Sweet Home Barcelona blog

We’ve got my son Edmund staying for the first week of the Easter holidays, and it’s fantastic to have him here. Unfortunately the new flat was not quite ready on time to move in to, so we’re still in rented accommodation, but he doesn’t mind in the slightest. We took Edmund round to see the renovation work yesterday and he ran around like a mad thing saying “I want to stay here forever”. So far we’ve had a great “quality time” period (i.e. we haven’t done much) and that’s been largely due to the weather. It has been unusually cold (around 12-14 degrees) here for the last few weeks and we’ve had a lot of rain which has been continuing into this week. This weather is all over Spain according to the news bulletins and I’m pretty sure that the reservoirs will soon be hitting record levels for this time of year, which will be a major relief given that they had been predicting water shortages just a few weeks ago. Anyway, when the weather picks up we’ll get out and head for Port Aventura or Tibidabo with the lad.

I got back from a business trip to London late on Friday night, and we decided to make the most of Saturday night by heading for Comerc24 tapas restaurant which is less than ten minutes walk from the flat. We could only get a table reservaton for 11:15 pm (I kid you not), but decided to take it in any case. When we arrived we were immediately welcomed by the staff and presented with a couple of glasses of cava. Then we were escorted to a chaise longue and read the menus to wait for our table to become ready. We decided to plump for the set menu degustación called the menu festivál. We had an excellen meal washed down with a really tasty bottle of Viña Guitián sobre lías 2005 - the wine is excellent; comes from Valdeorras in Ourense in Galicia. We had umpteen little tapas courses the most memorable being the onion soup with quail’s egg, and some sort of chocolate dessert with salt and olive oil. Isabel thought the olive oil that they served (which turned out to be Arbequina oil from Tarragona) was fantastic. We rolled home about 2am (which turned out to be 3am when the clocks changed to Summer Time) - not quite the last to leave the restaurant. I’d really recommend this place for the overall dining experience - excellent service and atmosphere - and it’s definitely worth getting a table in the resturant rather than in the bar. However, it was a little bit on the pricey side for the food that was served.

On another note, I just realised where another less formal tapas bar that we really like - Paco Meralgo in C/ Muntaner (corner with Córsega) get’s its name from. Pa’ comer algo means “for something to eat” in Spanish.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Contemporary Art Museum in Barcelona (MACBA). We mainly went to see the “The Killing Machine” exhibit from Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, but it was also our first time there so we ploughed through the other exhibits as well. The Killing Machine exhibits were great - a lot of fun and some interaction - I won’t spoil it for anyone be going through details, but do make sure that you take the time to visit all the exhibits - there’s one that you will most likely have to queue for as it’s for one person ata time, but all very enjoyable. There was also an exhibit of photographs taken by Manolo Laguillo - interesting from the perspective of showing how much the city has changed and improved since the 1970s. Principally from investment for the Olympic Games of 1992. I doubt if the London Olympics in 2012 will have the same impact on the city as the olympic area is concentrated in just the East of London.

After MACBA we headed to the “Scottish cheese shop” La Formatgeria in C/Dageuria near Plaza San Jaume. This is a beautiful little shop specializing in a small range of excellent Spanish cheeses produced on small farms, but it’s run by a Scottish woman. Strangely, we ended up speaking in Castellano rather than in English. We bought some El Cascarral sheep cheese - it’s a bit like Manchego but a bit less waxy and at Katherine’s insistance we also tried several different varieties of cheese ice cream. As she said, people either love it or simply nod and say “interesante”.

Today we went to watch the Barcelon Marathon.  Great, sunny weather (22 degrees); we followed the trail of runners backwards down Ausiás Marc, Paseo de San Juan, Arco de Triunfo, Luis Companys and into the Parque de la Ciutadela.  It was great to see so many people of all ages enjoying the run - inspiration for us for next year??  We’ll wait and see!  We walked down to Barceloneta and the beach and then headed back from Puerto Olympico arriving home with some slight (Isabel says I’m a langostino cocido) sunburn.  What a great weekend.

We picked up a hire car on Friday aftenoon and headed off to Mas de Torrent as a surprise treat for Isabel (and me). Words can only fail to describe what a truely wonderful place this is. Five star luxury in a beautiful country masía about 90 minutes drive from Barcelona. It’s close to La Bisbal d’Empordá (see earlier post on that place as well). Some say it’s the best hotel in Spain. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly the best hotel I’ve stayed in in Spain and it’s a very close run thing for me between this and my favourite in England the Peacock at Rowsley in Derbyshire. The whole atmosphere is exceptionally welcomng and chilled. The food was out of this world, the room (we had a suite in the Masía itself) an absolute delight and the staff very attentive and very amiable without overdoing it. We had dinner in the hotel both nights and the food was exceptionally good. At least as good as anything I’ve eaten in Cataluña (but we haven’t made it to El Bulli yet). We had a really relaxing weekend and took in a few of the local sights. We visited the beautiful villages of Peratallada and Pals and the amazing ruins of the Iberian city near Ullastret.  The city as huge - only around 30 percent has been excavated so far, and the reconstructed city walls, cisterns, drainage and house walls give you a feel for the immense scale of this place.  It dates from the 6th to 3rd centures BC and the Iberians predated any Greek or Roman settlements in the pensinsula.  The city was abandoned when the Romans colonized Iberia and built large towns on the coast.

Photos to folow…

As usual we were a pair of sad b…..s and didn’t make it to the carnaval on Sunday.  We wimped out in the end due to the last train back from Sitges being at 22:30.  If we didn’t have work the next day we get have caught the 4:00am train back, but there you go…

We had dinner at the Wok and Bol on Saturday night.  The food was the best Chinese that we have tasted in Barcelona (which admittedly doesn’t mean very much) and I can safely say that it is the most orangey restaurant that I have ever been in at least in terms of decor.  The orange walls are covered in (largely orange) paintings made by the chef.  We might be back again if we have a sudden hanckering for Chinese, but we’ll probably stick to the local Thai Sabai Sabai for oriental food now.  We find it has better food than the Thai Gardens, but not the atmosphere of the latter with it’s all-wooden decor.
We’ve being looking at door handles (manillas) for the flat this evening at Arcon and Ferretería Villa (no, Dad, it’s not a ferret shop) in Rambla de Catalunya.  Tomorrow we’re going back to Bolibar to see what they have.  So much choice, so little time… sigh

Carlos, the mosaizista, has started laying the mosaic flooring in the flat.  It should only take him a month to finish

We had planned to go to the carnaval in Sitges today, but the weather is so awful.  It’s been raining all day, so we’ve just stayed in - we’re planning to go tomorrow if the rain lifts.  Isabel has spent the afternoon updating the content of our main website Sweet Home Barcelona with the latest design picture for the flat from our interiorista, Mae.  I have to say that Isabel has done a fantastic job on the web design and I’m very proud of the way it looks.

Here’s an interesting poster that I found for the last Barcelona carnaval in 1935 before the Spanish Civil War started.  Carnaval was then banned until after Franco’s death.  I’m tempted to buy this one for the new flats.

I was in London last week to do some work and had one day of hell commuting.  There was about one inch of snow when I woke up on Thursday morning.  Not that much, really considering the weather forecasters had predicted the haviest snow fall for seven years the previous night.  Anyway, I walked to the bus stop; traffic seemed to be moving normally as the roads were clear.  I caught a bus to the railway station - so far so good, I thought.  I caught a train straight in to Paddington.  What was all the fuss about?  I got to Paddington and headed for the tube to travel to the office.  The tube station was closed!!  Apparently most of the lines were closed due to signalling problems. I headed for the Hammersmith and City line which was still open, but the platorm was absolutely bunged; I had to wait for people to get off the stairs before I could get down to the platform.  Obviously everyone else had had the same idea! I could see that there was little hope in me getting a train into the centre as the platform was about 10 people deep, so I caught the next outgoing train and got off at Royal Oak and switched platforms to catch the next ingoing train.  Sardines at Paddington!  I squeezed off the train at Baker Street and headed for the Jubilee line which was still running.  However, when I got to the ticket hall there were literally over a thousand people waiting to get down to the platform.  The helpful chap from London Underground explained that there were a further two thousand people waiting on the platform down below, and that we could be waiting “up to an hour” before we would be let down.  Sod that!  I thought and headed for the Jubilee northbound which ws still open thinking I could do the same as I had at Paddington.  Anyway, I got down the stairs and saw a sign saying Jubilee line Southbound.  Headed for that and walked straight out on to the platform (it wasn’t that crowded) and caught the next train within a couple of minutes.  All in all the journey had taken anout two hours.

I flew back to Barcelona that evening, but again there were problems: Heathrow terminal 2 had suffered a power failure earlier in the day, so there was a huge backlog in people getting X-rayed for security - it took over an hour from the back of the queue (which wound all the way to arrivals and back to departures and then out of the building down a long corridor) to finally getting in to the departures area.  When I landed back home at Barcelona I had a sense of relief that I was getting back to civilization and to some working public transport.  I’ve no idea what would happen to transport if it ever snowed in Barcelona, but I have a feeling that they would cope much better…

End of moan…

We needed to get some doors for our flat renovations, so on Saturday we decided (on Ester’s recommendation) to go out past Gerona to a small Catalan town called La Bisbal D’Empordá.  We’ve been there before when it was Isabel’s birthday last year and we stayed in the rather posh hotel Castell d’Empordá - which is really excellent; great rooms and wonderful food.  La Bisbal is full of antique shops and Ester assured us that one particular shop had “thousands of doors”.

Anyway, this was a day-trip only and we thought that rather than hire a car we’d try the journey by public transport - mistake!  We took the metro L-1 from Urquinaona to the RENFE station Clot-Aragon, only to miss the train by a few minutes largely because the automatic ticket machines didn’t sell tickets to our destination station (Flacá) and we had to queue.  When we eventually got to the front of the ticket queue, the ticket lady told us; “Well it’s a bit like flying from the airport when you need to arrive an hour or two before your flight; for the trains you need to be at the station 30 minutes before departure.”  Right! :-(  An hour wait for the next train… We decided to kill time by having lunch in a local granja - quite good and very cheap.  Then we caught the train to Flacá.  Unfortunately, someone on board had a serious BO problem, so the journey of 1 hour 40 minutes was less than pleasant.

When we arrived at Flacá, our plan was to catch at taxi to nearby Bisbal.  However, there was not a single taxi in sight at the station and we were informed by a local that we had just missed the bus to La Bisbal by a minute or two; you guessed it - an hour wait for the next one.  Isabel took the initiative and went into the nearest bar… Eventually we found a number for a local taxi and gave them a call.  Ten minutes later we were sat in a very comfortable S-class Mercedes which took us right to the front of the antique shop for 15 Euros; which we both felt was a bit steep for being out in the sticks.

We spent an hour or so looking at antique doors with the very helpful Rosa, and think that we may have found two suitable front doors, although the price is way above our budget.

Later we went to the famous cake shop “Sans Bisbalenc” in La Bisbal to try the traditional Bisbalenc.  This is a log-shaped puff pastry filled with a type custard and coated with sugar and pine nuts - extemely sweet.

We caught the local bus (only 1.20 Euros) back to Flacá railway station which has this interesting clock.  The time is 19:46 if you’re interested.

 

We got back home a couple of hours later.  Next time we’ll hire a car, or go by bicycle…

One weird thing: the river in La Bisbal was completely dry and cars were parked in the river bed in the town centre.  I’m not sure why this is, but I’m sure it’s nothing to do with global warming.

I got back on Saturday from a business trip to London.  What a shock - the pilot announced that it was cero grados when we landed at Heathrow.  I had a few long days in the office, met up with Gareth, John and Miguel for a few pints at The Fox pub in Boston Manor, and met Gareth’s first born, Kenza and her mother, Binta.  Kenza is almost four weeks old now and has beautiful dark eyes. Stupid me forgot to take a photo at least to show Isabel.

I stayed on in London on Saturday to try and sell my car, and miracle of miracles I managed to get a reasonably low price from the garage just around the corner.  I flew back on Saturday evening from the  grey of London to the errr… grey of Barcelona.  The great thing is that it never stays grey here for long

Hoping to plan a trip to Port Aventure at Easter time with Edmund.

We have Isabel’s brother, Juan staying with us for a couple of nights.  He’s here on business, so Isabel cooked a delicious tortilla de patata in his honour.  Completed with morcillas and some spicey salchichas, and of course pan

Also had to do prepare the dreaded Self Assessment tax returns for last year as the dealine is approaching…