Continued from Barcelona Day 1 Part 1.

This is what $300 a night gets you in Barcelona right off of La Rambla just adjacent to the Gothic quarter.

Splurged this time and got a room with a private balcony.

That’s La Rambla right there. Pretty awesome hotel room.

What’s not awesome is me forgetting to bring my European plug adapter. I had to borrow one from the last hotel and this one too. This adapter, while being the same exact one I’ve got at home, doesn’t work very well. It would only make good contact in a certain way and RL eventually helped wedge plates under it to get it just right.

Why is it that these same palm trees do not look half as amazing sitting on a Texas beach? We are hungry after that train ride, unloaded our stuff and now out looking for a late lunch.

Just a random pair of underwear on the street. Madrid is definitely cleaner than Barcelona, at least cleaner than the area we are staying in. Also, this particular street smelled soooo strongly of urine that we could hardly breath while walking down it.

But man, they’ve got some cool buildings here.

Much more durable grout than the stone.

Lunch spot, as recommended by an online friend.

Hell yes.

Blood sausage with onions. Man, the food is Spain is just so consistently good.

Soo soo good. I need to make this back at home in Austin.

Time to meander through these small streets back to our hotel for a short nap.

Woah!

Some baklavas…they turned out to be mediocre, unfortunately.

There are so many mobil phone stores here run by Indians or Pakistanis.

Fever gone, but I’m still coughing so gonna take some of this. Just finished napping, so time to head out, walk around, get some dinner, then get some drinks. Let’s go!

Such amazing weather.

Not an actual weed shop selling thc weed. These are, I believe, CBD based…but supposedly you can get thc weed at a members only club that uses some loophole. Either way, we were smelling the smell of weed regularly while walking around Barcelona but not so much Madrid.

La Rambla leads to Placa de Catalunya. Originally I looked at staying at the Iberostar hotel here across this square, and now in retrospect, glad we didn’t. This part of town is just a little too commercialized to our liking.

Gothic quarter with their narrow streets. Upon more research, we found out that most of the buildings in the gothic quarter are more recently built in the past hundred years or so. So, really not all that gothic. I guess they kept some of the gothic super narrow alleys and streets.

Cool photo mosaic. This “kissing mural”.

The whole mural is made up of photos submitted by the community in the area (I believe). And the artist compiled them into a mural of two people kissing.

Barcelona Cathedral.

Shame on the church and shame on Samsung. It’s in such bad taste to sell ad space on the renovation screen. Seriously?

I bet the homeless and the tired have been sleeping on those benches for centuries. Some things never change.

Let’s see, where to now…looking for food.

We actually did not end up eating here. We came in, and immediately, it felt like a Chili’s to us. This is in the actual Gothic quarter, and this restaurant felt more commercial than anywhere else we’ve been in Spain. When the waitress took forever to come to our table, we just decided to get up and leave so we didn’t waste a meal eating mediocre food.

Thought about eating at one of these outdoor restaurants along Placa Reial, also in the gothic quarter. But again, these seemed so touristy and and the food looked just ok, so we skipped.

Pretty location, but wish they had better food.

Frustrated by not being able to find food to our liking in the gothic quarter, we crossed La Rambla to our side of the gothic quarter…which we’ve soon realized is not technically gothic quarter since we are on the other side of La Rambla. The gothic quarter is much more touristy and cleaner and commercialized. Our side has pretty much the same small alleys and buildings but it has a much grittier look and feel…but at the same time, it feels just right at home to us.

We walked by this bar on our hotel side of La Rambla (apparently this area is called El Raval) earlier and RL wanted to come here for a drink. Since we can’t find a good food choice yet, let’s get a drink first.

Oh, this is IT! Walked in and immediately felt comfortable. This felt exactly like East Austin did about 15 years ago. This is where the bohemian crowd hangs out and this is exactly where I’d like to hang out myself as well. No pretense, decor that hasn’t been updated or painted in decades. Perfection.

Can it get any better than this, they also serve absinthe. RL and I both decided this is our favorite spot that we’ve seen here and we are coming here every night they are open. This feels like home. This is apparently the oldest bar in Barcelona and has been around since 1820. Apparently Hemingway and Picasso used to drink here regularly.

So happy.

Apparently our bartender’s resting face is a slight smile. He’s probably some artists’ muse.

Now that we are slightly drunk from the amazing bar, let’s do a second round of searching for food.

We found this spot on our phone, it looked empty.

But unlike most restaurants, they decided to seat all the patrons in the back of the restaurant first, so empty at the front but pretty good crowd here in the back.

Next to us sat a couple who looked like twins. lol.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes!!!! Sausage and mushroom paella. Yum.

As a parting gift, they also offered us a free local liquor on the house. Nice. Love it.

This will be on the late night dining list one of these nights.

To us, Barcelona started off by smelling and seeming like Bourbon Street in Nola, and not in a good way. But we ended our first night here with Barcelona like East Austin 15 years ago, bohemian perfection and we love it.

To be continued at Barcelona Day 2.