Team Kane Street in Barcelona

May 26, 2008 by alex

Hola Readers!

We promise we haven’t been ignoring you, we’ve simply been traveling! TKS took off for Barcelona in late April and then spent much of last week (or two or three…) catching up on life. We started this post a number of weeks ago and it’s been started and finished by two different writers, so please just roll with the varying tense usage and the references to either Karen or Alex. Most of you know we don’t usually refer to ourselves in the third person, at least not usually. And now, the much anticipated Barcelona recap!

We had great time in BCN; we ate well, drank well, walked all over the city and saw tons of amazing artwork and architecture.

We were lucky enough to hear about an apartment for rent from an ITP alum and decided to stay in this sweet apartment that was perfectly located on Las Ramblas. If you’re headed to Barcelona, I definitely recommend this place (drop us an email and we’ll connect you).

After our red-eye from NYC we certainly could have used a nap but knew better and headed out to explore the city. We saw most of Barri Gothic and grabbed lunch at a Foccaciaria before we crashed around 1 p.m. Naps were in order!

Fast forward three hours later and we were fresh and ready to go back out and explore. We headed over to the La Boquaria, THE MOST AMAZING market we’ve ever seen. They had everything from fresh cheese, meat, fruits, vegetables, candy, spices, lunch counters, and more. Amazing. Why don’t we have one in NYC? This was only the beginning of our romance with the market. We’d be back practically every day for the rest of the week.

Tired from browsing the market, we decided to act like the locals and grab an afternoon drink on Las Ramblas. It’s an amazing place for people watching or checking out the local street performers. Luckily for us, drinks are the size of your head, so we had some time to relax and take in the neighborhood.

Hungry and excited to try out some of the local cuisine, we walked over to El Raval and found our way to a restaurant that supposedly picked out their menu everyday according to what was available at the La Boqueria, Bibliotequa. This was the first of the many amazing meals that week. After dinner we roamed down the block and found ourselves a quiet, little, dive bar. We had a few drinks and before we knew it, the bar was packed with Spanish hipsters. Lucky find I guess.

Jetlag + a slight hangover + no alarm = waking up very, very late. When we finally rolled out of the apt on our second day, we began a hunt for churros con chocolat. While we were looking for a specific place recommended by some friends, we came across a little hole-in-wall coffee shop that served all varieties of churros. We ordered espresso and enjoyed our first round of churros con chocolat. The question we still haven’t found an answer to: Is the chocolat a dip or a drink? I really hope it was a dip otherwise that’s one seriously heavy drink.

After Churros we headed down to the waterfront to check out the beach. We walked all the way to the aquarium and had another fun day of people watching and observing weekend life in Barcelona. There is something really nice about living in a city near the beach (and I don’t include Coney Island in this list, but I do include Chicago).

We followed up our walk with great dinner of grilled seafood and fideos. We tried to make this at home once and I am sad to admit ours looked nothing like the Spanish version we had. Perhaps we’ll try again soon.

Our dinner ended and we walked on to explore some of the nightlife in other neighborhoods. We found an odd and interesting place called Bosc de Fades that was filled trees and greenery, a place where Frodo and his furry feat would feel at home. It was interesting, but also seemed like something not unlike a theme restaurant, like Jekyll and Hyde. We stayed for a drink before exiting, which happened to be through a Wax Museum adjacent to the bar. Will Wax Museums ever seem normal?

Now I feel obligated to reveal a travel secret of ours… when we head out of town for a trip that’s over a week long, we’ve been known to download an entire season of a TV show and watch it when we don’t feel like staying out all night or in this case find ourselves unable to adjust to the time (read: wide awake until 4 in the morning)…. Is that lame? Guess what? I don’t care. During our week in Barcelona we caught up with the first season of Mad Men, which is just an incredible TV show.

Ok, back to Barcelona! Monday was a jam packed-day of site seeing. We had lunch at the Market—traditional Spanish potato torta and then roamed around a very closed Born. The hours the Spanish keep are somewhat confusing. They seem to alternate the hours and days they will be open. I tried to stop by Pappabubble four times on different days at varying hours and it was always closed. How do they stay in business?

We Stopped in to check out Santa Maria del Mar in the middle of Barri Gothic. Nice small church that many say is nicer than the more popular Cathedral.

Resourceful Spaniard alert!! Check out this guy we saw sharpening knives for people with a sharpener he was powering with his scooter engine.

Since so little was happening in Born, we found our way over to Casa Batlló designed by Gaudi. It’s an amazing little townhouse without a single straight edge. It’s Dr. Seuss comes to life. I’m assuming Gaudi came first, so what does the Dr. have to say for his plagiarizing ways?

The view of Barcelona from the top spire.

Next up was Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. I’ve seen many churches in my time, and this is without a doubt the most amazing church I’ve ever seen. The interior was simply amazing and grand in such a unusual way. So unexpected for a church.

Anyone who knows Alex and me knows we have soft spots in our hearts for karaoke. We must since our wedding ended at a karaoke bar. Oops. Mom, did you know that? So when our friend Lisa suggested we check out Anti-Karaoke, we added it to our agenda. Then the person who rented us the apartment suggested we check it out as well. Two entirely separate recommendations? How could we skip it? So on Monday night we headed over to Sidecar and experienced one of the most fun nights of karaoke we’ve ever witnessed. Some people were all costumed up, singing the love boat theme song, making the crowd go nuts. It was like a rock concert—for karaoke. Totally strange and awesome. We tried to get our name in for “Living on a Prayer” but the night ended before our names were called. I like to believe the crowd would have lost their minds over Bon Jovi.

When Sidecar closed we took our drunk asses over to an Irish bar in Barri Gothic and sang Phil Collins to the bartender instead. For reals. The bartender videotaped this once in a lifetime concert, but I will spare you nice readers because I want you to keep coming back to this site. Here’s a photo of us instead.

We had an opportunity to check out the Picasso museum one afternoon, which was really nice. It was pleasant and controlled (hint: foreshadowing). You had to wait online 20 or so minutes to get in, but it allowed you a chance to actually see the artwork once you were admitted.

Before we planned our trip we had heard about how sweet Casa Camper (yes, as in the shoes) is. They were all booked up and the price was to stay was expensive, but we still wanted to check it out at some point. When my friend Laura came to visit back in February she also mentioned Casa Camper AND how they had all sorts of food in … wait for it… ball form. Can you believe that food could come in BALL FORM? So Alex and I head to the Casa, walk into reception and Alex says “Hola. We hear you have… food?” The receptionist kindly looks at us and says “Yes, for our guests. But… you are welcome to come in and enjoy a snack.”

So we did just that. But guess what? NO FOOD BALLS (Hi, Laura! Thanks!). So we enjoyed a seltzer from their little pantry of snacks, waited until only one person was left at reception and bolted before we could be any more embarrassed. Can you imagine if Alex had said “We heard you have FOOD BALLS?” They would have thought we were nuts… Or maybe not. We never found Foodball and suspect it closed and turned into the Camper bar down the block. Needless to say, don’t go to Barcelona to find food in the shape of balls. You’ll simply to need to enjoy your food in it’s natural form.

Anyway, moving on! We found some dinner and then raced to find an Irish Bar with the Barcelona v. Manchester United football game playing. We didn’t have to search too hard because people were watching the game in every single bar we found—in some cases through the windows on the street.

We found a great bar in Barri Gothic to watch the game and the placed was packed. Camera crews came, little kids were in the bar, senior citizens were in the bar—it was really amazing to see so many people over-the-top enthused for this game. Manchester ended up winning, but I think we walked away Barcelona fans (particularly when Alex had come to terms with his Catalonian heritage).

Can you spot Karen?

The next day we hiked up to Montjuic Park which overlooks the city. While up there, we checked out the Miro Foundation, found the stadium from the ‘92 Olympic games, and the Caixa Forum.

You know what makes for a bad art museum? No art. The Caixa Forum literally had one one room exhibit. Unreal. At least it was free.

While the walk was long, and high, it was a really nice break from the city life and noise. Barcelona was crazy crowded a bunch of days so it was nice to get some time away from the crowded streets.

The next day we took the train out to Figueres to check out the Salvador Dali Museum. The train ride was easy enough and when we got to Figueres we found a little Farmer’s Market that we decided to hit up for lunch.

In what turned out to be a glaring rookie mistake we opted for this “pizza” that looked like it could be good. It turned out to be somewhat perplexing (notice the perplexed look on Karen’s face), mostly due to the tuna fish (for serious) we discovered was sprinkled on it.

The Dali Museum itself was really neat but the problem was that, unlike the Picasso museum, they paid no mind to metering the rate at which people entered the museum. That resulted in a TOTALLY packed museum making it hard to really appreciate the art.

In addition to that, people at the museum were obsessed with taking pictures of the art, so you had people completely stopping the flow of traffic so they could photograph every photo. Some people were actually irritated if we stood and looked at the art too long because we’d end up in their photo.

Question for our readers: Can someone please explain to me why one would take photos of all this art. Do these people sit at home and flip through their digicam photos of the art? Ugh. It drove us nuts! But, when it Rome…

That night we decided to hit up this restaurant called Los Caracoles, that always seemed wicked crowded. We manage to slide in line on the early side and were seated relatively quickly.

While at dinner, we discovered what would become our favorite wine of the trip. We also learned that we enjoy putting back a whole bottle of wine with dinner.

Karen, a huge fan of roasted chicken, tried the chicken this restaurant was famous for, and was blown away.

Here’s where the magic happens at Los Caracoles…

…the crazy crowd lined up through the bar and around the corner every night.

We later found this awesome bar, Manchester, that was playing a who’s who of 80s-90s Brit rock.

To kick off our last day in Barcelona, we went back to the Boqueria Market and grabbed some food at Organic and it blew our minds. I wish this place would open a spot in New York. The provide copious amounts of fresh, organic food in really interesting combinations for a great price.

We then headed over to Gaudi’s Park Guell which was a beautiful example of what a public park can be if its designed with a lot of imagination. As with most places though, it was really overrun with people but you could imagine how amazing it might be early in the morning or at dusk when the crowds might die down a bit.

After a long day of walking, we came upon a restaurant called Bubo that served some of the best Tapas we’d had all week. Also, how come I’ve never seen someone serve mozzarella and tomato this way. It makes so much sense!

Something that we noticed after a few days in Barcelona was that we found ourselves eating. A lot. So much so that we ended up usually having two dinners a night. Dinner A around 4-5 p.m. that would consist of some tapas and a beer/coffee and then Dinner B around 8-9 p.m. A couple nights resulted in a very special Dinner C that consisted of whatever place was still open at 3 a.m. (pizza one night and a schwarma another).

For our last Spanish dinner we found a great restaurant with outdoor seating in a little courtyard.

The next morning we woke up super early (good morning, Karen!) and rolled our bags back up La Ramble to wait on line for the Aerobus back the the airport (a great way to travel, btw).

We had such an amazing week in Spain but were happy to head back home to Brooklyn. If you’re ever heading over there, drop us an email and we’ll give you lots of recommendations. Just remember to bring your walking shoes, your drinking hat and maybe some pants with an elastic waistband.

Check out all of Karen’s photos here.
Check out all of Alex’s photos here.

Tags: alex, barcelona, europe, karen, spain, Travel, vacation

Posted in Travel