Best Tapas Ever!

After a full day of sightseeing with stops at the Cathedral and the Barcelona History Museum, we were determined to go to dinner a little earlier than the past two nights. So we headed out at 7:30 pm to a restaurant called Inopia. It's a modern tapas place that was opened by Alberto Adrià, the brother of Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame (where Alberto is also the pastry chef). It's been written up in all sorts of publications and was featured in an episode of "Spain On the Road Again" where Gwyneth Paltrow proclaimed it BTE (Best Tapas Ever!)

We got there about 7:45 pm and there was a short wait. You can see my name first on the board! Of course, when we went inside, I realized that there was really only one table in this place. That's the table that Mario and Gwyneth ate at. The rest of the place is jam packed with stools, shallow counters and a big bar.

When we were led in, the greeter told me there were enough places for us, but not enough chairs yet. This turned out to be a strategy they employed. People would be led in and given some counter space - then you wait to swipe chairs when others left, so there was a constant shortage, but the newcomers were the ones who suffered until they figured out the swiping tactic. You'd think they'd just order 6 more stools and be done with it!

So the girls got stools within 5 mins or so, and it was another 10 mins before Sean swiped one for me. He stood the whole meal, but that was out of choice.

We ordered a ton of stuff. The menu was largely indecipherable (download it from their website if you don't believe me!) and our waiter didn't have a huge command of English. But we muddled through. And pointed a few times.

We had the following (in no particular order):

• Patatas Bravas - fried potatoes served with aioli and a little hot sauce, these were outstanding. A specialty of the house.
• Fried Prawns - interesting preparation, they were fried in their shells, I didn't quite get the point of this dish, although the prawns were very fresh so ultimately tasty.
• White Asparagus with vinegar and mustard - this dish was good but not other-worldly. It was the most pricey dish at 13 euros.
• Chicharricos - this dish was a total mistake. We thought it was a chorizo-like sausage. It turned out to be fried pork rinds. Only dish we didn't finish.
• Olive sampler - loved the arbequinas and the aragon negras.
• Pimiento del Padron - this turned out to be small roasted peppers that were spectacular, and I don't like peppers as a rule.
• Croquettes - potato and jamon (ham) fried up, nothing could screw this up. We ate two servings but each serving was really small...really....
• Bikinis - this is the Barcelona slang for ham and cheese toasted mini sandwiches, sliced into triangles. I could eat this every day. We had to get another order for the girls. Later, we tried to get a third order, but they were sold out. SOLD OUT! Of a dish that consists of cheese, ham and white bread!
• "Chicken Dippers" - this is what our waiter called this dish. It was basically strips of white meat fried with what seemed like a coating of potato chips. It was excellent!
• Chicken Kebab - considering this dish is just chicken on a skewer, it was very good.
• La Bomba - "potato with meat inside" is how our waiter described it. We went with it. It was good - a giant meat-filled croquette.
• Anchovy olives - again our waiter practically insisted we get this - 2 little white anchovy-wrapped olives. Not something I'd normally go for, but really not bad.
• Rabbit Ribs - yes, we did get this. Blame the waiter. It was a little like frog's legs - very small. And fried. It was good but alas, the girls were squeamish about eating Thumper and Sean didn't care for it. I ate it all.
• Torta Canarejal - we saw this pictured on a poster hanging up. We thought it was a dessert like a giant cream-filled choux pastry. Insead, it was a giant torta of creamy soft cheese, served with crispy rounds of bread. Not what we expected but good nonetheless. The couple next to us loved theirs so much that the gal was practically scraping all the cheese bits off the rind.
• Pineapple served with lime shavings and molasses - I don't usually like pineapple but this dish was seriously good. The little bits of lime did it for me.

OK, I think that was it. There was a lot of food and most of it was inspired. All told, our bill was quite low, but from what I can decipher, we weren't charged for a few dishes. No wonder, I could barely keep track of everything!

I predict this will prove to be our best meal in Barcelona.

Happy Pills

In keeping with our candy-heavy trip, we went to a cute little candy shop called Happy Pills today. It's a very narrow little storefront on Avinguda del Portal de l'Angel, so it would be easy to miss. The space is efficiently filled with bins of many kinds of gummies, mini chocolates and lots of other unrecognizable sweets. But their specialty is the presentation - you pick your candy of choice and it's packaged up like medicine. With cute stickers.

We got many kinds of gummies (love the extraordinary choices available here!) including happy face gummies, gummy tarantulas, butterflies and lips (two kinds of lips were available - regular and Rolling Stone with tongue sticking out). The chilli pepper shaped gummy was actually really spicy and peppery - I had to spit it out :( Everything else was great.

Thai Food in Barcelona

My pre-trip plan for dining at popular restaurants had been to try and go early (8 pm) to beat the local crowds who dine closer to 10 pm. Of course, this strategy didn't really work yesterday since we were on the bike tour til 8 pm, stopped for a fortifying post-ride gelato and needed a little horizontal rest on a couch afterwards.

So it was just after 10 pm by the time we headed down the street to a well-reviewed tapas bar near our apartment. And it was packed. With people standing around outside the front, all milling about. It didn't look promising.

We saw another restaurant down the street and wandered over to check it out. It turned out to be a Thai restaurant, called Thai Garden, with a very persuasive Thai lady out front who talked us into dining there.

The food was all pretty good - I asked her to make sure it was authentic. The restaurant was gorgeous inside, much higher end than it had seemed from the outside. And it was pretty full with locals. The prices were definitely high - the most egregious was 4 euro 30 cents for a serving of jasmine rice. You could buy multiple sacks of rice at that price in Thailand!

It turned out to be a very enjoyable meal. I think one of our family goals may be to try a Thai restaurant in all the big cities we visit!

Biking through Barcelona

In a flash of brilliance last month, I decided that on our first day in Barcelona, we were going to do a family bike tour since all four of us have now had extensive bike riding experience. So after an all-too-short rest in the afternoon, we readied ourselves for the 4:30 pm tour.

It turns out that there are 3 or 4 different companies that offer bike tours here - we ended up picking Barcelona Ciclo Tour, primarily because they departed from Plaza Catalunya, which was right next to our apartment.

Fortunately, they had a bike just my younger daughter's size (8 yr old) so we were all set. We were on a tour with 12 others, 8 of whom were American. The tour was billed as being appropriate for all ages. I have to admit that my little one was quite wiped by the end (there was a bit of an uphill stretch) - but overall, she did wonderfully well.

We rode all around Barcelona, spending a good part of the time on pedestrian-only streets. We biked for about 90 minutes, then stopped at a beachside cafe for a drink and a rest. Then biked on for another hour or so - it was great way to get an overview of the city, since we went by all the major sights. It was also relaxing. Well, it was until we spent a few miles on congested city streets in the evening rush hour. Then it wasn't quite so relaxing for a while trying to keep track of the kids.

I highly recommend this as a great way for a quick overview of the city. It also helps to burn off all those tapas and fried dishes that you'll be eating...

I love Papabubble!

After a morning of wandering around Barcelona, we headed to Papabubble, an artisan candy store that we had read about a few months ago. It was rather an unprepossessing storefront and if we hadn't been on a quest, I don't know that we would have stopped in.








But it was wonderful inside. Two employees were pulling a long mass of candy, white in the middle, green on the outside. We saw an order form with a hand drawn picture that showed the picture on the candy to say "Silvia & Carlos". It was a personalized wedding order. We watched them pull the candy, cut it off into long cylindrical sticks, roll them to cool off and then cut them into little individual hard candies. It was so much fun AND we got to have a sample as well - the writing on the candy was teeny but clear. I wish all the best for Silvia & Carlos with their clever candy choice.







After we watched them make candy for a while, it was hard to choose which flavors to buy - so we bought a few mixed bags. My favorite so far has been passionfruit, but many of the other flavors were excellent as well. And you can recognize the flavor quite easily - they use high quality ingredients.
We left with a bulging bag of candy and have since tried a number of other flavors. All in the name of tasting for this blog obviously! I want to go back tomorrow...

Greetings from Barcelona

We finally arrived at our apartment in Barcelona around 9:15 pm, to be met by a very nice man from Friendly Rentals, who checked us in and showed us around. We're in a lovely 2 bedroom place on the fourth floor of a grand old building. Our location cannot be beat - we are about 30 yards off Plaza Catalunya, the main square in Barcelona, right on Passeig de Gracia, a large tree-lined boulevard. With great shopping, I'm told. All in all, a perfect location for me.

The apartment is exactly like the description and photos - which is always a relief. Although I have to admit that all my rentals have turned out very well. You can take a look at it here.

We wandered outside about 10 pm to find some dinner and ended up at a rather touristy tapas bar across the street called Txapela, which served 51 different kinds of tapas (not including their desserts and daily specials). We had 17 little plates of the savory course and 2 for dessert. Considering we were all tired and jet-lagged, this turned out to be a great meal. My kids now like tapas rather a lot :) Our strategy was first to get 1 piece of lots of things, and then to re-order the ones we liked. It worked out very well!

No Time to Blog!

It's been so hectic in the past couple of weeks. The last week of school combined with my starting a new project has meant that I've been swamped of late.

I was in NYC a few days ago and was planning on a long detailed blog about the trip, but I need to pack for our departure for Barcelona tonight. Or at least finish all the laundry I'm doing. So you'll have to console yourself with a few highlights:

• my taxi tried to break all land-speed records getting me from JFK to Midtown, including hitting warp speed as the lights flashed by in the Midtown Tunnel
• I had a nice dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar, sitting at the bar by myself, and had a fabulous dish of raw sliced hamachi with an edamame puree and little bits of crunchy seaweed scattered over the top. The chef David Chang has won all sorts of honors, and I've managed to experience 2 of his restaurants. Just 1 to go...
  
• my exercise consisted of a rapid 40 block walk (there and back) up to Dylan's Candy Bar on the Upper East Side. Dylan's has moved their cafe and party room up to the 2nd floor considerably expanding both the main floor and the basement area. More room for candy!
• my quick lunch was down in the basement of Grand Central Station in their "Dining Concourse" which was a very nice food court, where all the vendors were local or independent businesses. I had a nice slice from Two Boots pizzeria but was eyeing a lot of other potential stops, including an enormous salad from Juniors. I did end up with a scoop of gelato from Ciao Bella later in the day.

All in all, a very quick 24 hour stay in New York. However, I'll be back there in less than 3 weeks, so no big deal.
Today, as I realize we're leaving for the airport in 8 hours, I'll risk boring you with my priority list for the day, in no particular order.

• Water orchids
• Wonder if bringing 5 pairs of shoes is insane (in my defense, one pair is just flip flops for the pool, which really shouldn't count - and another is a pair of heels since I need to add a few days to the end of the trip for some business meetings)
• Hunt for sunblock
• Realize that kids are trying to bring the entire contents of their rooms crammed into a small backpack wheelie, and take half the things out of their wheelie. Check throughout day to ensure that said items are not surreptitiously snuck back into the wheelie.
• Laundry, laundry, laundry
• Stop by the local bowling alley to book younger daughter's birthday party in July. One month later than her birthday. Oh well - she'll celebrate her actual birthday in Spain. What kind of place doesn't allow you to book a party over the phone or online? You guessed it - a bowling alley!
• Conclude that adding 3 days of meetings to the end of a big family vacation trip is really much more effort than it's worth, now that I need to pack heels and multiple work outfits that will not be useful in the south of Spain. Not useful at all.
• Start mentally preparing myself for my first over-the-water trip in Economy class in 10 years. Really. Yes, I'm spoiled.
• Start preparing my children for their first over-the-water trip in Economy class ever. Really. Yes, they're spoiled.

OK, must go make a cup of tea and chill. See you in Barcelona!