Sweet Home Barcelona blog

This weekend has been La Mercé the fiesta mayor of Barcelona City. Loads of free entertainment throughout the city for 3/4 days. It kicked of in front of the City Hall (the Ayuntamiento) on Friday night with a procession of “devils” dancing very much like something out of “Where the Wild Things Are” carrying fireworks and falling down dead when each of their fireworks finally exploded. This was followed by fireworks launched from the roof of the Ayuntamiento. Saturday we headed down to the Raval to see the Basque market - it was OK, but not as big as we had expected - just a few stalls. Saturday evening we parked ourselves in front of the Mercado de Santa Caterina to see the “main event” a procession of lots of devils dancing wildly with carrefocs (like giant sparklers) over their heads and with fire-breathing dragons and enthusiastic drumming to back them up. It was a bit of a squeeze in the crowd, but all very friendly. We then headed over to the cathedral square to see the wonderfully husky-voiced Italian Pietra Montercorvino belting out her stuff and then soul-funk maestro Amp Fiddler. Sunday morning we went back to Plaza San Jaume to see the Castellers (human castles) competition.  It was hot and crowded in the square, but they all put on a great show.  Some of the kids who climb to the top had a lot more bottle than me, and cried in disappointment when they fell down.  Sunday night we walked down to the beach at Barceloneta to see one of the nightly firework displays. The beach really is a great place for this. We walked back via Arc de Triunfo to see the Domincan night, but when we got there we realised it wasn’t for us and headed back home. It was a good weekend, but we’ll probably be a bit more organised next year and take in the final night fireworks in Montjuic which must have been spectacular as we could see some of it from our flat. Photos from the weekend are in the gallery section.

I was glancing through Margarita Puig’s book “Restaurantes de Barcelona donde nunca te han llevado” (Barcelona restaurants where they’ve never taken you to” and came across a good write-up for the Flor de Vid restaurant.  As it’s “just up the road” (two blocks) from us and we’ve never been there before we thought we’d give it a try.  We were a bit apprehensive on entering because we were the only customers (on a Saturday night at 10pm - it should have been busy).  However we sat down and had a really excellent meal with a fine bottle of albariño.  All exceptionally good value and fantastically well cooked.  There was an amuse-bouche of creamed fennel and then we had a selecton of tapas to start with a very tasty carpaccio of tuna, goat cheese croquetas and pimientos de padrón salted to perfection.  Isabel went for an arroz de langostinas and I had magret de pato - again both courses were perfectly cooked.  Some surprise desserts followed and we left extremely happy after a couple of chupitos of orujo.  We’ll be back.

Rob and Mike called in for a few days on their latest motorbike tour of Europe.  We had good evenings out and didn’t talk too much about work while they were here.  With Mike’s GPS they impressively found their way to our door without directions (the one way system can be a bit of a killer).  I’ve put some photos from our last night out together <here>.  Unfortunately for Mike, we were still waiting for delivery of a new bed and so we only had one spare bed ready, and he lost the toss with Rob, so he ended up on the inchable - I’m sure that Rob cheated, but I don’t know how.  If you’re reading this, guys, it was a pleasure having you here, and we hope that you’ll be back soon.

I’ve just uploaded some more photos taken at the aquarium in La Coruña at the end of our holiday in Galicia here.

I’ve uploaded photos from this summer’s holiday in Galicia with Edmund.  We stayed on a camping site with Isabel’s brothers, their families and friends.
The photos are here.

We’ve just had a few weeks great holidays in Spain.  We started off with a memorable concert in one of our favourite buildings in Barcelona - the Palau de la Música.  Isabel and I were entertained by the wonderful Norah Jones.  She has such an amazing voice and the band are an exceptionally good bunch of musicians.  This was quite simply the best musical entertainment that we’ve had in years.  Edmund then came over to spend a fortnight with us in Spain.  We had a few days in Barcelona first; we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (actually very entertaining - Edmund totally loved it).  Edmund’s bedroom here is now made out as a pirate ship with hammocks, skull and crossbone bed linen and posters of Will Turner and Captain Jack Sparrow.  We spent some time painting his Lord of the Rings figures and we went to Abacus to get cartridge paper so he could build a cave for his adventures.  The three of us then flow off to spend a week in Galicia with Isabel’s brother Jesús, his wife Mamen and the kids (Jesusito and Leonor).  More to follow.

Last weekend we had family visiting us; Isabel’s brother Juan, his wife Montse and their eight-year-old Daniel. We had a great weekend. Errr at least after Friday night when Juan, Dani and I made a trip to Ikea to get some wardrobes for Edmund’s bedroom. The flat packs just about squeezed into Juan’s estate car/van thing. When we got back home we man-handled the things into the lift (they fitted with millimetres to spare and lots of cursing at the lift doors). We were sweating buckets and swearing buckets by the time we’d got all the boxes into the flat…

We then headed off to Ronda de San Anton to meet up with Isabel’s cousin (also called Isabel) and her daughter Marina (seven). We went for horchata (it’s a cool mily drink made from nuts) for Marina and beers for the rest of us. Time flew and it was around 3am by the time we got back home.

The next morning - Juan had a parking ticket! In Zaragoza they don’t pay to park on Saturdays, but here in the centre of Barcelona it’s a big money earner for the Ayuntament. More swearing followed… the annoying thing was that Juan had already been down to his car that morning to move the seats back and the ticket must have been slapped on in between him coming back up to the flat and all of us heading off… to the beach

We drove northeast to Caldes D’Estrac in the Maresme - a great beach that Isabel and I have been to before by train (the train station is right beside the beach). Anyway, the place was totally parked up by the time we got there, but Juan managed to negotiate a space with a local who was loading up his car. The beach is fairly deserted and ther’s a great family atmosphere. We spent a few hours there before heading back to Barcelona. In the evening we headed down through San Pere to the lovely relaxed cafe atmosphere of C/Allada Vermell. It’s always a wonderful place to sit and relax under the trees and sip a cold beer.

Sunday was a reminder of why Barcelona is such a great place to live. Another sunny day - we headed up to the Parque del Labirinto - almost in Colserolla. It’s a wonderful park with beautiful flowers and of course the maze; where we managed to get lost - at least Dani found the way out first. Entrance is free on Sundays! Then we caught the metro back down to Parallel so Dani could get a ride on the funicular up to Montjuic and then down on the cable car to the beach at Barceloneta. We spent some time at Montjuic watching people diving in the huge swimming and diving pools up there - an incredible view with the backdrop of the whole city below. There was the usual 30-minute plus queue for the cable car, but it does give spectacular views of the harbour. When we landed at Barceloneta, we walked back to the Palau del Mar for a late lunch at La Gavina (Paella, Fideau, great tempura prawns and croquetas…) then we walked back home and watched the British Grand Prix (recorded) before Juan and co headed off home.

All in all a fantastic weekend (apart from Ikea).

23rd June was the midsummer fiesta in Barcelona (and presumably in the rest of Spain, but it’s a big one here).  Saturday night saw fireworks spectaculars at the beach and all night verbanas with petardos until dawn.  We spent the night down at the beach last year with Isabel’s brother, Juan and his Italian/Canadian friend Frederico.  This year we decided to give it a miss and head for our local street bonfire and party.  However, it didn’t happen…

We turned up around 10:30pm expecting the bonfire to be in full blaze, but there was no sign of a cinder.  We headed into the local corner restaurant Casa Freixo, sat down with a bottle of cava and some tapas and quizzed the owner.  He told us that he’d been running the local verbana for the last 20 years, but he had had enough…  The Ayuntamiento were looking to charge him 1200 Euros to run the bonfire and I guess that the extra business that it would have brought in wasn’t worth the hassle for him.  It was disappointing but understandable - he complained that none of the neighbours ever showed any interest in getting involved in the organisation in recent years.  Some kids came in with crates of fireworks wondering where the party was, and had to leave looking disappointed.  No big deal in the end as they set them all off in the street outside.

Earlier on Saturday we “discovered” another great little local place for tapas.  The Bar Mut in c/ Pau Claris just above Diagonal.  The decor is distinctly Paris 1930s, very friendly staff and great quality food with the menu hand-written on a couple of blackboards.  They also have a wooden?!? fridge.  We just had a plato of ibericos and a sortido de quesos with a couple of cañas, but we’ll be back to try something more substantial.

It’s been almost a month since I last updated this blog, and what a month it has been.  We have been for a long (felt more like short) weekend to visit my parents in Insch in Scotland.  We managed to get direct flights from Barcelona to Aberdeen with flyGlobeSpan, but the flight times were a bit crap, so we arrived very late on a Thursday evening and flew back at 0700 on a Sunday morning.  We packed a lot in in a few days including visiting my granny who we were delighted to see is looking rather well for her age.  We also went to Balmoral castle - a first for both me and Isabel after an aborted attempt to visit last summer with my cousin Helen thanks to a stray dog (it’s a long story…).  We also had the tour of the Lochnagar whisky distillery.

It was fantastic to see all my Scottish cousins and their families and Uncle George and Aunty Chrissie looking in such wonderful health.

Back in Barcelona we seem to have spent the last month continuously moving furniture around so that the builders could finish their work.  After much hard work we are now in a situation where things are relatively tidy, and the cardboard boxes are getting fewer and fewer.  We have a lot of furniture now although we are still waiting for some custom-made wardrobes for our bedroom.

Isabel’s brother Jesús and family (Mamen, Jesusito and Leonor) have given us the honour of being our first guests this weekend.  They came down for Jesusito to sing in a choir at the Auditori in Barcelona on Sunday.  When I say choir, it was really a huge chorus of children from all over Spain - I did a rough head count and there were 700 kids on stage singing a version of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

We had a fantastic lunch with them by the beach on Sunday prior to the concert.  We all shared a bowl of arroz con bogavante (lobster with rice) in the Arenal restaurant.  We would go there again because this was absolutely wonderful.

The title of this post is a little inaccurate because Emilio, our painter from Chile, will be back still finishing off during this week, but there really isn’t much to do.  We have the feeling that he’s doing it really slowly because he enjoys working here so much - I guess that the air conditioning helps. 

This weekend has been the Festa Major (Fiesta Mayor) of the Eixample Dreta where we live. Our street, C/Girona, was closed to traffic along much of its length to allow market stalls and entertainment stands to be set up. The intention was to take the fiesta back to the period when the Eixample was first being built, and things to see included lots of people in period (c.1910) dress, local children’s bands, magicians, period cars, motorbikes, a bus and a Fire engine (that’s the red one that says “Bombers de Barcelona” on its side). One of the local delis Can Ravell provided a whole roast pig and cow with which they managed to feed hundreds of people. This was impressively well organized and the cow had been roasted for 12 hours from midnight on Friday to be ready for Saturday lunchtime.

You can see photos from the Festa Major here.