OK so this is where not reading and not paying attention really pay off.We rose up after the 11 hour beauty sleep with a plan of spending the day seeing various Gaudi buildings and Park Guell. Wandered up Las Ramblas finding office buildings and what not, over to the cathedral, and then took the subway in the general direction, we thought, of Park Guell. We missed by miles. Took the wrong train (yes our hostess had written all the instructions on the map she gave us....) and ended up somewhere in the French Alps I think. We would point to the map and say "Park Guell" and the people would shake their heads and look puzzled.
Barcelona is not a flat city, and it was quite hot and sunny that day. We walked the better part of 4 hours, seeing interesting parts of where ever we were, but not the park. Finally, hot, thirsty, footsore (oops I forgot to mention that last night, as we were out looking for dinner restaurant, we thought we'd pause for a little light libation and some tapas. I thought John had the cash with him, he thought I had the cash with me....I had to run back through the streets to our pension to get cash, leaving John at the bar....and got blistered feet in the process. The bar owner was quite gracious about the whole thing.) and bordering on peeved, we spotted a local pub doing a good business, with outdoor tables. A beer! Wine! We took a table, ordered the beer and wine, and then noticed that the table next to us had some gosh darn good looking plates of stuff that smelled delicious. We ordered the little fried squid - chopitos......wonderful.
And then the waiter figured out where we were on the map, and set us off in the right direction. Park Guell is magnificent (we got lost getting OUT of the Park too....) and the trek to find the little squid worth every mile.
1 comment:
We hadn't intended to eat, but it was a choice of eating or passing out from fatigue.
What a great restaurant. Nobody, but nobody, spoke English. Through a series of gestures, pointing and a mismash of French, Spanish and half mumbled nonsense we figured out where we were. The waiter even stayed to help us out while his co-workers were calling to him to pick up his other orders.
Besides the tasty squid the place had a very open minded attitude about dogs and one fellow customer on the sidewalk let me have a dog fix to get over my separation anxiety.
I am not sure if Nancy has mentioned this and I am not sure if this is right place to bring it up, it IS a food blog after all, but on our trip two years ago to visit Ren, she pointed out that in Paris that if you are a dog or a statue of a horse you do not necessarily have to be "fixed".
I thought I had more to say on this but maybe I will leave it at that.
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