On Friday, August 31st, we headed to Newark for our flight to Barcelona -- vacation officially kicked off with two sparkling glasses of cava at the Newark airport! We arrived in Barcelona first thing on Saturday morning and proceeded to the Hotel Neri, an adorable little hotel in the Barri Gotic. Hotel Neri is on a street so narrow that our cab driver at first couldn't find it, and then could barely drive down it. We were offered a very-much needed cup of coffee while we checked in. We then spent the day walking around the Barri Gotic and Ciutat Viella, and saw the cathedral -- complete with beautiful white geese in the cloisters. We sat down for a sandwich at a little cafe (olive oil on the bread of a ham and cheese- check it out people). We asked for the check afterwards. 20 minutes passed. Rachel finally went up to the bar and paid herself. We imagine that we'd still be sitting there waiting for the check if she hadn't!
After a stop at the Museo Picasso, which was really special, we headed back to the hotel and crashed before waking up for our first dinner at Restaurante Roig Robi, which was far away enough from our hotel that Rachel asked "are we still in Barcelona?" during our taxi ride. The long distance turned out to be worth the wait as we had a to-die-for tuna tartare in a sesame dressing and an amazing veal dish.
On Sunday morning, we woke up early and headed to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's one hundred fifty-year-in-the-making church. We entered through the "Passion" facade - Christ on the cross pictured below.
The actual front door of the church has "Give us this day our daily bread" carved in over 50 languages.
This is the "Nativity" facade, which also depicts the life of Christ.
We continued our lesson on the architecture of Gaudi, heading to la Pedrera and Casa Batllo. We took a tour of Casa Batllo which we both loved.
On Sunday night, we headed to Camp Nou to experience Sunday Night Football, Catalonian style. We saw FC Barcelona play Valencia. Husband, having only been to a live soccer match in Argentina, where they are apparently so worried of post-game violence that they literally fence in the "cheap seats" allowing the rest of the attendants to clear out of the stadium before letting loose the real hooligans, was beyond surprised to find that Camp Nou was perfectly clean, in a safe neighborhood, and we did not need to fear for our lives for attending. He was even more pleasantly surprised that the food was not only edible, but a hot dog was 2 euro (versus the $9 Yankee dog we are used to)! I was thrilled that it was a non-smoking facility (but bummed that it was alcohol free). We even had an old-timer behind us who took it upon himself to enforce the no smoking rule.
The match (which Barca won 1-nil) did not start until 9:30pm (read: Rachel read the 21:30 to mean 8:30, math fail), which left us relying on those 2 euro hot dogs for dinner. Arriving back at the Hotel Neri past midnight, we were informed that the hotel bar was closed, but that "many" places in the neighborhood were still open. They were not. Or they were so sketchy as to bespeak caution to the wary tourist. Our thirst unslaked, we threw that caution to the wind and entered an empty dive bar worthy from its appearance (or so Christopher thought) of the lowest of the lower east side of Manhattan. But Rachel was right, and it turned out to be a good place for a tipple, and so closed our first full day.
Monday would be known as "the day of Plan Bs", a rare occurrence in a 15 day journey. Rachel had lunch, dinner and after-dinner drinks spots all picked out, all of which were closed on Monday (boo Spain, boo. Also, clues to your economy - I note very few places in the United States close three days a week). For lunch, we had tapas (too many tapas) in a little square in the Raval.
We then walked to the St. Josep marketplace and admired all of the stalls filled with amazing fish, meats, spices, nuts, candies, etc. We stopped at one stall for a copa de vino :) That night we dined at Rias de Galicia, where we were chastised by our waitress (in Spanish mind you - she couldn't (or wouldn't) say a word in English) for not sucking on the heads of the shrimp (can't do it Sally) and also closed the place down - at one point, we knew we had another course coming, which Rachel asked about in Spanish, but the waitress thought we were asking if we could order an additional course - she checked her watch and said "no". It was a lovely meal and a very special place.
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