Saturday, May 2, 2009

Barcelona - Week 1 in Spain

We're staying in the Sweet BCN Home in Barcelona in the north side of the Eixample area. Our hostal is interesting --(note: it's not a hostel) we have 2 twin beds in our room with a small sliding window that leads to the shared dining room space outside our room.  We can hear anything and everything that happens outside our room and outside the building. There's one shared bathroom on our floor and the shower door only goes half way past the tub. I still don't understand why shower doors don't go all the way across. There's this one European couple staying next to us and everytime they walk in the hallways or hang their clothes outside, we know because we can smell them.  Very musky, I tell you!

My sister Francine and her boyfriend Alex met up with us in Barcelona for a few days. We saw several buildings and parks designed by Antonio Gaudi that were all very lovely. We went to the Chocolate Museum, Picasso Museum, Las Ramblas, several catedrals, etc... 

We did find out fast that food here is not that affordable. The euro to the dollar really made our chances of eating well on a budget a bit hard. So lately, it's just been supermarkets and sandwiches everyday. They sure love their bocadillos and tapas here.  We ate at the Sagardi tapas bar where the tapas are lined at the bar with toothpicks through each one. You get a plate and when you're done eating they charge you by the number of toothpicks. Each toothpick tapa was 1.70Euros which is about $2.35 dollar.  The tapas were not that big. We did splurge on a few meals here though. We ate at Inopia, the tapa restaurant owned by Ferran Adria's brother. We loved it! We ate at a traditional Catalan restaurant Les Quinze Nitz well known by several tour books because there were over 100 people lined up for dinner 30 minutes before the restaurant opened.  And I must say, service was quick and our food was delicious. There was still a line of 50+ people when we left at 10pm.  Amazing!
 On another night, Elgin and I decided to try Dos Palillos, an asian tapas restaurant owned by Albert Raurich (who was the Chef de Cuisine for elBulli from 1999 to 2007). The restaurant was good, but extremely expensive and overpriced. We had 4 dim sum shrimp and pork belly dumplings that were made as well as Yank Sing and it cost 7.50Euros = $10.35!! Then 1 japanese mini slider burger for 4.90Euro = $6.75 (i'm pretty sure it wasn't made with kobe beef)!  I think that's high way robbery right?! Anyhow, we tried a few things on the menu, and left for McDonald's to satsify the rest of our hunger.

Top 10 things we've noticed about Barcelona so far:

1. There's a lot of dog piss and shit lying on the ground - we are always watching the floor warning "POOP!"

2. Catalans like to wear their pants ultra-low because we've seen a LOT of crack. Both men and women.  Women also wear these pants that are extremely baggy and have a very low inseam -- thai style of some sort??

3. They love their yogurt - Danone aka Dannon was created in Barcelona - their supermarkets have very large sections of yogurts

4. Pizza is not good here (period).

5. Food is very expensive here - even cheap food is not cheap. Locals think it's expensive and they stopped tipping.

6. The tour book says that people here eat lunch from 14:00 - 16:00. It's not true, most places are actually closed at this time and only serve bocadillos and some tapas.

7. They siesta for more than a couple hours. I'll see some stores closed for 4-5 hours in the afternoon.

8. Barcelona has a reputation for pickpocketing, but it still feels safer than NYC. Even though we just saw an unsuccessful pickpocketing crew in the subway today.

9. They love their futbol! This past weekend was a game between Barcelona and Madrid and we heard gun shots and canons go off every time there was a goal. It was actually really scary.

10. Bocadillos (mostly baguette type sandwiches), tapas, aceitunas (olives), anchoas (anchovies) and jamon (cured ham). -- yes, it's true, we miss our rice and noodles :(

No comments:

Post a Comment