, opening on large room decorated to look like the storage room for the bar. On one side were industrial shelves lined with liquor bottles all lit from the back. Along another wall was a large wine cellar.

Check out their website here, and check out this video. The place was super-cool.

So the whole theme of the place was cocktails paired with food. They had three different tasting menus. We opted for the middle one.


And this photo from the menu shows the starters with the cocktails:


The cocktails were smaller sized, but after a full-sized aperitif cocktail and then seven smaller ones, we were feeling no pain! The one on the far left was an anchovy on top of date paste on a piece of baguette. The cocktail was a vodka martini frappe (think of a martini slush). That was one of our favorites. The other favorite was the tuna roll with the wasabi martini slush (third from the left). Some things were pretty different: The "Sharon Stone" was some sort of thick chocolate concoction. The suckling pig was excellent.

When we arrived for our 9:30 reservation there was only one other table seated. I thought since it was a Monday night, it was slow. Then by 10:15, the place was packed full of people. We finally left at 12:45 AM Tuesday morning and when we made our way out, we had to press through the crowds of people in the Dry Martini bar in the front. It is a very popular place.

We refer to this as our Epic Meal, and it was one of the most memorable and different experiences of our dining lives!

We got up a bit later because of "spring forward" and ate breakfast. Then we walked over to the cathedral to watch the sardana dances. Every Sunday at noon, the locals dance this traditional dance in the courtyard outside the cathedral. (They do it at some other times as well.) They gather in circles, put their bags and other belongings in the center of the circle while they dance. It is a slow swaying dance with some footwork. I loved the tradition of it all. Our experience was rather surreal because there was also a marathon in town that day, and the course went right by the courtyard where the dancing was happening. 

  

We ended up dashing through the marathon course a couple of times. It was fun watching people, young and old, try to time their crossing so as not to interrupt the runners. It probably wasn't fun running trying to dodge the pedestrians!

We saw many wonderful gargoyles:


We explored all around the cathedral neighborhood. We walked along the old Roman Wall and then walked way up into the Eixample neighborhood through quiet residential streets. Everything outside of the tourist areas was closed for Sunday with the exception of a very few neighborhood cafés.

Here's another famous Gaudí building, Casa Milà, which we did not tour:



We had a late lunch at Qu Qu: white wine, a flauta (a sandwich on a long thin baguette) with ham and another one with dried sausage, a salad of marinated tuna on sliced tomatoes. Then we walked all the way down La Rambla to the Mediterranean.

We saw the famous statue of Christopher Columbus:


And then we walked out onto La Rambla de Mar, a pedestrian pier out into the Mediterranean, Barcelona harbor.


I still haven't touched the Mediterranean yet. Next trip!

We had tickets that night for a Flamenco concert at the Palau de la Musica. The concert started at 9:30 PM. (They do things differently there!) So we went and had a cocktail before (which was quite an experience - we picked a very expensive place that had one of the "world's best bartenders" - they had a book on the bar to prove it - who was talking with a woman at the bar about how he had been traveling with U2 in South America as their personal bartender).

Inside the Palau de la Musica was gorgeous. It's the only naturally lighted concert hall in Europe. Of course it was dark when we were there, but the skylight is breathtaking:


As is the stage:


The Flamenco was astonishing. It was very traditional in the Catalan style, more focused on showmanship and fast feet than costumes.

After the concert, we went for a late tapas dinner at La Taberna del Cobre: house red wine; padrones; an amazing dish of sausages, lentils, and shaved foie gras; some tasty meatballs; and the ubiquitous tomato bread. By the time we left, all the little gelato and pastry shops were closed, so no repeat of the previous night's dessert.

We started the day with a tour of Casa Botlló, a remodeled building designed by Antoni Gaudí. It was an incredible experience to be inside such architecture. The house is known in Barcelona as the "house of bones" since there are a lot of skeletal aspects to it. To me much of it was "under the sea". There are very few straight lines inside, and there is a skylit shaft that goes through the entire building, tiled in blue.

I loved this ceiling treatment:


And this window which ran across the entire front of the house:


Gorgeous tile and ironwork on the back patio:


Looking out into the blue:
  

And the most famous part, up on the roof:


And perhaps the coolest part, the attic:


And the famous facade:


It was a sunny warm day and we went for a shopping stroll after the tour. We ended up back at the hotel and made a lunch from the food available there. Then we walked over to find the Palau de la Música Catalana. It is an awesome spectacle of modernista style, both inside and out.

  

We pondered taking a tour, but then decided to buy tickets for a show on Sunday night, so I'll post inside pictures on that day.

Then we walked over deep into the Gothic quarter through narrow streets


to the Picasso Museum. It has a large collection of his early work and is housed in several Gothic palaces. So the artwork is stunning and the setting is fantastic. I didn't take any pictures while there. Duh.

We explored the Gothic quarter for a while and I found a store that sold a huge assortment of Caganer. This is something that I have just learned about last Christmas and was amused to find in real life. These are small sculpted figures that are squatting and pooping. They are traditionally included in the huge Nativity scenes in Catalonia. Really. Go read about them and about the huge upset when Barcelona didn't include on in the newly commissioned 2005 Nativity display. It's a modern tradition that the Caganer depicts a famous personage. In the picture below, the entire top row are Caganers, and there are some obvious Christmas-themed ones below that.



And here's a close-up so you can see some actual pooping by Tin Tin!


I had seen a photograph of a multi-stories tall Caganer in a mall in Spain on Fail Blog at Christmas time. And, no, we didn't buy any!

We had a late siesta of our own and then went for cocktails at Rita Rouge, which is on the edge of the rough part of town. After that we went to Taller de Tapas for dinner and ate very well: Gallic ham (more like Danish boiled ham) with smoked Spanish paprika, the best tomato bread of the trip, salt cod fritters, delicious braised octopus, and langostinos on a stick.  We found some fantastic gelato on the walk back to the hotel: B had creama catalana flavor and I had milk with cinnamon.

Spain did "spring forward" overnight so we had to deal with yet more time change.

We agreed to rendez-vous with Sandy and George at La Sagrada Familia. We were running late, but they were good sports about it, having found a café.



The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família was awesome! It was the best cathedral visit ever, even though it is still under construction. And there were lots of people there. And the toilets were under renovation.



I loved the more modern and organic design. I liked how it seemed more possible to worship Nature inside it.


I loved the ceiling:


And the windows:


And we got to go up high and walk down one of the spires:



And there was a cute man there:


We had more montaditos for lunch at Txapela, breaking Bruce's rule of never eating anywhere that they have pictures of food on the menu. In fact, the entire menu was pictures on the placemat.


And it was quite tasty! Sausages! (I'm still joking that those two asparagus spears in that sandwich were the only vegetables that I ate on the whole trip.) (Oh, and that sandwich is called a bikini. I don't know why.)


After lunch, Sandy and George went northward on the Passeig de Gracia, and we went south. We found a sweet shop with tiny little croissants in the window. How cute! (That's an espresso cup!)


We were to meet up for a good-bye dinner since Sandy and George were leaving the next day. But on the way to our hotel, getting on the subway, Sandy got pickpocketed. That pretty much ruined them for the rest of the trip. I don't blame them at all. At least all they got was her cell phone. But, alas, it had pictures from the Dali Museum and a video of the jewelry heart beating.

As an aside, this is the second trip we've taken with Sandy and George, and we've yet to tell them good-bye properly. The first trip, they were in getting massages when we were leaving. And this time, they opted out of going out and left the next morning.

We went for drinks at a really cool place right near the hotel, Boadas Cocktails, apparently the oldest bar in Barcelona. It was very old-school, tuxedoed bartenders behind a huge wooden bar pouring drinks from on high, walls lined with photos and autographs of famous patrons. (Later in the trip, we took a picture outside.)


Then we went to a place near our hotel that we passed every trip in and out, and called "the cured meat restaurant" because they had jamon in the window and lots of options on the menu. The real name of it is Julivert Meu. It's totally kitschy inside with pottery hanging form the ceiling. We ordered enough food for if Sandy and George had been there! We had the best jamon of the trip along with some lomo (pork loin) and two dried sausages, big salads, a huge duck confit leg, and three kinds of fish "carpaccio" (tuna, salmon, and cod; thinly sliced, raw, dressed with olive oil), two bottles of red wine, and a huge plate of make-your-own tomato bread (bread, with whole garlic and halved tomatoes on the side). Sadly, most of the jamon was gone before I decided to take a picture.

It was still supposed to be rainy the next day, so we decided that would be a good day to take the train to Figueres (about 1.5 hours each way on the train) to go to the Dali Museum. It turned out that we took the train into more rain than we were leaving, but by the time we got back to Barcelona, the rainy part of the trip was over. So, it turned out to have been a good decision.

We got a late start, still moving slow from the jet lag. We had a good walk up the main street, Passeig de Gracia, and had our first look at some of the modernista buildings.


Sandy and I got to knit on the train. We had a fun time gabbing and watching the Spanish countryside go by.

Figueres is a charming town with a lot of upscale shopping. The Dali Theater Museum is impressive. Dali himself conceptualized and decorated the whole thing. He is buried there. The outside of the building has giant eggs on it, as well as gold bread loaves and human figures. I didn't get a good shot of the outside because of the rain. (But if you click on the link, you can see pictures of the outside and more.)

There was so much good stuff in the museum. Many things that I expected, but many things I didn't. I fell in love with these wild ink drawings that were on the first floor. But there were many large works to grab attention. Crazy sculptures outside:


This piece was GIANT (that's me for scale in the second shot - I'm down by that little nut thing in the left corner of the first shot).


That's a mosaic that looks like Lincoln if you squint.


Here's Bruce and Sandy posing in a spotlight being reflected off of an ornate mirror:


And here's George out in the rain:


And perhaps the highlight, Dali created a room that, when viewed from a vantage point with a special lens, is a tribute to Mae West:


After the big museum, there's a second stop that is an amazing collection of Dali's jewelry creations. We were all surprised and impressed with the jewelry. I didn't get very many pictures here because my battery was dead. But I did get this one, which we all agreed was the highlight:

The jeweled heart in the middle moved! It looked like it was beating.

We had dinner at a place that was recommended to George, Tapas 24. It's a wildly popular place with mostly counter seating, brisk and brusque service, and a palpable energetic pulse. We ate cheese, tomato bread, shrimps, black rice (made with squid ink) with squid ribbons on top, oxtails and beans, and country pate. The oxtails were disappointing. They had great flavor, but seemed not to have been cooked long enough.

With the rain over, we were in high spirits and didn't mind strolling back down La Rambla. Bruce and I decided we were going to go try to find an absinthe bar that Hemingway supposedly frequented. But, it turned out to be on the bad (west) side of La Rambla and after seeing too many hookers and fearing getting mugged, we abandoned the plan (wisely) and went back to the hotel and drank some wine and wrote out postcards.

Breakfast at the hotel was excellent. They had real croissants! (And lots of other good stuff.) I discovered a Spanish Nutella-esque thing: Nocilla. I liked it better than Nutella. It seemed more chocolatey and less oily.

We met up with Sandy only, as George was still ill. The day was rather dreary and gray and there were occasional rain showers. We went to the big food market, La Boqueria and strolled and gawked. I was both in love and awe with everything there. I still cannot make sense of everything we saw. I took over fifty pictures while there. Here are some highlights.

Lots of jamon whole, sliced, in cones; and many other types of cured meats:



Bones:


Fruits and vegetables:



Spices:


Candy:


Foie gras:


Insane amounts of seafood:



Some of which we had no idea what they were, like these things on the right side below. The sign says "percebe candabrico". They look like little monster claws.

Later on in the trip, we saw some people eating a big bowl of them at a sidewalk tapas place, but we didn't want to be rude and stare to see how they were eating them.

When we got home I investigated and found out that they are gooseneck barnacles. They are only eaten (and considered quite a delicacy) in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. They are steamed and then one twists off a leathery outer coating of the stalk and bites the meat that was inside that is still dangling from the shell. The meat inside the shell is the sex organs and they aren't considered good. There's a YouTube video of how to eat them here. We didn't eat any.

And, of course, they had padrone peppers! (We loves these thanks to those Half Pint Farm folks.) We ate them several meals and they were exactly like how me make them at home.


That's probably enough about the market. If you want to see everything, go to my Flickr set for the trip.

After we left, we wandered and explored and shopped. We found a little bar with montadito tapas slices of baguette with tapas items piled on top, secured with a skewer. Many places are self-serve and they count your skewers to tally the bill. We ordered by pointing at things on the bar to get the three anchovy-egg ones and then said to surprise us with the other three.



We wandered a bit more and found a bit of home.


I was fading so we went separate ways. I crashed in the hammock and Bruce went exploring a bit more.

We met up with Sandy and George (who was feeling better) and we walked up into the Eixample for drinks and dinner. We found a bar at the Axel hotel and had drinks sitting outside. Then we had an excellent tapas dinner at La Flauta, thanks to David W. for the recommendation. We ate padrones, fried artichokes, jamon, asparagus and mushrooms, sardine fillets, foie gras, tomato bread, and creama catalana. This was probably the most upscale tapas we ate on the whole trip, and still it was pretty casual.



When we left the restaurant it was raining, a steady soaking rain. Nobody was very happy about getting soaked on the way back to our respective hotels.