So she said, “that’s an apartment building. How much do you think it costs to live there?” Well, note that it’s on Passeig de Gracia, the Rodeo Drive of BCN. I said “maybe we could live across the street in the plain building, where we could SEE the Gaudi, that would be better, wouldn’t’t?”
8^D
Mrs likes the Gaudi, I like the Gawdy. All the small picturesque shops did n’t really catch my eye, but this big display in a big store, did. I personally believe the world cannot have too many rubber chickens.
I caught this display, too. I have in mind that I would be providing a service to show fashion windows from all the cities I visit, but I haven’t conquered the technical photographic issues of glass-glare.
I had some shots in Naples that were fascinating but almost wholly unvisible because of the glare. I haven’t seen a window of fashion in PRG, yet, that I wanted to snap.
I also hate graffiti, just the gang-tagging, but I love the streetart. These are some samples from just around our hotel I snapped that last day.
The first time we had gone to El Congrejo Loco, the crazy crab, we had seen people finishing up lunch as we went into dinner, but we didn’t understand that. Now you’d think the crazy crab would be some dive with corrugated tin walls and license plate decorations, but it is a very elegant dining hall, with 3 different rooms on two levels.
And now we were educated, cultivated BCNn diners, so we walked around all morning, denied ourselves any tapas, and wound up at the Crab 2ish, on the acceptable early end of lunch. I had come back, not for more barnacles, but for other new dining experiences.
I started off with cockles, steamed open then doused with olive oil and lemon juice. They were salty little boogers, almost as much as the barnacles. We had a nice little sauvignon blanc to wash them down.
Mrs got something they called a daily lunch, a fixed menu, salad, soup, salmon, and tira misu. The salad, she loved of course. The soup she doesn’t remember much about, except that she will have it again if I take her back to BCN . . .8^) . . .
The salmon she remembers very clearly . . . 8^D . . . it’s apparently hard for restaurants to get the right judgment for grilling salmon, where the outer crust is, er, crusty, but the meat inside isn’t dried out, but at the Crab, they do know.
Meanwhile I was noshing on my sea-cucumbers . . . they weren’t anything like I expected . . . for one thing I thought they’d be the size of land cucumbers, but they’re much smaller. And I tho’t they’d still look like cucumbers, in some way, but apparently they strip off the skin to reveal the squid-like animal. Squid-like is the best description I can come up with . . . they’re sort of briny and rubbery like squid, so sauté ‘em up with a little virgin olive oil, you can’t go wrong.
But truth to tell, they didn’t fill me up . . . I had tried to order a salad but the waiter didn’t understand, he just kept saying, “si, si, madam will get a salad”.
Well, while I’m looking at Mrs eating her salmon, one of the waiters comes by with a platter of barnacles and offers me the plate. I took one off. It was still cold. I tested the flex. It was like a rubber tube – it hadn’t been cooked yet . . . so I looked back at the waiter, and said, ‘No, gracias, I had these last time”. So he looked a little disappointed and just put them into the iced display case. But our waiter came back by, and he seemed to understand me perfectly this time when I said I wanted something else. A quick reconnaissance of the menu didn’t show me anything else really unusual, so I settled for Fried Tiny Fish.
I tho’t maybe the bones would be cooked out, so I ate the first one whole, but I had to spit back out a couple of large backbones. So the rest I surgically filleted, which is a fun way to eat these little goobers if you get into it.
Mrs was supposed to get a tira misu, but she just was gonna give it to me anyway, but they didn’t bring it, they brought these little sponge cakes with my cappacino, instead.
Then they brought us some complimentary Calvados, skunk-apple brandy . . . a catalan especiality. Like the late lunches and dinners, and the 3 hour mid-day siestas, it takes some adjustment, but we found we could get used to it . . . especially when he brought us a second sample. WhoA!
There was some Japanese tv show filming a travelogue about Barcelona. The restaurant was in sort of an uproar the whole time we were there about it. All these Japanese creative types running around, the talent strutting around in the gorgeous renaissance dresses, the flamenco dancers, the guitar player, the camera crews, makeup, grips, and so on. You can imagine the show… just like in America . . . they were dancing flamenco together for the fadeout shot I reckon as we left . . .
So we staggered home along the beach esplanade, then La Rambla Poblenou, and packed for an early departure. We watched our last 3 seinfelds, and a movie.
Trip home went without a hitch. We unloaded, then walked down to Himalaya Indian Food for some to-go vindaloo and tandoori. It felt like home cooking, and we had all day Sunday to rest up.
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