Author: cpcrowley

Santa Caterina Market 2

They had whole booths for eggs:

The goose eggs (at the far left) were pretty big but then we ran across this one:

These are ostrich eggs, only 28 euro each.

The market is mostly fresh food but they had deli stuff also. We plan to make a picnic tomorrow from there. Today we ate at a little cafe in the market. It was very good. They say Barcelona is a foodie town, that seems to be true.

We sat right by the cooks, this guy was friendly and was making jokes with us and took the above picture. He was the grill cook; to the left was the station for the guy who did things in frying pans and pots.

Notice the writing above on the back of his shirt, menjar i beure.  Those of you who know some Spanish know that that is not Spanish. It is a good example of Catalan.  Google Translate tells us it means “food and drink”.

Barcelona Markets

We love to go to markets when we travel. Today we went to the Santa Caterina Market, the has a festive colored and wavy roof which we didn’t get a picture of. This is not the more famous La Boqueria market just off the middle of the Ramblas, our hotel recommended this one. It was an amazing place with beautiful fruits and vegetables:

We got some strawberries for breakfast tomorrow and some tiny little bananas that we heard are really good, from Columbia I think he said.

The market is all food. Here is ome of the meat and fish:

 

Gaudi backlash

Here is the sink in our hotel:

And the toilet is squared off too:

But not as much as the one we saw in Italy last year:

Holy rectilinear Batman!

What is going on in the land of Guadi? We are looking forward to seeing the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona in a few days, and Guadi, as a sort of angular anti-Will Rogers’s never met a right angle he liked.

The sink, by the way, does not really drain well with its flat bottom.

Purple play-doh on a pretty plate

Here it is:

It seems obvious now and probably to you.

We ate at Alfileritos 24, at Calle de los Afilteritos 24 (cute huh?), the guidebooks said “Modern international”. Our hotel manager, Enrique, recommeded it and called it just “24”. I guess that is what the young, hip crowd calls it and Wynette and I, with our combined 125 years, always try to go where the cool kids go. Overall it was very good.

This is the appetizer we got “carpaccio de pulpo” Somehow, despite our hipness, they gave us the English menu which called it “Roast octopus”. When we got it, it seemed like the wrong order. Where’s the octopus I thought. And it seemed kind of small for 10 euro. Wynette agreed although she was looking at it from the other side of the table so I guess it is mostly my error. We were this close to asking the waiter about it when I suddenly realized that the plate was all black and the pattern on it was, in fact, our octopus. It would have been highly embarrassing and a big hit to our hipness if we had asked. Anyway, once we found the cleverly cleverly-hidden-as-a-pattern-on-the-plate octopus, it was very good and we were off to a great start with the meal.

The play-doh does look like a kid shaped it. It was potato and turnips (and purple coloring) and was good too.

I’ll refrain from posting pictures of all the other courses, which we did take.

Fashion report

We often see new fashions in our trips to Europe that we see a year or two later in the US. But maybe it is Albuquerque and the fashions are happening at the same time in New York, probably so. Anyway for those of you not living in New York, or Europe, we have been seeing a new fashion: women wearing short-shorts, often colorful, and knee-length soft leather boots. A good fashion for young women because only a young woman could pull it off without looking ridiculous.

In-Cider

Both Wynette and I like hard cider. We each learned about good cider in England where every pub has cider. Spain has cider too. In the north they make what we hear is really good cider. We are looking forward to it when we get to Barcelona.

We had cider with our tapas. Actually not cider but perry, pear cider. There were two choices available: Strongbow and I forgot the one we had Bulmers (you can see it in the tapas picture), both English ciders. Why not Spanish cider?

Well, maybe I can get Spanish cider at the Irish pub down the street.

Luck of the Irish

What’s the deal with Irish pubs? It seems like everywhere I go there are Irish pubs: England (understandable), Albuquerque, Italy, and now Toledo, just a couple of blocks from our hotel, John Daley and Company. I’m Irish myself but not a big drinker so maybe that’s why I don’t understand.

Looking like a tourist

Post by Charlie: Of course, anyone can tell we are tourists, our unstylish American clothes to start with and on from there. Still sometimes it feels funny to be standing around looking at a map. I got an app for my iPod Touch called CityMaps2Go for $2 you get access to thousands of maps from all over the world. You can download the ones you want and access them offline. We have one of Toledo. So I can stand around looking at my map but look to all the world like some guy checking out his phone, as people do for hours at a time. Plus the kindle app has eight guide books downloaded to it.

Of course, if I had a real smart phone I would have all that integrated but that is too 21st century for me, and there are no monthly charges for this. I was thinking of getting a GPS attachment for my Touch but decided against it, maybe next time.

Speaking of phones, we have a limited sample but it seems like there is less use of phones at meals here, definitely some but less. I haven’t seen any cases of two people sitting at dinner and both staring at their phones. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just indicates that we have entered a new era in interpersonal relations and I wonder a lot exactly where it will all lead. Some communication requires a lot of “wasted” time around it before you get to the really good communication. With a phone there there is no need to put up with any “wasted” time because there is always something else you could be doing.

Don’t call me late for dinner

Post by Charlie: The Spanish eat ridiculously late. Lunch is 2-4 and dinner is 9-11 or later. This can be a problem for tourists. Some restaurants open for lunch at 1 but usually it is 1:30. We are still jet-lagged so we fit in pretty well. We woke up at 10 were ready to go out touristing by 11 and had lunch at 2, early but within Spanish bounds.

Dinner is more of an issue. Last night we had tapas for dinner. You probably know about tapas, an old Spanish custom where you had bar food to go with your drinks. It developed into an established culinary form where you would go bar-hopping in the early evening (7 or so) and have the specialty tapas at each bar, then go have dinner at 11 or 12.

This seems to have developed into something a little different. We had  “todo tapas”, a tapas sampler, basically a dinner in the “small plate” form that seems to be popular now in lots of countries and food styles. It is a way to have an early dinner and get to bed at a decent hour. Lots of the restaurants have this.

It seems like a good deal for the restaurants. We were in the bar at a tiny little table with lots of people around us. No big dinner set-up, packed them into a small space, sell lots of high-margin alcohol, what’s not to like for the restaurant? And it worked for us too. The “small plate” idea is great because you get to have lots of tastes and, as we all know, the first bite is always the best (or is that the first toke? I forget.)

So this will be our dinner solution and the solution for lots of people it seems. The couple next to us was having an orange fanta and water so they weren’t there for the drinks. Note by Wynette: We split a pear cider.  Very good.