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]

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.

The independentist folks are not a majority but they do make a lot of noise, unfortunately.