Travelogue: Barcelona, Friday, 26 August 2011

28 August 2011

Barcelona reportedly has a very well-developed metro system, but one of the benefits of cabbing from place to place is that we get to see a number of different neighborhoods, albeit fleetingly.

We begin the day at a coffee and pastry shop down the street from hotel. Say what you will about Cappuccino UK’s pandering to a tourist crowd, the place speaks the international language of espresso drinks fluently.

Then, Park Guell, designed by Gaudi in the early 1900s for the city’s aristocracy. From there, we cabbed to Sagrada Familia. Neither Peter nor I felt like waiting in line to see the interior, so we cabbed instead to the famed Block of Discord.

Lunch: Cafe de L’academia, recommended by Rick Steves in his guide to the city. We split a salad and a bottle of white wine (from what we’ve read, the wine comes from the proprietor’s own vineyard), and I have sautéed squid with mushroom risotto.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the La Ribera neighborhood and the old part of town before returning to Taller de Tapas for dinner.

I tend to interpret cities comparatively, maybe because likening new places to familiar ones makes the adventure more manageable. Parts of Barcelona remind me of Paris, Prague, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and Munich … only cleaner and more welcoming. We’ve been here only a couple of days, but I understand why all our friends who’ve come to Barcelona speak longingly of it. Mi gusto.