Barcelona Day 1

We arrived in Barcelona about 11;30 AM. It was a pretty uneventful flight and we even were able to sleep for a while. Customs took less than 15 minutes and we headed to baggage claim where we picked up our bags. The taxi ride to the hotel got us to our hotel, the Petit Palace Boqueria before 1PM. The hotel is in Old Town Barcelona the oldest section of Barcelona and is located on a pedestrian only street, but thankfully it was close to where the taxi dropped us off.

Our room was quite adequate for our 2 night stay and overlooked a courtyard where there was music in the evenings so we were able to enjoy the music from our room. After a much needed rest and shower we headed to the meeting place for our evening tour, Barcelona Food & Wine Tour with a Local Sommelier. Since we are only in Barcelona for 2 days we wanted to experience as much as we could and get the feel of Barcelona. Food tours are a good way to do that.

We were a little early for our tour so we stopped at a small “hole in the wall” tapas bar called La Barmuteria and enjoyed our drinks with some complimentary olives as we sat outside in the wonderful cool air. The owner came to check on us and explained that the olives they serve are marinated in a special seasoning from southern Spain called Mojo Picon. They were wonderful and really complemented the wine. When we headed out to join our tour David laughed and wondered if our tour would take us back here.

We met our delightful tour guide, Moa from Sweden a few blocks from the tapas bar and were thrilled to find it would only be 2 couples with our guide. Our fellow guests were a young couple who live in Dallas Texas but the guy grew up in Rochester. It always amazes me that we can travel thousands of miles from home and run into people from our hometown. It is a small world.

As we headed out on the tour we retraced our steps and laughed as we stopped right at the tapas bar we had just visited. The owner and bar tender acted like we were old friends when they saw us come in with the tour.

At La Barmuteria we enjoyed a Spanish white wine, Albariño with some tapas. During our tour we stopped at 3 other tapas bars where we got to try a variety of red and white wines, and some Cava, all from Spain and some local tapas favorites. Most tapas is simple, and everything we had was delicious. At one of our stops the owner brought out a plate that looked a bit like poutine. When he set it on the table he said that it was a house specialty. Our tour-mate from Rochester said, ‘that looks like a garbage plate” and the poor owner looked appalled. He recovered, or we think he did after our Rochester friend explained that garbage plates are a favorite food in Rochester and people go out of their way to get them,