at long last.

Just a few notes, before we swan dive gracefully into Barcelona...

1) The weather has FINALLY broken. Temporarily, at least. We've had roughly ten days now of 10-degree-plus temperatures (in American, that's 50 degrees!!) It's supposed to be back down to 4 next week, but whatever. Spring will be here someday. (The sun is acting like it's spring, too...it went from getting dark at 4:00 to getting dark after 6:00 within about two days. Somehow.)

2) It's official: I've started trying to cook. I know...cats and dogs, living together! Mass hysteria! But I find that it's kinda fun, and I get to make things that sound good to me, which is important, because my recipe collection is growing rapidly out of control and I need something to distract me from accumulating more. So, naturally...cooking said recipes. Thus far it's been mainly vegetarian because I'm frightened of contaminating my whole kitchen with meat germies, and of feeding myself and my husband all manner of e. coli and salmonella and whatever else you can get from improperly cooked items of a meaty nature.

And on that note...Barcelona! (WARNING: heavy on the photos. Lucky for you all, it was a whirlwind trip and we barely had time to dip our respective toes in the ocean of awesomeness that is this city.) Yet another city which I'm completely taken with, and cannot wait to return to. (I'll put my prepositions wherever I want, thank you.) Dave and Jen were going for the weekend and invited us along. Really beautiful and interesting architecture, right on the ol' Mediterranean, a buzzing and lively atmosphere, and frickin' fantastic food. Oh, the glorious, glorious food, and also, Spain is the birthplace of sangria. Plus, they speak Catalan, which is this crazy French-ish variety of Spanish involving lots of the letter X. Who knew? Neat. Could this place be any better? I submit that it cannot.

Sadly, we were really only in the city for the weekend, so there wasn't nearly enough reasonable (i.e., not pain-inducing) eating and tourist-ing done, in my opinion. Having said that, we managed to fit a fair amount in. Arrival night: caught some tapas in a random little bar (Rita Blue) that turned out to have WAY better food than anticipated... really good hummus; nice and bready calamari; patatas bravas (essentially, steak fries with a spicy tomato-mayo sauce); and "queso dip", which turned out to be chunks of battered and fried cheese with curry sauce. Tasty.

Day 1: late breakfast at La Boqueria, a giant public market with all manner of amazing, colorful, and fresh delicious things. (Juices! Fruits! Meats! Seafood! Spices! Yaaaaaaay!) Followed by random and all-too-brief roaming of the city, on the way to our 2:45 lunch at Comerc24, a ridiculously highly-rated and fancy-schmance restaurant that really turns out some amazing food. We were supposed to have dinner at 10:00 PM (how Spanish of us!) at a seafood restaurant, but none of us were even remotely hungry enough to go, so we went for tapas instead...and what a brilliant move that turned out to be. YUM.

La Rambla: main pedestrian thoroughfare through the historic center. Our hotel was just off this street...fantastic location.

Spices at the market...so pretty.

"Breakfast" - whole shrimp, white beans with baby squids, pastries, lamb croquettes, cafe con leche. A weird mix, but super delicious and all extremely fresh.

Santa Eulalia, Barcelona's gothic cathedral.

Then came the latest possible lunch at Comerc24* (apparently, we were lucky to get any seating at all, on such late notice...i.e., the morning of): officially, Mike and Dave's meals a few had 17 courses plus six desserts, and Jen and I only had 13 courses and five desserts. Naturally, several courses included more than one dish, and dessert also included a round of petit fours. Insanity. Here are a few of the best/most interesting dishes. 

Mike's: an oyster served with a flower and a nasturtium leaf, over rocks and dry ice. Looked like a very pretty science experiment.

Also Mike's: beach shrimp ceviche with peach and wine. He was nice enough to share a bite of this with me.

It's a little washed-out in this photo so you can see what's going on: consomme with parmesan, egg yolk, and truffle bubbles. YUM. So rich and warming.

Duck rice with foie gras and roasted (super crunchy!) corn. Normally I'm not a fan of foie, but you stir all this stuff together and it is ridiculously rich and creamy and flavorful and crunchy. Wow.

Ohhhhh, this. The tenderest veal cheek ever, in a seriously savory (...red wine?) sauce, with pine nut puree (in the little bag at front, which was edible). The whole thing just melted.

This was weird, but somehow delicious: whipped (unsweetened) cream with strawberries, basil, and parmesan. Savory and sweet at the same time.

Comerc24's take on the conguito, a traditional local chocolate-and-peanut candy, which, in real life, has a rather politically-incorrect logo. Fortunately, that was missing here, and these things tasted like fancy Reese's...I could have eaten about six more, despite one of the worst cases of overeating I've ever perpetrated on myself. In my whole life. Ever.

Thankfully, we canceled our seafood restaurant and found amazing tapas at Bar Lobo, another random little place that was directly next door to our hotel. Despite my utter lack of hunger, I ate still more, as did everyone else, so at least that made me feel a little better in my gluttony. For the table, we ordered more hummus (delicious!), patatas bravas, little fried and salted green peppers (yum!), cod with red peppers and (mild) garlic sauce, fried shrimp, fried asparagus, and a plate of Iberian ham. (Iberian ham is kinda like prosciutto, except sliced a little thicker and, in my opinion, a little drier, with more texture...but still tastes like butter crossed with ham.) There may have been more, but I honestly can't remember, in the midst of all that bounty. Holy smokes, what food. So colorful, so ridiculously delicious. And we washed it all down with a pitcher of their sangria, which was fantastic (apples, oranges, and cinnamon...cinnamon, who knew?). A nice end to a day full of extreme deliciousness and even more extreme stuffing-ourselves-to-the-gills. 

Day 2: more touristy, less food. Coffee at Jen and Dave's hotel, and then off to see the insanity that is La Sagrada Familia and the most famous Gaudi buildings. I'm pretty sure that guy was equal parts crazy person and super genius.

Construction on La Sagrada Familia began in 1882 and is still not complete, which is a tragedy for Gaudi himself, as this was his final and most passionate undertaking. He died penniless in 1926--he had given all of his money to its construction, and was living there--and was buried in the church, and shortly thereafter a group of anarchists burned his office and all of the remaining plans for the church's completion. The design of the church itself has always been controversial, as is the continuing construction on it, since modern architects can claim to be finishing the church as Gaudi would have wanted, and then proceed with their own designs. Whatever your take on the situation, this place is pretty wild.

La Sagrada Familia: the Nativity Facade. Covered with all sorts of animals and plants and people and the texture looks like the inside of a cave. Yep.

Detail.

The Passion Facade.

Crazy carvings on this facade date to the 1980s.

And now, the inside! Supposedly Gaudi designed the columns and ceiling to look like trees and branches. Say what you will about his designs, the guy was truly inspired by nature and organic forms.

Craziness on the ceiling.

View down one of the side nave vaults. 

Gaudi-designed school in front of the cathedral.

Um...mosaic-covered fruit bunches? On top of the church. (The spires up here were covered in mosaic, too, but covered up for some unknown reason.)

View towards the Mediterranean from a spire.

Next, lunch somewhere along Carrer de Mallorca on the way to La Pedrera. (I think it was Vitto.) Naturally, there were more fried peppers to be had, along with patatas bravas (actually spicy this time, hooray!) and some sort of spicy sausage (...chorizo?). And these sammiches.

Mine was just a ham, cheese, and egg sandwich, but look what they did with the bread!!  

Mike's had three different forms of pork and peppers. Um...YUM. Definitely the big lunchtime winner.

And then, on to La Pedrera ("the stone quarry"). I had been wanting to see this place for years: I am a gigantic fan of Art Nouveau, and although Gaudi's take on Art Nouveau was undoubtedly unique, this building is one of Spain's most famous iterations. (In Spain, however, the style is called modernismo and they have an entire route through the city with over a hundred examples and someday I'm going to follow the whole thing). La Pedrera began as a residential building built between 1906 and 1912, originally as an apartment block for an industrialist and his wife, but now it's part museum and part residence (people still actually live here...!).

As far as I can tell, there were no corners or 90-degree angles anywhere. The guy liked things rounded.

Inside the main entrance and largest interior courtyard.

I. LOVE. THIS. DOOR. Main interior courtyard. The mural colors here are much more blue/green/underwater-y than you can tell from my crappy photo.

And then, to the roof. Filled with weird ice cream swirly things and crazy helmet-looking sculpted vent covers. I actually had a little vertigo up here from the stairs and crazy swooping roof line (the weird swoop in the right foreground is the top of another interior courtyard). 

Roof-y detail. Ice cream and helmets, am I right?

Inside the attic. Kinda like being inside something's ribcage.

This was neat. This is actually a photo looking down into a mirror...

...reflecting this chain construction hanging from the ceiling. This was how Gaudi worked out the physics for the construction of another of his (never finished) buildings: the inverted shape gave him the correct curves for constructing rounded towers similar to those at La Sagrada Familia. Pretty smart there, guy. 

Interior hallway. No corners anywhere to be seen.

Want. This. Tea. Set. Look how pretty and Art Nouveau-y!

Check out these mouldings!

Pretty Art Nouveau bed. In another room with no corners.

So fantastic.

Last stop: Casa Batllo ("house of the bat"...these guys have a fantastic website and way better photos than I could manage). Gaudi built this one with an underwater-y aesthetic for the interior, but with a distinctly skeletal appearance on the front facade and a dragon's spine on the roof. I am not kidding.

Casa Batllo on the "Block of Discord." 

See? Dragon's spine. On the roof.

Front facade. The columns are patterned after bones.

Interior stairway, which, naturally, looks like a twisting spinal column.

Love this ceiling.

Center of the building: all of the rooms and floors are built around this.

Stairway up to the roof. 

Attic hallway.

Insanity on the roof! Inside the dragon's back is a "reflection room," with a little fountain onto which a light shines so that the water's patterns project onto the walls of the room. Very pretty.

I'm not kidding about the architecture in this city: so gorgeous! Look at those wrought-iron balconies! Shades of New Orleans, although obviously the Spanish influence went there, rather than vice versa...

Jen said the tiling on these towers looks like a sunset. I am inclined to agree.

LOOK. AT. THE. ART. NOUVEAU. Sooooo stunning.

As is obvious, I can't wait to return to this city. For an Art Nouveau addict such as myself, there is so much to see and learn, and we didn't even think about going to museums or palaces or other churches or any of Gaudi's ridiculously amazing creations further outside the center or even the beach. Or spend enough time roaming the crazy-narrow medieval streets. And also, eating the food. This is a major foodie city. Tapas are such a great way to try so many delicious little dishes, and also: FRESH SEAFOOD. Plus a lot of really nice restaurants, but I seem to prefer the local, laid-back eateries a little more these days (awesome food, and generally less chance of me eating until I hurt)**. Ahhh, Barcelona. We will meet again.

What I'm reading: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after 20 Years Away, by Bill Bryson. I love me some Bryson. This is a collection of reflective newspaper columns he published about--naturally--returning to America after having lived in England for many years. Hilarious and interesting, although it occasionally devolves into old-man ranting. (But hey, who's not prone to that, once in a while?) Then, The Family Fang, a novel by Kevin Wilson. This one was pretty dark and occasionally unsettling, about two grown children of a pair of mostly-insane performance artists dealing with their parents' effect on their lives and with family misfortune. Once it gets into the main plot, it's a seriously tense and addictive and compelling read, but not really for anyone who likes to keep his or her reading clean. Next was Stories I Only Tell My Friends, which is Rob Lowe's autobiography. Fairly well written, and an interesting glimpse into Hollywood and the relationships therein, as well as an overview of Lowe's career and what he felt were his defining moments. (I seriously love this man on Parks and Recreation, in Wayne's World, and in Austin Powers, and I think he's a brilliant comedic actor. Full disclosure: I don't remember seeing him in any major dramatic roles, although I now know that they're out there.) Finally, now I'm reading The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America, by Michael Ruhlman. It's Mr. Ruhlman's account of his attendance as both a participant and a journalist at the Institute, and it makes me want to A) eat at one of the Institute's restaurants; and B) eat at some fancy French restaurant...mmmmm, fancy (and good) food.

My favorite things: for this segment today, we are returning to one of my favorite culinary items of all time. As ubiquitous as it is, I find that parmesan cheese is one of those little delicacies that makes food (and life in general) truly special. We're talking real parmesan here--parmigiano reggiano--and not that nasty, sweaty-socks-in-a-green-can stuff that we all grew up with, or even cheese sold as "parmesan". SO GROSS. No, the real thing, with its slightly salty and pungent bite, firm and crumbly texture, and ability to enhance everything. Oh parmesan, what can't you make better? (Except for Mexican food...definitely an exception.) The Italian makers of parmesan claim that it has healing properties (broken arm? eat parmesan, for calcium!) and is good for old people and children (easy to digest!), but I say, who cares? Its  unique, but still classic and familiar, flavor are all the selling points I need. If you don't believe me, buy just a teensy sampling of actual parmigiano reggiano (this name is protected by Italy, so unless your cheese is labeled as such, it's not the real thing...!) and you'll never, ever go back. More cheese, please, and pile it on. 

Next time: a giant Indonesian feast and Alpine sledding. Good times.

*Recently, I heard someone point out that posting food pictures might be perceived as a little snooty, i.e., "Ooh, look what I got to eat, and you didn't!" Point well taken. However, I also view it as an opportunity to make everyone that much more motivated to come visit us in Europe. (Come for the food, stay for the company...? Or something like that.)

**That having been said, I will never turn down an invite to a snooty restaurant. Ever. Try me.