Tom & Lynn's Excellent Adventure

Barcelona is a beautiful, unique city. If you were transported here and opened your eyes, you would know you are in Barcelona. The architecture is so distinctive, so uniquely Catalan. People here are proud of that and still pissed that they are part of Spain. I feel their pain, but they are not going anywhere.

At least this visit, there were no protests, as there were all over town last time we were here, exactly two years ago.

Life in Barcelona has changed in many ways due to the pandemic, yet in many ways maintains the same pace and grace we have experienced in the past.

Life in the pandemic

Masking is mandatory everywhere indoors and on all public transit, no exceptions. About the same percentage of Barcelonans as Parisians wear masks outdoors, perhaps one quarter. But here in Barcelona, the ubiquitous mask has become a wearable fashion. Many people walk the streets with the mask around their elbow. Others keep it around their necks under their chins. I don’t know which looks worse.

Signs also direct people entering buildings to squirt ever-present disinfectant on their hands. I thought this was optional until I noticed a sign that listed the practice as mandatory. I didn’t do it anyway. That stuff is disgusting.

Unlike France, Spain does not require proof of vaccination when entering a restaurant or other indoor establishment. People come and go in the markets and shops simply deploying their masks as soon as they enter and taking them off as soon as they exit.

Spain, by the way, has one of the lowest case rates in Europe, a fifth of the rate in the U.S.

Business in the pandemic

For restaurants and many others, it’s the same story of finding people to work. As a result, some places have closed down indefinitely (two of the four Sensi restaurants and the bank on the ground level of our building), while others have shortened their hours or curtailed services (Fastnet and Pennybanger).

As we walked around Barri Gotic and El Born, we saw a number of For Sale or Available signs at obviously closed commercial properties. Even tony Gracia had some vacancies among the luxury brand stores. Clearly, the pandemic has had an effect on business, which our cab driver to the airport confirmed.

Tourism

While we have seen more tourists here in Barcelona than in Paris, the numbers are still significantly down. Notwithstanding, two or three tour buses at a time pull up on the street in front of our apartment every day, either reloading or disgorging their passengers. And we see group tours with the ubiquitous guide paddles streaming through Barri Gotic and around the major sights, just not as many as we have seen in years past.

The cruise ships just started to return in September, and we saw three or four of them in a row during our stay.

We heard a lot of German, probably because Barcelona is still warm and Germany is already cold. We also heard a fair amount of American English, much more than we did in Paris. Both are probably due to Barcelona’s climate in the fall and worldwide popularity as a tourist destination.

However, there are no Chinese. They can’t get out, and no country will let them in.

Miscellaneous observations

Traffic moves a lot faster in Barcelona than it does in Paris, where the speed limit is 30 kph but in reality is more like 20. As a result, Barcelonans for the most part cross at the light, whereas Parisians are world-class jay-walkers. The other danger in Barcelona is that although bicycles have their own lanes, skateboards and scooters go wherever they want, so pedestrians have to look 360 degrees at all times.

Grafitti is pervasive in all European cities, especially the major ones we have visited. And it is quick. The Caixa Bank branch at the base of our building had obviously just closed, because the boards over the windows were painted black. In 48 hours, they were completely tagged.

One thing that has surprised me about both Paris and Barcelona is the number of food delivery services. We saw the insulated boxes on bicycles everywhere in both cities. Why people pay to have food delivered when great restaurants are all around them is beyond me.

Down to our last two days in Barcelona, it was time for just walking around, enjoying the sights we have seen so many times.

Sunrise here is spectacular over the marina; we never cease to marvel at that. The view from our window displays the mega-mega-yachts, the tour buses that park right beneath us, the newsstand that opens every morning early and the people walking, biking, skateboarding and scootering up and down the street. Even down here at 41 degrees latitude, the autumn sun does not rise until about 7:45 a.m., so we awake in the dark to watch the light come up over Barcelonetta.

The days grow shorter, and so does our time here.

The weather has been nothing short of perfect with blue skies and temperatures rising to the low 70s in the afternoon. We ventured out for the one thing we had yet to do, take a harbor cruise. Honestly, it’s not all that interesting, but the ides of spending an hour or so on a boat appealed to us.

We walked up just in time for the first excursion at 11 a.m. on the huge yellow catamaran that promised an eco-cruise of 40 minutes. The only other passengers were several Middle Eastern couples, four young men with small suitcases (had they just arrived or were they leaving from the boat?), a few older couples who chose to stay on the lower deck and us.

It was a quiet cruise. There was no commentary. We rather liked that.

We passed along the cruise ship terminal where three ships were berthed, two of them massive. The MSC Seaview is on a five-day cruise around the Med. It can hold more than 5,000 passengers, although I doubt that many were on board this time, considering the circumstances. We agreed that we would never, ever get on such a thing.

On the other side of the harbor were the boatyards servicing more mega-yatchs, some of which were tented over. One of the biggest was Eclipse, formerly owned by Roman Abramovitch, the Russian billionaire who traded that one in for the world’s largest private yacht. The brother of a friend of ours runs Abramovitch’s leisure holdings, including the yacht and the spread on St. Barts.

As soon as we cleared the harbor, we encountered a gentle swell from the open Med. The huge cat proceeded for about a mile along the beach before turning around and heading back. For us, it was pleasant. For the Middle Eastern men, it was nap time. They lay out on the cushioned seats, took off their shoes and proceeded to sleep through the rest of the short cruise.

Back onshore, we walked around the marina to Barcelonetta and The Fastnet where we wanted to have lunch and say our farewell to their staff. But when we walked up, the owner explained they didn’t serve food on Monday. Usual reason–they can’t get a second chef, and they can’t work their one chef seven days a week or he will leave and they will have nothing.

We have heard this from New Orleans to Newport to Paris to Toulouse to Barcelona.

We walked past the Picture Path of food, as Lynn termed the restaurants along the main street, and into the square right behind Fastnet’s back door. There we found two restaurants and chose Can Ganassa, which offered an entire menu for 10 euros with a 10% surcharge for the terrace. For 11 euros, that was impossible to turn down.

And this was no small lunch. It included a salad, a plate, a drink and dessert. It included a full plate of food. In my case, I had beef and vegetables grilled on two skewers, plus grilled vegetables on the side and a heaping serving of rice. We ordered two small beers, which remarkably was included in the price. Lynn couldn’t finish her eggplant lasagna. And we could have had dessert too, but were just too stuffed.

Now mid-afternoon, we strolled back to the apartment so I could wrestle with UK testing requirements. That required a few phone calls to London, numerous attempts on the Internet and a double charge for testing–nearly $400. More about that later, but it was nerve-wracking, confusing, time-consuming–and expensive.

I finished the ordeal right at cocktail hour, but by then, I was not too fastidious with the exact time.

We walked out to dinner again at Gilda, which distinguished itself even more than the first time. We ordered the Argentine crispy prawns over curry ice cream again (decadently good); the burrata Caprese salad (definitely enough for two); foie gras with marmalade (even more decadent) and the biggest mussels I have ever seen. Our Belgian owner said they came from Gallicia in northern Spain; a Belgian would know his mussels.

Sunday. You know what that means in Barcelona.

Milk!

No, not that kind. Milk the restaurant for brunch and Bloody Marys, the very best in Europe. This was our third time there in a week, second for brunch.

Milk serves a daily brunch of classic Eggs Benedict, rich with hollandaise sauce and thick, very meaty bacon strips over slices of baguettes, with a salad on the side. It’s more than we can eat comfortably, but it’s so good.

And then there are their Bloody Marys. Milk’s secret is a lot of lemon juice, which I learned several years ago and emulate at home. But the real topper is exactly that–they top off the drink with a shot of Guiness from the tap that eventually melts down through the glass to give the drink a richness that is unique to their version. I have never been able to recreate that at home.

We arrived just a few minutes before 9:30 to take one of the last tables available. As we sat down, we saw our Puerto Rican dinner companions from the night before at the adjacent table toasting us with their own Bloody Marys for sending them there. They were on their way to the Barcelona-Madrid soccer match, a major sports event if there ever was one.

We waited on our drinks to arrive, but the food came first, because the bar was running behind due to high morning demand. Smoothies take longer to make than Bloody Marys, and this crowd was oh-so-healthy while they pigged out on stacks of pancakes topped with whipped cream and maple syrup. We started our own healthy helpings, and finally the breakfast juice arrived, spicy and delicious as always.

After our short, obligatory late morning post-brunch nap, we had time to kill before taking the bus to Parc Guell, so we walked a few blocks down the street to Barcelona’s pretty City Park that resembles a cross between Jardin des Plantes and the Tuileries in Paris.

The park is surrounded by museums, the Barcelona Zoo and a small municipal stadium. Inside the grounds are a small lake where visitors can rent row boats to go pretty much nowhere and a large, ornate cascading fountain in the center. All the way at the end of the park stands Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf that was built for the 1888 Universal Exhibition.

We didn’t venture that far down, choosing instead to enjoy the cascade and the bandstand not far away filled with elderly residents dancing, very much like a Catalan version of Cajun dancing in front of the Fais Do Do Stage at Jazz Fest.

After our short visit to the park, we set off for Parc Guell in the northern reaches of Barcelona. Parc Guell was intended to be a planned upscale residential community, somewhat like Lake Vista but with Gaudi as the architect and his patron Eusebi Guell as the developer. As a residential neighborhood, it never really succeeded, so the park was turned over to the city and eventually became a private enterprise. Today it is a popular destination for locals and attracts large crowds to the main entrance that displays Gaudi’s fanciful architecture.

Inexplicably, Apple Maps sent us to the back of the park rather than the front. That necessitated an arduous climb up the mountain with only one working escalator. Lynn’s knees were not happy.

And when we finally reached the entrance, we had to climb some more to get to the three crosses monument, which is not what we paid seven euros a piece for. Apple Maps was no help navigating through the winding, dusty trails down the hill to the other side and the main attraction. This was not what we crossed town for.

But as we worked out way across and down, we felt like we were making progress. Gaudi had also designed a series of aqueducts to carry water down the mountain. They looked like sand castles at the beach, but they were all carefully created for a purpose.

Finally, we found our way to the correct side down the hill and enjoyed the view of Gaudi’s entry buildings and his fanciful lizard of broken tiles. The walls around the central pillared pavilion were paved with similar types of mosaics, and the crowds were heavy enough that we had to wait in line to enter. But it was a short wait, and it was worth it.

This was what we paid seven euros each for.

After all that climbing and wandering through dusty trails, we needed a beer. The concession stand inside the entrance was the perfect spot to slake our thirst and watch the patrons stream through.

And instead of a long walk to the nearest transit stop, we walked out the gate less than ten yards away from the 116 bus that took us to the Metro and back home. Once back in the apartment, I consulted Google Maps, which would have directed us right to the main entrance via the same transit lines we took home.

Lesson learned. Consult both map sources before leaving the house.

Serious Boat Porn has returned to Barcelona. Three 300-footers showed up over the last two days, stopping off here for provisioning and repairs on their way from summering in the Med to wintering in the Caribbean. They docked in tandem along the quay in sight of our apartment window, just as others of their size had done two years ago.

The smaller ones we marveled at earlier in the week are mere 150-200 footers, not even worth noting anymore now that their Big Sisters have arrived.

Viva is a 308-footer just launched this year for an American billionaire owner whose initials are FF. I could not track down the identity of this owner, but apparently his brother owns a similar boat as well.

Dynasty was the first to arrive. It stretches to 331 feet and is the oldest of the three, launched in 2015. The owner was Alijan Ibragimov, a Kazahkstan billionaire oligarch who died earlier this year, worth only two billion. Apparently the boat is currently for sale, if anyone is interested.

The last to arrive was Kaos, all 361 feet of her, the largest yacht ever built in the Netherlands. She is owned by Nancy Walton Laurie, Sam’s niece, who herself is worth about five billion, give or take a few hundred million.

Eye candy all, their crews scurry about, polishing here and there, running back and forth on the quay and generally making themselves busy before taking time off to wet their whistles at The Fastnet Bar across the marina in Barceloneta.

Equally, perhaps more, impressive that the gargantuan mega-yachts was another more modest sailboat in Royal Barcelona Yacht Club’s marina. We had lunch there again, and once again spent way more than any lunch we will ever spend in Paris or Barcelona or London or New York. The yacht club was a pleasant place with a diverse menu, but they charged for bread even though we declined it and added an item to our lunch that we were not aware we had ordered, despite the fact that their menu is in both French and English.

But from our table at the window overlooking the marina, I could see a sailboat that looked different from all the others, sporting a hooded cockpit and large outriggers spreading from the mast step. It was clearly a vessel meant to race across oceans. And in fact, it was. And it had just finished winning.

Offshore Team Germany was built in 2011 for the Vendee Globe and just won the Ocean Race Europe, a tune-up for the big Ocean Race that will start from Spain in 2022. The boat won the Europe series by all of four meters over the U.S.A.’s 11th Hour Racing in the final leg around the Med from Alicante, Spain to Genoa, Italy.

The Ocean Race, formerly the Volvo, will start from Alicante a year from now and stop in Newport for its last stop before the final leg to Genoa in late 2023. We’ll be sure to follow, as we always do. Better to watch from a computer than a rail.

We circumnavigated the large marina complex in Barcelona all the way to Barceloneta beach and back again to Columbus’s monument in the main harbor. Along the way, we stopped off for lunch at our favorite bar in Barcelona, The Fastnet, a true Irish sailor’s bar.

We chatted with Stephanie, our very pleasant Irish waitress and with her boss, the owner. We heard the same story as we had before in France. They were locked down for months, but managed to stay in business by selling beer over the counter to the workers on the mega-yachts who knew where to go for a beverage.

Business still has not come back fully, she said, which is why they have reduced hours to open at 1:30 p.m. on weekdays. But it is gradually returning, as tourists gradually return to Barcelona. As we chatted, four young men obviously from one of the boats came in to have glasses of Guiness stout. We contributed to the bar’s cause with a couple of beers each and four tapas orders of potatas bravas, anchovies, calamari and croquettes.

As we departed, we promised to come back before leaving Barcelona. It’s the least we could do.

We finished the night with a delicious dinner at Sensi Bistro, the sort of French version of Sensi. We sat next to a family from Puerto Rico who were visiting Barcelona for just a couple of days after flying in from Madrid–non-stop, those lucky souls. We shared some restaurant recommendations, especially for Milk the next day, since they were planning to attend the Barcelona-Madrid soccer match.

After that, for no apparent reason and against all good sense, we repaired to Pennybanger for a nightcap. Lordy.

Thursday was a Gaudi evening–a late afternoon tour of Casa Mila followed by an early evening tour and rooftop performance by a local singer, complete with cocktails served under the lights at Casa Batllo, right down the street.

But first was our long-awaited brunch at Milk, complete with their Bloody Marys, the best in Europe. We showed up at 9:30 a.m. without a reservation, and we were given a table right away. Had we waited another half hour, we would have waited out on the street for another half hour. Even in the middle of the week with depressed tourism numbers, Milk still fills up for brunch.

Our Bloody Mary lust fulfilled, we spent the rest of the day walking around the marina checking out the new mega-mega yachts arriving, and checked in at Royal Barcelona Yacht Club to make reservations for lunch Friday.

By late afternoon, it was time for our Gaudi adventure, so we took the Metro up to the tony Gracia nieighborhood, where Casa Mila and Casa Batllo are separated by only two blocks. Gracia along that stretch is the Fifth Avenue/Champs Elysees of Barcelona, lined on both sides of the wide thoroughfare with all the luxury brand names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Cartier and the rest.

Both the Gaudi casas have stepped up their game in terms of production values in a major way. In some measure, that diminishes some of the tour through the buildings, as I remembered being able to go through rooms and areas that are no longer part of the very produced and orchestrated routes.

But none of that diminishes the beauty and grandeur of Gaudi’s residential creations. Casa Mila was his last residential project, designed for a very rich family who wanted to live on the ground floor and rent the upper floors out as apartments. Your tour now includes an informative audio guide that leads through all the major rooms and up into the attic where Gaudi’s famous whale bone catenary arches support the roof.

What they don’t tell you is that the way down and out is via seven floors of stairs with no stopping or detours. Lynn was none too happy.

While she took a potty break before leaving the building, I was able to admire what used to be the main entrance and owners’ stairwell, which I could have sworn was once open as part of the tour. Now it is off limits to visitors but visible on your way out and to the inevitable shop.

We actually made it through Casa Mila a bit too quickly as we had nearly an hour to wait for Casa Batllo to open the lines for the evening patrons. We should have sat down for a glass of wine, but I didn’t want to jeopardize our place in line. Bad judgment on my part.

We had the more exclusive gold tickets what would set us right up to the stage on the roof but even more important, admit us ahead of everyone else holding tickets.

We picked up our auto-sensing headphones at the entrance, which is not at all what I remembered from our previous visits. The entry area is now sleek, modern and nothing like the Gaudi architecture that awaits beyond.

Once we were inside the actual building, the headphones automatically sense which room you are standing in, and a narrative starts, complete with music and in some rooms a video depicting life among the very wealthy in early 20th century Barcelona. It’s all an extremely polished and sophisticated production.

We worked our way up the stairs through the graduated tiled light well and past Apartment F, where incredibly someone actually still lives. We reached the attic of arches fairly quickly by not listening all the way through the entire narrative in each room.

We actually reached the rooftop area early. We weren’t the only ones, and a line formed to wait on the setup to be completed.

Once in and seated, the show began right at 7 p.m. We were entertained by a very talented singer and her keyboard player.

Our performer sang a series of popular songs and her own numbers in three different languages, which itself was very impressive. Our tickets included two glasses of cava or beer, which we eagerly accepted, since my bad judgment had deprived us of a glass of wine before entering the place.

An hour and two drinks later, we wound our way back down to the ground through a brand new stairway designed by a Japanese sculptor to emulate Gaudi’s curves. More stairs, but at least these presented some passing interest.

And then we were out.

The Metro station is directly in front of Casa Batllo, so we ducked down to catch a different train back. What we did not realize was that our intended train was nearly a kilometer walk away. We would have been better off taking our original train and getting off on La Rambla rather than walking so far to reach the train that took us closer to our destination in the Barri Gotic.

But we finally made it, and found Sensi Tapas, where we were given a table–for an hour and a half, the attendant stressed. Our waitress learned we were from Louisiana, and explained that she plans to take a month in Louisiana next year. She was so excited to hear from real Louisiana residents.

Our food was, as always at Sensi, wonderful. Padron peppers (more than we could eat), shrimp, pork cheeks and raviolis in truffle sauce, truly decadent. The wine I ordered was corked, one of the very few times that has ever happened to me. We soldiered through a glass, and I finally called the captain over to taste it himself. He agreed immediately, took the bottle off the bill and gave us two glasses of good wine to accompany our delicious dinner. We went home happy and full.

Construction continues on this true wonder of the world nearly a century after Gaudi’s death. In fact, the audio guide predicts that the Mary spire, which will be the second tallest, will be completed this December.

Our timing was fortunate–Sagrada Familia had been closed for seven months due to the pandemic and started with limited hours in early summer. Full admission only began this month.

Tickets are not cheap–26 euros each. But they now come with a downloadable audio guide, and for one dollar more, you can get the guided tour. We didn’t need the tour, since we have visited Sagrada Familia a number of times, but the audio guide was somewhat informative.

The crowds were clearly smaller than before. We walked through the queue with only one family of four and proceeded quickly to security. Their security is more thorough than an airport–we had to take off belts and even watches. But once through that, we simply scanned our codes on the phone to the gate and we were outside to start with the model that is on display in the apron outside the Nativity portal.

The church can accommodate up to 1,000 people at a time, but I estimated there were no more than 600. We had been there before when the crowds were so thick is was difficult to move through.

In the center, they have added a large number of pews that now take up nearly two thirds of the floor space. The model toward the front that used to be there and in fact is referenced in the audio guide is gone, as is the mirrored table that allowed visitors to see the ceiling without craning your neck. The mirror never really was that efficient, since there is so much to see, and you spend most of your time looking up anyway.

Without the jostling of crowds, we were able to walk through at our own pace and in our own direction, marveling once again at the light and how it fills the interior space.

The audio guide helpfully explained many of the little details of the sculptures inside and out. Nothing in Sagrada Familia is left to chance. Every detail has been thought out and executed on a plan.

Underneath the church is an excellent museum detailing in depth the history of the construction with displays of various details Sagrada Familia, some of Gaudi’s drawings and the actual workshop where the current architects continue the mission of finishing this monument. My guess is that the workshop has not been occupied in a year.

The museum is worth a separate ticket, as it layers a physical element to so much of the design.

Since the crowds were small, we were able to wander through the basilica, the crypt and the museum at our own pace for a solid two hours. It was finally time to leave, so we walked over to the Metro stop and the McDonald’s/Five Guys corner opposite the stop we had emerged from earlier at the Taco Bell/Burger King corner, not realizing that this would require a very long walk through the station to reach our train. Had we simply walked back to the Burger King corner, we could have looked some more at Sagrada Familia without having to wear the suffocating mask.

Finally back to our neighborhood, we searched El Born for lunch and found a pleasant bistro in the plaza facing the Cultural Center. The menu offered some tapas for Lynn and a dish of pork, onions, peppers and fries for me. Lynn’s calamari were excellent; these did not come from Sysco. My pork was thick fried bacon, not the best I have ever had, but the rest of the dish was acceptable. Overall, it was a most ordinary meal for nearly 40 euros.

But dinner at El DIset awaited. And it did not disappoint. Surprisingly, we were not the first customers there at 7:30, but by the time we had finished, the place was full. Our waiter came up and actually sat down next to us to take our order, as if he was counseling us.

We started with an incredible bottle of wine at 23 euros, then dug into Lynn’s favorite ceviche, a wonderful dish of prawns, fish, avocado and mango slices, with chopped red peppers in the citris juices. Next out were two more tapas dishes on “glass bread,” their version of well toasted baguettes. One tapas was a chorizo in a savory, spicy red sauce and the other was grilled aubergine wrapped around goat cheese. Both came out as pairs, which meant it was almost too much for us to finish. But finish we did, and finish the wine we did. All this set us back 63 euros, about the same as our lunch plus the wine.

El Diset lived up to our estimation once again.

One of our favorite things to do in Barcelona that don’t involve a church or a Gaudi masterpiece is to visit Mont Juic park and castle. The trip requires a funicular from the Metro stop (part of the fare), then a separate gondola up to Mont Juic Park and the castle above that. The view from the gondola going up and down the mountain is spectacular as Barcelona spreads out below.

The castle charges another 5 euros for admission, but since we had been there before and have walked around a bunch of castles like it, we saw no reason to go in. Rather, we walked around to watch the archery club work out on their targets. Then we took the gondola down to the park below, where we found the handy sandwich spot and enjoyed a cold beer while we gazed at the view of Barcelona below us.

From the park, you can walk down the road a ways to take another gondola down to the harbor, far above the water.

It’s something I have wanted to do for years, but two reasons have kept me from the ride: 1) we can never find the station at Mont Juic and 2) Lynn doesn’t like heights. So we took the regular gondola down again from the park to the funicular to the Metro stop on Rambla.

By then, we were hungry for lunch and walked into Barri Gotic to find a suitable establishment. But as we walked the narrow streets, all we saw were small bodegas and shuttered doors at the better restaurants. I swore I remembered more and better places open for lunch last time we were here just two years ago. But now so much was closed, victims of the pandemic and/or shortage of workers.

We finally stopped at a reasonably decent looking place offering inside seats and empanadas that turned out to be mostly dough and little filling, but for two euros each, what can you expect? We ate quickly and walked on. Other the the crappy pizza place behind our apartment, we saw nothing inside the quarter that looked halfway decent for lunch.

After a quick break back at the apartment, we walked across Laietana to the Born neighborhood, which was a complete revelation. Quality looking restaurants were serving lunch and drinks on every block. It looked like a Catalan version of Paris. The people walking the streets were more upscale, the shops sold much better quality clothing and merchandise, the vibe was perceptibly more lively. El Born has risen. Barri Gotic seems to have declined substantially. We’ll know where to find lunch next time.

Our goal was to find El Diset, truly one of the great restaurants in Barcelona. I had been unable to make reservations online, so we figured that perhaps someone might be on the premises if we walked up. Not to be, so I called the number and someone actually answered. But he asked me to call back later when he would write down the reservation.

While we were walking through El Born, I searched for the clothing store where I had purchased a sweater, a jacket and a pair of shoes a few years ago. That was the most clothing I had ever bought in one place at one time in my adult life. But again not to be. We couldn’t find the store no matter which way we turned. They probably went out of business in utter shock after selling Tom Long all that stuff .

Dinner was at Gilda, right behind our apartment and directly across the street from Pennybanger. It was wonderful. Lynn proclaimed it better than any of the Sensi restaurants, because the menu is creative, typical Barcelona dishes with a sophisticated Belgian flair. Every aspect, including the service, the food, the wine and the atmosphere was excellent.

We finished the evening with a nightcap at Pennybanger, where we were reminded that they do not serve Havana Club, but something much better. Which is true.

The manager explained that they had been shut down for a year but the locals are coming back and so are the tourists. Same story we have heard on a number of occasions. But until they can come back fully, they have reduced hours to open at 6 p.m.

It was 9 p.m. when we sat there sipping our drinks. And we were the only customers in the bar, just as we had been the only customers in Gilda at 7:30. Barcelona is a late town in a late country in a late continent. We are Americans, and we are old, so we eat and drink early.

We awoke unusually early for us after a most restful night’s sleep in our familiar apartment. We were excited to be in Barcelona after two years, curious to see the changes and how many visitors were around.

But first things first. Chores must be done. First it was to the Santa Catarina market, where Lynn could buy chicken thighs, vegetables, and cheese. The chicken stand offered beautiful leg quarters but Lynn wanted just the thighs so we pointed to a couple already cut and asked for two more. Without hesitation, the chicken vendor pulled two leg quarters out and placed each into a pair of fixed mount giant chicken-cutting scissors that sliced the leg from the thigh in one swift motion. We were impressed.

Fresh veggies, chicken, sausages, mushrooms and cheese in hand, we deposited the goods back at the apartment and walked down Passeig Colom to the Coaliment supermercat for other essentials: paper towels, butter, soap, olive oil, eggs, and of course wine. I splurged on three bottles ranging from 5.35 to 8.95 euros. Oh the joy.

Main grocery chores accomplished, it was time for exploration around the neighborhood. There have been some changes in our ‘hood, most notably a Little Caesar Pizza joint now being finished out. From the looks of the construction, it may open before we leave. Not that we plan to dine there.

We wandered off to the marina for boat porn, but it turned out that none of the biggest ones were even 100 meters. Peanuts. But that includes perhaps the ugliest boat ever built for 150 million euros. I checked it out and it is owned by a Greek-Canadian tycoon.

Our goal was to hit Fastnet Bar for lunch, but when we walked up to Barcelonetta from the marina, it was closed, not to open until 1:30. We were too hungry to wait, so we walked back to Barri Gotic to explore what might be open for lunch. We walked through the narrow streets looking for suitable places and finally found ourselves at Placa George Orwell and Bahia Bar. Orwell is remembered here in Barcelona for his involvement in the Spanish Civil War in support of Barcelona and his landmark book Homage to Catalonia, one of the best accounts of the war. (Hemingway did pretty well too in A Farewell to Arms.)

We had been to this little spot a few times before on previous visits, and we eagerly walked in again to take the last of the two tables inside. We ordered our regular plates of potatoes bravas, chorizo in cider and for me, a plate of delicious, lemony anchovies. Lynn took one tiny taste and pronounced them too fishy. I gobbled up the entire plate hardly taking a breath.

We continued our casual explorations of Barri Gotic in no special order or plan. Although the old quarter features narrow winding streets, it also contains a number of spacious, even large plazas that are especially pleasant in beautiful weather. We wandered into and out of a few of them, enjoying the warm sunshine in short sleeve shirts for the first time in a month.

We commented on a number of store fronts that looked permanently closed. Although there is a lot of construction going on in the area, it looked like a lot of retailers had become casualties of the pandemic and the loss of tourism for a year.

Not that Barcelona is bereft of tourists. We took a stroll down the famous La Rambla, aorta of rampant tourism, and found the street to be crowded but nowhere near as bad as we have seen before. The crappy sidewalk restaurants were busy but not full, and the street was devoid of the usual itinerant sellers of cheap souvenirs displayed on the ground. All the cheap souvenirs were on display in their official stalls along the street.

The afternoon was drawing late, so we walked over to Pennybanger, the Irish bar we have frequented before, for an early cocktail, only to find it still closed. Their happy hour doesn’t begin until 6 p.m., and we didn’t care to wait around that long. SO it was back to the apartment for our own happy hour and dinner prepared expertly by Chef Lynn.

The rest of Barcelona cuisine would wait another day.

Our train out of Carcassonne did not leave until nearly 1 p.m., so we packed up in the morning and made a most frustrating, unfruitful excursion into town for breakfast.

Sadly, unlike Paris, petit dejeuner is not offered at many restaurants in Carcassonne. And the ubiquitous patisseries in Paris are nowhere to be found.

Maybe it was just Sunday, and maybe we were caught between early petit dejeuner (whenever that might be) and early lunch. Most restaurants in Carcassonne don’t open for lunch until noon, and the few that are open early for croissants and cafe had already shut down to prepare for Sunday lunch by the time we walked out of the hotel. We found nothing until we walked into a somewhat shady place frequented by a few old guys studying their racing forms and placing bets in the back room.

The waitress tried to accommodate, but our common Franglish was not working well. We wound up ordering toastines of canard in two different flavors. Tostines have nothing to do with toast–they turned out to be jars of duck spread which in any other circumstance would have been delicious. Instead, they just made Lynn more hangry. I ate most of my jar and a good bit of hers on slices of baguette.

Defeated in our hunt for breakfast, we walked back to the hotel to wait for our taxi to the train station. Lynn deposited herself in the sitting room, and I took a random walk around the hotel toward the bridge to the Cité. One last gaze upward on a cool, cloudy morning that did not show the medieval complex in its best light.

The taxi arrived right at 12:30 to take us on a five-minute ride to the train station. The Carcassonne station offers no option except to haul luggage down and up the flights of stairs to reach the train platform. Once again, we did the heavy lifting, then waited for more heavy lifting into the old inter-cities rail car.

Wouldn’t you know–someone was sitting in our seats. He politely gathered his computer, backpack, bag of food and assorted personal items that he had deposited in the seat across from him. It never ceases to amaze me that in Europe, people just take seats on trains, whether they have a ticket for those seats or not. In fact, I would wager that the young man didn’t even have a first-class ticket, as he would have had a reserved seat if he booked first class.

The ride to Narbonne was only 40 minutes, so we were faced once again with the Big Lug. Despite our vain hopes that our train to Barcelona would be on the same track as our train from Carcassone, it was not to be. Narbonne’s station is not much bigger than Carcassonne, so we waited as the crowd built for the train to Barcelona.

Due to Covid, crossing borders is sometimes not as simple as it used to be in Europe. Our pass sanitaire in France was supposed to be checked anytime we entered any sort of establishment, but truth be told, a lot of restaurants, especially outside Paris in France, never bothered.

I was nervous about crossing over to Spain, because I had researched and read that a similar pass was required by the Spanish government and health authorities. The online form was no big deal, but when I tried to submit for Lynn and me, it did not allow an option for a train entry. I had been told earlier by Viviane in Paris that taking the train into Spain was not a problem, but I fret over these things.

As it turned out, no one in France asked for our pass sanitaire when boarding the trains. In fact, no one asked for anything, including a passport (as is customary in the EU), when we arrived at Barcelona Sants train station. Even more surprising, no one even checked our tickets on the train at all on either leg.

The train to Barcelona was the fastest two hours of travel I think I have ever experienced. Before we knew it, we had passed the Etang salt flats of France and pulled into Perpignan, the last city in France. It seemed like minutes later we were in Spain arriving in Girona and right after that the huge Sants train station in Barcelona. We knew we were in Spain when the train announcements changed from French to Spanish in a second.

A short taxi ride took us to Friendly, where we checked in and paid our rent in something less than five minutes. Instead of asking the taxi driver to wait, we had to hail another one outside the office, but we were only five minutes or so away from our apartment on Paseo Colom facing the marina where the huge Barcelona Boat Show was just closing up.

As soon as we alighted from the taxi, we knew we were in so-familiar territory. Very little had changed on the street from the last time we had been to Barcelona. The bank on the corner was boarded up, a Little Caesar’s pizza opened where the old, mostly ignored Italian restaurant had been, and next door a new restaurant opened, which seemed to be a lot more successful. Bt the newsstand was still there, now closed but ready to open first thing Monday. And the little convenience store was at our building entrance.

We took the tiny elevator up to the fourth floor, unlocked the door and walked into Apartment Van Gogh. It was if nothing had changed since we were here last. We were home.

Carcassonne on the left bank of the Aude River is a small medieval city, so small in fact, that you can walk across town from the river to the Canal du Midi in about 10-15 minutes. Which we did Saturday. Twice and a half again.

We walked out of the hotel, Luddite paper map in hand, to visit the sights of Carcassonne. Our first stop was the Musee des Beaux Arts, which we had passed a number of times at the far end of pleasant, attractive Gambetta Park just steps from our hotel.

Admission is free, so we walked right through after showing our pass sanitaire. The museum collection includes a few galleries of minor painters from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Some of the paintings are interesting, but frankly most are clearly not up to Louvre or d’Orsay standards. They are simply hung on the walls without explanation or any particular organization other than time.

The park features a number of nude statues sprinkled all over the grounds surrounding the central splash fountain water feature. At the closed end of the park stands the museum, an attractive Beaux Arts building in its own right that we found lighted in purple the night before.

The featured exhibit was a collection of photographs of women in various elaborate costumes (or none) with messages written on their bodies in marker pens. The messages covered the usual litany of liberalism: climate change, equity, consumerism, wealth distribution and whatever else is wrong with contemporary society. It was all pretty bizarre and self-indulgent, as so much of today’s uber-liberal thinking tends to be.

We made it through the museum in a little more than a half hour and started down rue Verdun, which by now was a busy shopping thoroughfare.

Our targets included the St. Michele Cathedral and its adjacent clothing market, les Halles food court/market, St. Vincent Church and finally all the way across town, the port at Canal du Midi. It was directly across from the very train station where we had arrived in Carcassonne the day before.

There is only one lock at the Carcassonne port but several excursion boats to transport tourists through it. Since we had just been through the same type of lock in Toulouse and years ago traversed dozens of locks on the same canal, we had little interest in doing one more. But it was enjoyable to watch the large pontoon boat navigate the lock and rise to the port level, a good eight feet above the canal behind it.

All of this sightseeing took no more than a couple of hours back and forth along the streets of Carcassonne. Our boating curiosity satisfied, we walked back through town again to the main square to find lunch and located an available table at Cafe Felix, one of the many establishments surrounding the square. We wanted to split something a bit more substantial to take us to dinner, and we found the perfect item on the menu, a charcuterie board.

After successfully ordering water and glasses of wine, I asked for the charcuterie board, but the waiter misunderstood my poor pronunciation and eventually brought out a plate of choucroute. Not what we wanted, but actually it turned out to be pretty good and just right for the two of us to share. Again, a lot of amazement from the waiter that we wanted only one plate, so amazing that he brought out only one set of utensils. And the choucroute was a euro less than the charcuterie board, so no complaint from me.

By the time we finished, the tables around the square had started to empty out. We settled up and walked back to the hotel for a bit of rest from our efforts of crossing Carcassonne.

Soon after, however, I couldn’t resist one more walk across the old bridge to the Cité. It was just so close, and the sun was so warm. We joined a stream of locals and tourists crossing the bridge and walking to the fortress. This time we turned right off the bridge and found the steep path just a few yards away that led up to the Aude gate of the Cit´e.

At the bottom of the hill in the shadow of the Cité stands the smallish Gothic church of St. Glimer. It was designed by Viollet-le-Duc for the villagers during the extensive and disruptive renovations in the mid-19th century. The steep cobblestone path up to the gate starts there, and Lynn decided to rest near the church while I climbed up the road.

The climb up is strenuous. The walk down is treacherous. I made sure to pick up my feet carefully, lest one misstep put me in a close encounter with gravity.

But it was worth one last look up close at the Cité.

Our last dinner in our short stay in Carcassonne was back to Verre d’Un, where I had the same lamb shank that Lynn enjoyed two nights before, and she ordered the whole daurade. Lynn expertly picked out the meat, lifted the backbone and surgically plowed through the entire, expertly cooked fish despite chewing on just a few little feather bones without swallowing any of them.