Barcelona Again!

We didn’t have class on the third Friday of the program, so five other girls and I decided to rent an apartment in Barcelona for the weekend. I booked my tickets after the others and arrived later than they did on Thursday night. I met two of them at a cafeteria/ tapas bar near our short-term home in El Raval district. Both had rather scared faces when I arrived, which turned out to be because they had just sent a plates of ears back to the kitchen. Intending to order sheep’s milk cheese, or “queso do oveja,” they asked for the word that looked the most similar. “Oreja” directly translates to “ear,” and out came a plate of long, fried cartilage pieces. They still don’t know what animal they belonged to.
Staying in the apartment was great, even if it did mean sleeping on the couch pillows practically underneath the kitchen table. I passed the weekend seeing the sights I missed when here two weeks before. I rode the funicular (like a huge ski lift) from the side of a mountain down to the beach on Friday. Barcelona actually has two funiculars, one going up Montjuic and one going down. This one dropped me (not literally) right on one of the urban beaches, where I walked around before heading to La Boqueria for lunch. Bar Pintoxo (Pinocchio Bar) is a menu-less tapas bar that is always packed from opening at 6am to close at 4pm. I didn’t exactly know how it worked, but I got a seat between two enthusiastic Spaniards munching on langoustines and calamari with garbanzo beans. They both raved about the food as they happily chomped away, so I settled into my tiny seat prepared for a great meal. The five men behind the bar acted as servers, waiters, cooks, comedians, and overall entertainers. One told me the menu, giving recommendations throughout the short spiel. My grilled tuna steak with olive oil, calamari with flavorful tomato sauce, and langoustines (my neighbors’ looked so good!) sprinkled with chunky sea salt and drizzled with olive oil were amazing. I did feel a bit guilty about the langoustines because the pile of live critters was right in front of me on the bar. I watched one of the entertainers grab two fat ones and get pinched by another, before tossing them into the sauna. After I finished them, the pile of shells next to the pile of live ones was a slightly eerie juxtaposition. Two hours later, I waddled toward the apartment in dire need of a siesta.
Parc Guell- a hilly green space filled with Gaudi sculptures, architecture, and a few pieces of furniture he created for Casa Batllo- was just as interesting as every guidebook reported (pictures to come). I hiked up Montjuic, the lovely green mountain within Barcelona’s urban sprawl, on Sunday after reading a flyer for some sort of medieval festival that was to take place that afternoon. The huge celebration took place at the well-restored ancient castle on the mountain peak. I don’t know if it was an important birthday, or simply an annual fiesta, but I made it to the top to face a rather disturbing scene. The festival itself was great- lots of balloons, paper crowns, music, and costumes. The disturbing part was that, despite the bands playing funny instruments, lines of people dressed in old-timey military uniforms were shooting those long guns (bayonets?) at a rate of about fifty shots every five minutes. The sounds of those shots, on top of the canons they were also shooting, had lots of babies and children in tears. So while a jolly parade with larger-than-life puppets of past kings and queens marched through the castle and over the drawbridge, the accompanying mixture of medieval music, loud gun shots, crying babies, and canons echoed across the mountainside. My ears were ringing after twenty minutes, so I wandered back down, away from the madness.
That night, I met a family friend and her wonderful family for dinner. We walked to the restaurant from their hotel on the beach all the way into town and up Passeig de Gracia, the 5th Avenue of Barcelona. We ate at a very contemporary place with a simple menu. I believe the theme must have been “fresh” because it wasn’t Spanish, or Catalonian, or any recognizable origin. My “toro” tuna belly was delicate and delish, served only with sliced tomatoes sprinkled with black sesame seeds. The dessert I had was also wonderful- a take on the traditional Crema Catalana (Catalonian pudding dessert) with a whipped caramel pudding on top of a scoop of green apple sorbet. It was nice to speak English (and a bit of Spanish!) with such a kind family and the night was the perfect end to the relaxing weekend.