Placa Catalunya from Le Cortes Ingles

We were too T

eating to remember to take pictures of the rest of the entries.

The Casa Battlo at Night

Louisa with Bruce and Marilee outside the walls of La Cité

In my "cuisine americaine"

Barcelona (Part 2)

Part of the reason that we came to Barcelona in the rain and the wind was to meet our friends, Marilee and Bruce from Pasadena. They had come to Spain for 3 weeks, and Barcelona was one of their last stops.

Unfortunately, their trip had been full of travel mishaps - lost luggage, sprained ankles, things not quite turning out as planned shall we say. By the time we caught up with them, they were just barely recovering from - well, something they ate that shouldn't have been eaten. Evidently.

Luckily they had a really swank 4 star hotel in which to throw up. But it worked out well for Dave and I, since every time we went out to eat, we ended up eating most of their food!

But as you can see, they managed to stay in pretty good spirits in spite of all. Because we had been in Barcelona before, and had had the previous evening to reaquaint ourselves with a little corner (the touristy one) of the city, they were at our mercy - at least for the first day. Before getting out and about, Dave and I abandoned our close to hostel hotel an moved into the Palacete Continental where we had stayed last spring. It was right around the corner from Bruce and Marilee, and the desk clerk remembered us - or at least had the grace to pretend he did. So we moved the car (without incident, this time), and moved back into the comfortable if slightly gaudy (our room was very, very, pink) Continental.

We just sort of wandered and eventually found this little demonstration against the "anti-immigration" forces. (There have recently been some well publicized expulsion of non-documented persons from Spain back to whichever African country they had come from and there has been a lot of discussion of immigration policies and illegal immigration, etc. etc. in the european media) - sound familiar??. The sign on this little self powered land-boat says that frontiers don't make sense. David noted that if anyone in the US had tried to drive a little motor boat on wheels down a regular city street, the police would have been all over them (not to mention that there clearly open containers in the vehicle!), but here they were left in peace.

Unfortunately, the same was not true for my purse.....just around the corner from this scene we stopped for a copa cava (glass of sparkling wine) and ice cream (another civilized approach - you can buy wine at your local ice cream stand). I put my purse down next to me and next to a row of potted plants that separated the little bistro tables from a bike lane and the street. Should have known better! Anyway, a hand came between the potted plants and started pulling my purse between them. Luckily, Bruce both noticed and had the presence of mind to pull it back! Also lucky that he won the tug-of-war. Then he (Bruce) stood up and started waving the long walking stick his was carrying and yelling "Ladrone! ladrone!" (Spanish for thief! theif!) and various other spanish expletives. Even so, the (two) would be theives - young guys in their 20's, I would guess - just fairly sauntered away. They did have the grace to dart around a corner when Dave went after them.


We had dinner at El Quatro Gats, which is a restaurant and brasserie where Picasso first showed his works back in 1903 or something. A nice belle epoch sort of place, with pretty good food, even though a bit tourist ridden. Though Barcelonans still seem to come here for special occaisions, and that sort of thing. The picture of Gaudi's Casa Battlo is just here as a tease - we only walked by it, didn't go inside, but perhaps the outside is enough. As you can see, it is particularly stricking at night, when the skull and bones theme to the decoration becomes even more obvious.






The next day we went out to "Barconaletta" which is the neighborhood by the harbor that still retains the feeling of a fishing village. The man at the local wine shop kindly gave us directions to "Can Ros" a local little seafood restaurant where we had a wonderful "riz negre" (black rice) which is rice flavored with squid ink. Just the thing, said Marilee, for queasy stomach!

In the evening, David and I hit the "Cortes Ingles" which is a big department store right on the corner of the Placa Catalunya (the Placa Catalunya is right at the end of "Las Ramblas" and essentially marks the border between the old "Barri Gotti" and the new (as of 1909 or so) "Eixemple" district. The picture at the top of this post is from their rooftop cafe -- department stores in Europe often seem to have cafes with great city views at the top. Our shopping in Barcelona - where prices seem to be well below those in France, especially for shoes and other leather goods - netted Dave two new pairs of shoes, a new shirt, and (matching of course) socks. By that I mean that the socks match the shirt, not one another, which you might or might not take for granted.

We headed home to Carcassonne the next morning - trying, without success, to beat a rainstorm.

Bruce and Marilee came with us in the more or less comfortable (maybe I should ask them?) seat of our new/old 1997 Renault Scenic. They only were able to stay 2 nights, 1.5 days, but we managed to get in 3 good french meals - no more sharing!