For dinner on our first night in Barcelona we were wandering about after having toured the Sagrada Familia, and then walked a number of miles to the Arc de Triomphe (a bit smaller than the one in Paris), which led to a long line of market stands. We then walked into the La Ribera area near the Barri Gotic. We were still early - it was only just about 8:30pm, and ended up picking the first decent looking restaurant we came upon which had already opened - the restaurant Iggy.

Iggy specialized in Italian cuisine, and had a pretty diverse menu. Our charming waitress was actually Italian herself, from the island of Sardinia. We had an excellent bottle of Priorat (a red wine which comes from a particular region of Spain) and an excellent meal. Appetizers we enjoyed included Steak Tartar, steamed shellfish, stacked Caprese salad, and goat cheese ravioli. For our main courses we had roast lamb shoulder, a tender Ossobuco, pumpkin gnocchi (the only mild disappointment as the gnocchi were not fresh and tender), ox tail, and Turkish snuff tail (a type of fish). Dessert consisted of a chocolate fondant, apple tartlets, and ice cream, along with a sweet Spanish sherry with overtones of raisins. Final bill was around 240 Euros (approximately US$380), plus a 20 Euro tip (tipping is not that common in Spain, with a tip typically consisting of rounding up the bill to the next round number) for the nice service we received. Iggy gets an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

As some of you may know, the three older Richters are foodies. Bas is slowly getting more adventurous too, and for an 11 year old boy, does well (his favorite foods include mussels, snails, and steak tartar), but he doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of us.

As foodies, we try to explore the local cuisines of areas we visit, and here in Barcelona, there are three overlapping cuisines we were are working to sample and experience: Catalan, Mediterranean, and Spanish. That’s in conjunction with some excellent Spanish wines, of course, as well as with another wine-based concoction: Sangria.

As mentioned in my previous post, dining times here in Spain are a bit unusual from an American perspective. Most local restaurants are open for lunch until about 4pm, and then re-open around 8:30-9pm (some as late as 10pm) for dinner. Back home we usually have lunch between Noon and 1pm, and dinner starting betweek 6 and 7pm). I’m hoping jet-lag makes the whole adjustment to later dining times easier.

So far we have dined at four restaurants, with a failed attempt to dine at yet one more.

Our two lunch experiences have both been at places which offer a popular form of Spanish dining, namely something called “Tapas“, with the restaurants serving Tapas frequently referred to as Tapas Bars. Spoken quickly this sounds like “Topless Bars”, a misunderstanding which is a source of frequent amusement to us.

Tapas Bars in the U.S. are bars (as in alcohol bars) which serve Tapas, while here in Barcelone, they are bars more along the line of Sushi Bars - you can set at the “bar” and select from a variety of Tapas shown under glass at said bar.

So what are Tapas? Well, the term refers to small plates of a particular food item - it might be a cold food, like marinated octopus or ham on small slices of bread, or hot food like skewers of meat or patatas bravas (chunks of potato with a spicy sauce).

The plates either comes as individual items for one person or as a slightly larger small plate featuring multiple portions of the ordered item, ideal for sharing with others at your table. Our experience with Tapas in the U.S. so far had been with the latter approach - you typically get enough for sharing with one or two other people, and make a meal of ordering a half dozen different Tapas items which are all shared.

Our first restaurant was Txapela (pronounced “Chapella”), a couple blocks from our hotel, right near the busy intersection of Passeig de Gracia and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. While the weather was still a bit brisk, it was a beautiful afternoon, so we sat outside at the cafe portion of the restaurant. Our waitress did not speak English, and our Catalan and Spanish were minimal, but thanks to a pictographic menu of Tapas, we were able to order our Tapas-based meal without too many complications. The tapas at Txapela were the first single portion size tapas we had ever experienced. We ended up ordering two or three of each of the kinds we wanted to sample (about ten different kinds overall), and enjoyed them all. We accompanied the meal with a couple of pitchers of sangria, a blend of wine, fruit, fruit juices, and as we discovered in this case, a heavy dose of sugar too. While the food was good, service, while friendly, was a bit spotty. For the six of us, the bill came to around 120 Euros (about US$190). Based on what we’ve been seeing of prices here, that’s not unreasonable, and certainly eating outdoors was a pleasure (albeit a bit cold for those of us with thin blood) as we could do all sorts of people watching. Txapela gets a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

We started off mid-morning on the so-called ‘tourist bus’ - the double decker that tourists like us use to get around to all the interesting visitor spots at a particular destination. We took the red/north line (there are also the blue and green lines), which ultimately brought us to Parc Güell, another site featuring the works of Antoni Gaudi.

After a couple of hours of wandering about we hopped back on the bus in hopes of transferring to the blue line to get to Fundació Joan Miró - a museum with over 10,000 pieces of the art of this modernist/post-impressionistic/surreal artist. However, by the time we got there we would have had less than an hour to see the museum and the line to get in was ridiculous, plus it was raining. We will try again Tuesday.

So, instead we had lunch in Las Ramblas - more tapas at a tourist-oriented place, after which we said goodbye to Martin and Arend. They have a 14 hour drive back to Holland.

After a bit of shopping we went to the oceanfront and Aquarium (photos above), followed by an attempt at an early dinner (dinner starts late here - typically 8:30pm or 9pm at the earliest).

We’re still quite jetlagged too.

After hooking up with Martin and his father Arend, we had a hearty lunch of tapas, followed by a required two hour nap. From there we took the subway to see Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, a building that continues to be built even 80 years after Gaudi’s death. Breathtaking!

Our flights were all on time, and thanks to frequent flyer miles we could use on KLM we enjoyed the comforts of business class travel - very nice indeed across the Atlantic. Business class within Europe is a bit weird from an American perspective, as the seats are all the same size as in coach, maybe with a bit more seat pitch, but with better service than in economy.

By the time we got to Barcelona, the sun was already up a bit in the sky (we got in around 9am). We collected our bags, and then went to get a taxi to our hotel only to discover that the taxis here are just a wee bit too small to handle a family of four, even with only one checked bag per person. So we ended up taking the Aerobus municipal transport to the Plaza Catalyuna and walked the four blocks to our hotel from there.

Now we await the arrival of our Dutch friend Martin and his father so we can bop around Barcelona with them. On the list of things to do are visiting some of Gaudi’s architectural works including the Temple de La Sagrada Familia, the Picasso museum, the Joan Miró museum, and, of course, tapas bars to sample Spanish and Catalan cuisine.

As a side note, I just remembered that one of my favorite musical groups of the 80s, The Alan Parsons Project, has a whole album dedicated to Gaudi, and even a song about the Sagrada Familia. Great album which is about to take on a completely new meaning for me.

I think each one of these photo posts costs about $2 to make, thanks to the cost of roaming data services, but hopefully it’s worth it. Here is the Richter family boarding KLM flight 754 to Amsterdam.