Barcelona - Part 1

[judo100]

More about our Mediterranean vacation. On Thanksgiving Day, Nov 22, we flew to Barcelona, Spain, and spent a couple of days exploring the city. It's a vibrant, fascinating place, with a good mixture of present and recent past. Barcelona feels alive, with people working and shopping and eating out, all side by side with its wonderful architecture.

Comments

[pondhopper]

It's really hard for me to answer questions about meal hours since I am of the opinion that wherever I may wander I adapt to the customs of that country and not other places to my habits. When in Rome and all that. That is in no way meant to criticize as you are not the first nor will you be the last to be taken aback by our meal hours here and I'm used to it. We are a night culture and southern and Mediterranean and if you go to Greece you will well find the same sort of thing. We have breakfast at breakfast time (whenever you get up) and our main meal is any time between 2 PM and 4 PM as a general rule. These hours are fairly standard across the country. At night we all have light meals of tapas or omelets or some such which varies here in the South from 8:30 PM onward and gets a bit earlier as you go further north but not much. Barcelona caters to lots of tourists but it surprises that you found tapas (cooked tapas?) at 5 PM. I have never seen that in Barcelona and we've been there often. But maybe we go to the places locals go to

[judo100]

Thanks for your detailed explanation. I knew before we got to Barcelona that dinner was very late (and we didn't expect to eat it), but I was confused about when other meals were available. It seemed that whenever we thought about getting a bite during the day, places were either not open because it was still "too early" (at close to noon in some cases), or closed for much of the afternoon during the 1 - 4 break. So we also gave up on a traditional lunch

[pondhopper]

I am still very confused about where you were eating that tapas were available at 5 PM when local or other Spanish people are still digesting their dinner from between 2-4! I suspect that many of the central places do cater to tourists in that sense, not a bad thing, but you don't get much of a sense of what the natives do. Nobody I know from there has more than coffee before 8! We tend to go to the hidden back streets like in the university neighbourhood and find places the locals frequent. The food is fresher, recently cooked or made while you wait and the feel is so much more local. That said, a very popular place with both locals and tourists is Ciutat Comtal, fantastic food and always crowded (and open earlier for food precisely because it is in a heavily central and touristy area). You usually have to wait a bit for a table. Or Can Culleretes, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Barcelona and which has a fixed price menu higher priced than most places but SO worth it and it has quite a few choices

[heliopausa]

Gorgeous, vibrant Barcelona! How wonderful to be eating tapas (and sweet, custardy pastries, at all?). Yes, there's a whole band of culture across the Mediterranean which wakes up late (in terms of shops opening) and then pushes all the meals on accordingly - but your tactics sound spot-on. :)
Wandering the lanes of anywhere is one of the things I really love doing - and Barcelona has those terrific tiles, and unexpected Art Nouveau-y flourishes on buildings. Let alone the old Cathedral, and all the Roman remains down underground, and the choirstalls with tiny, life-filled carvings on every chair - reflecting life-filled Barcelona, I guess.
How long was the cruise, all up? And really a cruise, on a ship, or more that you were cruising about, checking out whatever cities you wanted to go to?

[judo100]

I agree with you that Barcelona was a perfect place to wander around and find delightful things to look at. I loved the atmosphere there