It was the last day of my trip, and I had a ton of chocolate shops to visit. I'm not going to detail them all here. I'm gonna stick all the pics up on flickr so my customers can also take a look. But suffice it to say, I had a great time, saw some really cool stuff and bought more chocolates than i could ever eat.
I spent the morning visiting three stores near Shirley's neighborhood in Gracia. Oriol Bagalguer (my new favorite chocolatier), Petit Plaisir and Chocolat Factory (super cool stuff). Then I was back to Las Ramblas to meet up with Greg for lunch and to finish off my Barcelona chocolate tour. On Las Ramblas (which is the main tourist drag of Barcelona, filled with sites and lots of shops), there's a famous market called Mercado Boqueria. Now, I am a huge fan of outdoor markets (have you seen my little farmer's market rant), so of course, I had to visit La Boqueria.
So here are a ton of pictures, with some captions. There were different sections for all the various types of food. Here's a meat stand:
Here are some shots of various fruit stands:
A photo of dragon fruit (i think that's what it's called, I don't particularly like it, it doesn't have much taste and has a funny texture)
Cherries! (you know how much i love cherries)
The fish stall:
Some salted fish (aka bacalao)
Candied fruit:
Dried fruits and nuts
Candy:
and of course chocolate!
Ahh so much food. I ended up buying some fruit. Like cherries and wild strawberries. (tiny and floral, I've only seem them in Europe) The other great thing about La Boqueria is that there are a handful of food stalls where you can sit down and order tapas, which is exactly what Greg and I ended up doing at this place:
We both ordered the menu of the day, which is a set menu of three courses with various options.So we both started off with appetizers. I had this very nice salad with tuna, which i enjoyed a lot
and Greg got this slightly unusual, but very enjoyable (for him) dish of a fried egg atop white rice and all covered with tomato sauce. He said he'd had it before in Madrid.
Next, we got our main courses. Ok, I admit I didn't really know what type of fish I was ordering when I got this, but I thought it'd be safe knowing it was some type of white fish. It was actually a simply grilled swordfish steak. I have no idea why it was served with these odd french fries, but I didn't eat them.
I was more jealous of Greg for ordering this whole bass. Which was also simply grilled. (he also had no idea what he was ordering other than some type of fish, and I don't think he was expecting a whole fish, but he enjoyed it none the less.)
Of course, we had dessert left. I went for something very simple. Just a slice of fresh pineapple. (it was a big slice)
While Greg had some type of bread pudding?
Post lunch, we were both quite full. and it was super hot out. Luckily, Jayna was able to join us during her lunch break and we went off to explore some chocolate shops.I eventually made my way back to Shirley's house and for dinner, we decided to go to one last tapas restaurant, one that Shirley particularly liked called Ciutat Comtal.
It was super busy when we got there and was a much fancier restaurant than the casual bar that we'd been at the day before. But they also had a very long bar with many of their cold tapas set out (like the ones on slices of bread.) They also had fresh veggies and seafood at the bar, which you could order, and then it was sent off to the kitchen to be cooked.
We sat in a room at the back of the restaurant which had this cool wall of beer bottles.
I must admit that service at this place sucked. First, it was kinda weird that all the servers here were Asian(which isn't a bad thing, it's just an odd thing in noticed). We couldn't figure out why. And even though we were asking for things in Spanish, the waitress still brought us English menus. Which is a little off putting when you're trying to order something you're accustomed to ordering in Spanish (like gambas al ajillo) and you have to look for the English translation to find out the price or if they've even got it. Plus everything was hurried and not super pleasant.At any rate, I began my order, and since it was my last night, I decided to try a number of dishes and of course, ordered way too much. I enjoyed this grilled shrimp skewer (sorry for the blurriness)
and I had to order my favorites, grilled pimientos with sea salt. I love these things and i order them everytime i go to Toro in Boston. And it was nice to see that Toro had gotten it right. These were delicious as usual.
I also got some mushrooms
and an order of small fried anchovies. I was actually expecting them to best crispier, but they were still tasty.
In fact, everything was cooked well. And it wasn't terribly expensive. I did enjoy the simplicity and casualness of the previous evening's meal more, though. And dare i say it, but i think I like the tapas at Toro in Boston more. Just for its sheer innovation and how well the tapas are prepared there.and to finish off the whole meal, Shirls and i shared this nice slice of stawberry tart.
Of course, I'd had a a fabulous trip and all my foodie cravings fulfilled in Barcelona. So i leave you with a last picture of me and my girls in front of a bull statue in Barcelona.
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