Autumn Arriving

The season is finally starting to change in Barcelona.

Sea Life

I've managed to go sailing! 

Visit from the Travelling Gourmet

Today's quote: Work, exert yourself and get stuck in-but above all, enjoy yourself as much as these dancing sunflower seeds.

The weekend started out with a nice catch-up drinks with the local aupairs in my town. The old part of town is picturesque and full of old stone buildings with coloured shutters and tumbling flowers. I'm not sure whether the giant plant pots installed in this stretch were intended to stop cars or just as decoration but it's always entertaining to find yourself caught up in a James Bond style dodging manouevre with a car on a narrow street with the pots adding to the fun. We've found a little bar in the square by the church where we can sit outside and enjoy cheap drinks. Unfortunately the low prices seem to mean even less motivation for the waiter who must have been close to running out of friends to phone by the time we left but at least the customers weren't getting in the way of him enjoying his Friday night.

I've been very privileged to recieve my second visit from the travelling gourmet! Naturally we met over lunch in Barcelona after a wander past the Arc de Triomf and through Parc de la Ciutadella in the sunshine.

Barcelona has a public 'pay as you go' bike system like London.

An electric car show was in action

Fountain in la Parc de la Ciutadella

I think I need to try this Vespa hire company

Lunch was a trip to Blue Project Foundation Cafe, a vegetarian experience specialising in raw food. The menu was a challenge as, despite being in English, there was a fair amount of new vocabulary needed in order to decipher the many ingredients necessary to create a 'Love Sandwich', 'Out of Space Salad', 'Magic Hummous' or a 'Live Sun Burger'. We managed to work our way through most of the menu and it was pretty educational and tasty, delivered in a suitably rustic setting.

Next stop: dessert! We may have already treated ourselves to a three course meal but it was all healthy with equally healthy portions (ie fairly small) so after a little walk some chocolate and churros was called for. La Xocolateria by Oriol Balaguer was definitely to place to go. We had a slight communication issue and thought our order of 8 churros (perfectly reasonable between 3 people) was being questioned when actually we had accidently ordered enough chocolate to keep a class-full of kids quiet for the foreseeable future. Challenge accepted, we got through a worrying amount of it. 

I should have got a better picture to demonstrate the scale!

I especially liked the tiled map on the wall depicting what we guessed would be different historical cocoa trade routes and the performance we were treated to with the 'make your own ice cream' option. The ice cream was flattened on a frozen chopping board and theatrically sprinkled with the chosen topping before being scooped up again. The frozen chopping board came into its own as the ice cream was left chilling for quite a while as travelling gourmet made up her mind.

Then time for a wander through El Born over to Mercat de Mercats Food Festival 2014. This took place just by the Cathedral and the ambitious name did live up to expecations. Just about every time of cuisine was represented and we had a great time grazing our way around. It became very atmospheric as night fell and the twinkling lights came on to light up the balloons flying from the stalls.

Cheeses in ice cream cones

Keeping the fan-weilding stereotype alive

On Sunday I met the travellers in Placa Reial in the centre, stopping for a quick dose of culture in a modern art gallery, before hopping on the metro to Poblenou for a stroll down the beach. Most of the residents seemed to be out and about playing sports. The more tanned the volleyball teams the better they seemed to be, I guess as a pretty direct correlation with time spent in the sun playing. 

Approaching Placa Reial

Placa Reial

I'm fairly sure this is an elephant

Never too young to take advantage of the outdoor gyms!

The unfortunate European love of speedoes was in full evidence at the volleyball

There was just enough time left to fit in a quick stop in a vintage market in La Ovella Negra (the black sheep). This is a large barn-like building housing a bar/restaurant that describes itself as a 'day and night experience'. They hold various events of which this market is one. I was a bit overwhelmed by all the selection on offer so opted to have a quick drink and walk through rather than sift through everything for some hidden gems. I would definitely return when I have the energy to hunt things down!

Culture Vultures

Today's quote: Take no notice of the firecrackers, you are the bomb. I was charged with taking the kids to buy fireworks for the fiesta of San Juan in the summer. This involved an awkward standoff because I didn't realise you needed ID to buy fireworks which became more awkward when I worked out that to buy the small firecrackers we wanted you needed to be 16. It will come in handy looking youthful one day!

After Saturday's excursion to Sitges, it was time for a day out in Barcelona. I hopped on the bus and was happily working away at my Duolingo (really handy language learning app on my phone) when the bus inexplicably emptied leaving only me and another headphone user seated and confused. As soon as I looked out the window the reason for the diversion became evident. Streams of people with Spanish flags and cars with horns blaring filled the streets leading up to the main square-Placa Catalunya. The 'Fiesta nacional de Espana' is a national holiday and used to be called 'El dia de la hispanidad' to celebrate the anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World on October 12, 1492. The change in name draws the focus away from Spain's historic colonialism and links with Latin America.

In Barcelona those who want Cataluyna to remain in Spain seemed to be using the holiday as an opportunity to promote ideas of unity. 

'Everyone's Spain'

Next on the agenda was a wander over to a lunch stop via the Cathedral and a breakdancing show who were taking advantage of the spectacular setting.

I think I may have overdone it with patatas bravas recently and decided Asian food sounded very appealing so we found the Vietnamese 'Bun Bo' round the corner from the cathedral. Initially there was a tense wait while our name was drawn up on the chalk board and our place in line, and even the wisdom of the chalk board system, was disputed with various customers. We were threatened by a serious looking waitress with a half hour wait before being being led to a table after all of about five minutes. 

Delicious chicken noodle salad

Bun Bo

A selection of Barcelona's museums and art galleries are free on Sundays and the best way to be a culture vulture is to take advantage of anything free! The Museum of History of the City in the centre gives an insight into the Barcelona of the Romans. You can walk around a whole section of the remains of the Roman city streets with a laundry area, wine making, fish-smoking, shops, houses and city walls. We were slightly dubious as to quite how they had deduced all this information from at times fairly sketchy details (different shaped pile of stones) but the historians are clearly the experts here.

I think it's interesting how concepts like spoons and rings have changed so little over thousands of years because the ideas are so simple and effective. These remains have been so well preserved because it has been underground for quite some time now. I'm pretty disconcerted walking above this area knowing that buildings were built on top of these ancient remains. It doesn't feel safe!

After culture vulturing everyone deserves ice-cream

My other culture vulture attempt recently has been to make my way through 'Love Story' by Erich Segal in Spanish which the host mum has kindly lent me. She loves the film although I haven't seen it. My lack of film knowledge constantly surprises the family who have definitely seen more English language films than I have. She assured me it would be a very easy read and was then apologetic when I showed her all my vocabularly from the first few chapters! I was finding I was getting the gist by reading through a chapter first then collecting lots of useful words with a dictionary the second time around.

Vocab learning attempts

I also have a new running coach! Her motivation techniques include shuffling hopefully over to me when I'm having breakfast and generally being so overexcited I think it will become difficult to skip a morning's run. We're establishing a good routine of a warm-up walk down to the beach with frequent stops to make friends and we leave no stone unsniffed. Then the serious work starts on the beach path. Apart from a few sit down protests when we have to leave the beach and start making our way back she's really well behaved. One friend-making technique seems to involve a fun game of picking the smallest dog on the beach to sit on but I always chat to the owners and they seem relaxed! On Tuesday we had a suspicious foot injury which I'm pretty sure she was faking because she miraculously recovered when another dog came past and she wanted to play. But I can't say I blame her, I rarely want to leave the beach either!

We also have a new game: Digging to Australia. 
It's a work in progress

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