The food and service lived up to the hype. It is a sit down counter in one of the busiest parts of the market. We waited a bit an snagged a few barstools. Immeadiately we were waited on my an older gentleman we find out later to be the owners nephew. The owner is this great old man in a lime green vest and white shirt. All of the employees are his family members with a few exceptions.
We started with a round of cava becsuse mom had never tried it and she loved it. No surprise there. Sparkling Spanish white wine, what's there not to love. We told our waiter to bring us tastes of different tapas, and he did amazing. We never order yet these intricately flavored yet simplistic dishes kept arriving
He brought us three jamon croquettes to start and these little fried things have stolen my heart. A plate of those and a glass of cava and I would be solid.
He then brought mussels on the half shell. They were soaked in a pico de gallo and vinegrette creation and were out of this world. W ate them with crusty bread. Next we had salt cod salad. They scooped rehydrated salt cod, tomatoes, egg, onion, and a few other things I couldn't place into a silver can and tipped it out .sand castle style onto a plate. It was then drizzled with balsamic and olive oil. I didn't think I would like this but I did ut had a very fresh flavor and wasn't too salty.
While eating the salad a simple plate of chickpeas arrived. They were mixed with some sauce that I could not place but were tasty. Then we had steamed cockles which were terribly sandy but in this case it worked. If you saw past the sand and ate them on bread they were wonderful with the cava.
We had spanish sausage with a small salad, and smoked baby green peppers. They had a very sweet flavor to them and once again were great with the bread. We loved it here and didn't even really want to leave but it is a busy place and felt bad taking up the seats.
We left La Boqueria and took the subway up to Montjuic and the Olympic park. The olympics were held here in 1992 and they did a lot of reconstruction to make the city more accessible to large crowds. Both of these places are up on a large hill and we had to take a different subway to get to the top. Think like a subway that drives like the beginning of a roller coaster. We went and explored a garden up on the hill which was beautiful. We sat out front of the Catalan Art Museum which was in this great building that overlooked plaza de Espana.
Then we got hilariously lost trying to get to the castle Montjuic and ended up practically running to get a cab. The castle was pretty sweet and overlooked the port but it wasn't spectacular.
We took a gondola partway back and saw a lot of the city. Then we hoped on the metro. We decided to just make dinner in and ran around La Boqueria buying fresh vegetables and olives. Everything there was super cheap. Our version turned out pretty good, not even close to Yassines but tasty none the less.
That night Alicia and I went out dancing at a club on the beach but came back fairly early around 3ish because we both weren't feeling it.
We went to get our tickets to Valencia in the morning but all seats were booked till 8:30 so we stored our luggage and went and shopped. Mom bought a really cute dress. We fed pigeons in Plaza de Catalunya and had these huge but delicious faalafel sandwiches for lunch. We went to La Granja M Viader which is one of the oldest milk bars in spain. We ordered majorcan milk, flan, and cheese with honey. There was a mix up between alicia and mom and the flan was supposed ro be creme brulee. Then flan and cheese were a bit odd but the milk was delicious. It was made with honey, lemon, cinnamon, and one other spice.
We got on our train at 8:30 and got into Valencia around 11:30. The hotel I booked is a lot farther away from the city as I expected but oh well... They have a metro system. We woke up this morning and had our complimentary breakfast of pastry, cafe con leche, and Valencia orange juice. About to get going and plan the day.
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