The hotel tried to help me, but a driver would have charged me 300 euros for pickup and return, and altho’ I am willing to hump my bag up and down train stairs in transit, I just couldn’t work up the energy to venture out into the en-english unknown to play. What a waste.
Oh, well. So we were going to hit the sights we liked again, and any we had missed. We could see this building in the distance from the Poblenou train stop, so we decided to walk over for a better look. They call it a cucumber. Only in BCN would this building not be in the top 5 weird shaped buildings . . . 8^D . . .
It’s really tall . . . you can see it from very far away . . . it was a really long walk, as it turned out . . . 8^D. . . but it was down La Rambla Diagonal and it was a beautiful day, so that was ok.
We got there, looked at it, then walked around a huge mall across the street . . . it’s always interesting to see foreign malls they’re the same as US malls, only different. Then we walked past the cucumber again to see it closer . . . it’s painted on the inside, with a million glass panels (I estimate) on the outside.
Our main mission was Paella at Escriba this day. Escriba is only open for lunch, but since lunch is so late in BCN, we had to plan our day carefully. It’s on the beach between La Rambla Poblenou and el Congrejo Loco, so we wound up walking a giant circle from the hotel, to the cucumber, back thru some nondescript neighborhoods to the beach, then back down the beach to Escriba. This discotec was the most interesting thing I saw . . . not quite graffiti, but not commercial art, neither.
Oh, well, this street sign was interesting to us, too. We’re not sure how you say this in Spanish, or Catalan, “yuy”?
So when we got to Escriba it was too early for lunch, we were told, but they let us order some sangria and it was very pleasant to sit out in the sun by the sea and drink sangria, so along about 1:00 they came and took our order paella & salad, and maybe 15 or20 minutes later they brought the salad. I don’t know if you know how Mrs loves her salads . . . when we were in France she loved how many different ways they added fruit to the salads, and the freshness of the tomatoes and lettuce . . . but the French have nothing over on the Spanish, as far as I can tell. Great Salads . . .8^) . . .
But the reason we were here was for the paella . . . I can’t tell you how many times during the week we had passed up other paellas because we were waiting for THIS paella – sometimes they just looked like too much to eat for lunch, but mainly, this is supposed to be the best in town. Mrs was surprised to see that they used risotto instead of rice . . . we had read that they didn’t use saffron, too, like all the recipes say to, but we’re not sure about that . . . it has the color, but that could be something else . . .Oh, it was good, tho!
In my defense, let me say that that paella pan is VERY shallow . . . so I had room for their chocolate tort. Zowie! So good Mrs took 2 bites, despite her iron will.
The restaurant was quite busy by then with their lunch rush, with new arrivals, still . . . even tho’ it was 4 pm. By the time we attracted a waiter’s attention and got the bill, then walked back to the hotel, along the beach then La Rambla Poblenou, it was 5 pm. We just stopped at a little grocer around the corner and got some wine and some nibbles for later and retired for the evening: some seinfelds and a movie. . . I think the way the Spanish do it, is they have this lunch, then a siesta, then they go back out and party hardy late into the night, but the way we do it, we are in bed by 9pm . . . 8^D . . .
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