This 'n' That in Barcelona

We're getting into the B life.  Yesterday, b'fast around 10am, heavy lunch at 3pm, light dinner (tapas) at 10pm.  Lunch prices are ridiculously cheap.  We stopped into an Italian restaurant, table cloths & linen napkins.  We chose between an appetizer or a salad, then a main course, then a dessert and a drink which could be anything from bottled water to wine or beer...all for 12 euros, about $14.

In Paris, at best that would get you a two-combo choice of an appetizer + main course, or a main course + dessert for 12 euros & that's all.  Drinks and the other course extra.

Food pics!!!

Our lunch main course, Susanne's mushroom/ham pizza & my spaghetti carbonara (ham):

After the heavy lunch, light dinner that night, three tapas...potatoes, olives, mild peppers:

We had our first yoga class this morning, Hatha style...more mellow than the Vinyasa we're used to but after going two weeks yoga-less on the ship, it was a very welcome shift.  Easy going movements, more emphasis on stretching/flexibility/relaxing, less on building strength.  No standing poses.  Our old bones appreciated that a lot.   It's a morning class twice a week, so we'll be back.

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Meet Dane, an American.  I would characterize him as a perpetually wandering professional student.  We chatted with him at length, very enjoyable; very nice guy.  He attended Ariz. State among many other schools.  He's living in Barcelona but also lived in Germany & Sweden & would like to study in Scotland; get a degree in archeology.

He lives in this freaky 'do all the time, an attention-getter.  Sleeps with it, on his side, of course.

He can draw a crowd.  Look at their faces.  He reminds me of our encounter with the biker dudes in Bozeman last year.  The old book/cover thing.

(By the way, we are returning to Bozeman in July.  So after we get back home, this blog will go dark until that trip starts.)

Here's an addition to the Señorita collection.  She is pondering who/what to TM next.  And yes, everyone seems to be staring into their palms here, too.

Spoiler alert...more food pics!  Dinner last night at an old (since 1890) very nice Catalan restaurant just down the street from the apt.  We often like to arrive at a nice place right at opening time.  We were the first diners.  It gave us the opportunity to meet & visit with the owner, James, a wonderful man with great English.  He advised us on our food choices & recommended a Spanish red that was perfect.  He took this photo.

This was the appetizer, a salmon/lox & avocado combo.

I am not a fan of rice-based dishes.  I love plain rice to be covered with Chinese, Japanese, Indian or other foods, but a rice based meal like risotto, not so much.  However, we are smack-dab in the middle of paella-land, so I decided to try it.  Here is the seafood version which is very popular.

I liked it & finished it but that will probably be my last paella for the trip.

Susanne ordered fish, turbot in a Catalan seafood-based sauce.  All you see is the sauce but there is a very nice fish swimming underneath.

Here's the wine.  I described what I wanted as a lightish red, soft, not too dry.  That's exactly what he served, as a half bottle, the right amount for us.  The man knows his wines.

Susanne imbibed and as a bonus, it didn't give her a migraine which reds usually do.  A large family of French tourists took up culinary residence at the table next to us. You can see a few of them through the wine glass and James taking their order.  Susanne chatted briefly with the Irishman in the red shirt.  From our table, she heard him speak in English.  By the time we left, the place was jumping.

When traveling, it is so true that strangers are simply friends you haven't met yet.

Breakfast in the apartment.  The three pastries from the patisseria just across our narrow street, a mere €2.60, about $3.  The blue bottle is the heavy cream we like, nata in Spanish and that brown container is raw brown sugar.  European plugs & sockets are big and klungy, probably because their line voltage is 250 V compared to ours, 120 V.

Susanne placed & took this shot.

OK, enough food already.

I'm going to try a video.  It's long, 1:14.  If you're subscribing to the blog by email, you have to go to the web (click on Steve's Travel Blog above) to view it.  Look at it a second time & click on the Full Screen symbol, lower right.  The focus goes to hell, but you get a better feel for the "happening".

I was wandering thru the Barcelona market off Ramblas when I heard this music, a group of musicians playing ancient & fraying instruments surrounded by people having a great time.  The man on the left who gets up and sits down.  The annoying lady taking a vid with her phone.  The lady on the right joining in, swinging a cloth.  The sitting man in blue with the big, fat cigar. 

This happening along with the Dane visit are Barcelona's travel gifts.  They don't come to you, you have to walk the streets of the city to stumble upon them.  It reminds me of a Sunday morning in Paris years ago when my ears led me to a 20-piece string group giving an impromptu concert of classics in the Place des Voges; enthralling was the only way to describe that.

You won't find these happenings by being herded off & on a tour bus or rushing to museums & monuments.  You can't plan them or buy them...they just randomly happen.  To me this is the difference between seeing a city and experiencing it and why, to everyone's amazement, we're in Barcelona for three weeks with no plans to be dashing madly about.

You simply walk the streets.

If you've experienced a travel gift, tell us about it in the comments section.

OK blog post, off you go!!!