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Enjoyiing the rays
Floating art viewing the architecture and passers-buy from the Barcelona Harbour..After Will and Marika awoke at noonish yesterday Kim whipped up an egg and ham dish - Kim noted how yellow the yolks were and we all thought it the most delicious eggs we had ever wolfed down - and Marika and Will didn't even ask for Ketchup.
As we walked to our local Metro - the Rocafort stop on the Red Line, we noticed multiple large bins on each corner. I have been seeing people putting things in the bins and assumed they were for local businesses. Not so - every intersection in our Eixample region has these bins - it is where residents dutifully deposit their organics (like our green bins in Ottawa), paper, metal, glass and garbage. While I have not explored the rate of recycling here, it is an interesting concept rather than individual pickup at every residence - when I compare it to the piles of fetid trash lining Manhattan streets every morning, it certainly seems a good option.
Marika and Will climbed on lions at the Christopher Columbus monument at the foot of La Rambla and we wandered about the Mediterranean waterfront. This morning we saw we had a message from Kim's Aunt
Cartalaginians?
Marika and Will observing rays and sharks from a moving pathway. Peg in Washington DC - we visited Aunt Peg and Uncle Pete last August and had a wonderful time with them as always. Anyway Aunt Peg told us to pay tribute to the statue as that is where Aunt Peg and Uncle Pete met - and then hitched a ride with a street cleaner in the wee hours of the morning!!!!!!
Why in the world would we visit an Aquarium of all things while in Barcelona? What's next - Disney stores? Aquariums are just one of our things - we always visit them and compare them to other ones we have seen including Chattanooga (?!), San Diego, Philly/Camden, Tampa, New Orleans, Vancouver and Boston. The highlight was a slow moving footpath that trawled us through a shark and ray tank.
We have visited our local grocery store every day mainly for fruit and veggies - veggies are almost unheard of in restaurants in Spain- not an easy place to be a vegetarian and a feat of magic to be vegan... At first I assumed the shopkeep stayed close to us to ensure we weren't lifting anything, but yesterday as we picked some ham he caught our attention, shook
Balconyville
Our backyard balcony neighbourhood - these 'squares' are part and parcel of every block in our Eixample region. his head and directed us to, in his opinion, a better option - now we say hi every time we pass the shop.
As luck would have it a wonderful pastry shop gaurds the entrance to our metro, and we pay a toll of sorts with a purchase - yesterday we had a pain au chocolate better than any Kim and I had in Paris (Will was only 3 months old then...).
The highlight of the day was our first true Catalonian meal - "Smattering of classic Catalonian tasty tidbits" in Kim's words: whole sardines - who knew they could be half a foot long?; local chorizo sausage (salchicha) which was to die for - mild, moist and delicate; Catalan white beans which Will said melted in his mouth; local ham; potatoes which were boiled I think but somehow slightly sweet; and squid of course - calamares romane - tender as can be and lightly dusted with a crust and drizzled with lemon - the kids insisted we order a second plate. Kim and I agreed the pale yellow cava sangria we had was far and above the best ever - not too sweet, fruit like nectarines we
Jailed !
Our apartment's lift - only big enough for three! could taste and very refreshing. We decided that for dessert we would share the two offerings we had never heard of - Honey with cord and Pyjamas de casa. The former was Greek (Kim thought) honey with something like slightly dried yoghurt - I loved it and the kids demurred. The pyjamas were an indulgent sweet festival of cream, ice cream, fresh fruit and sauces - the kids did not demur. Meson David has been in business since 1920 and has a reputation for being noisy with cranky waiters and outstanding locally sourced Catalan food - right on all counts. Kim and I landed on this option as we tag-teamed cross-referencing Fodors Barcelona on the ipad and Trip Advisor reviews on the laptop. Will just woke up and in his words "Delicious and it looked cool - especially the fish". Marika has joined us and has this to say"The fish looked looked disgusting to look at".
During the afternoon we tried the local 'fast food' staple - big chunks of fried spicy potatoes with mayonnaise - what's not to love?
In spite of the sun beaming into our living room now the forecast is dodgy so depending when
Going down
Will, Marika and Kim brave the lift. Marika and Will awake, we may take a train fr a couple hours to Figueres on the Costa Brava to visit the Salvador Dali museum and enjoy some different regional Catalan tastes. (BTW - almost everything is trilingual here - Castillian spanish, Catalan spanish which Barcelona is the conerstone of, and English).
Will asked me to add a word about the bridge - as we walked across a pedestrian bridge on the waterfront a claxon horn blared, but we skirted the barrier and just made it across the bridge before it split sideways sort of to allow a sailboat with a tall mast to enter the adjoining marina which also sheltered multimillion dollar yachts.
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