Barcelona Spain

Barcelona First night

9 September 2006

With halting Spanish, we somehow managed to convey our destination to our driver.

After arriving in Barcelona and marveling at all the neat duty-free shops in the terminal, we took a taxi to the Grand Marina Hotel. With halting Spanish, we somehow managed to convey our destination to our driver. We settled in, shed our traveling clothes, showered, and dressed. We asked the concierge for a recommendation to a restaurant within walking distance. Since most locals eat dinner fairly late, I was hoping that finding a place at 10:30pm wouldn’t be too difficult. He suggested a place called El Nou, which was situated fifteen minutes away in a little neighborhood just past the Plau de Mar. This restaurant is a couple of blocks away from the main tourist area along the harbor. To find it, we had to travel a bit down a little alley. It seemed a little seedy at first, but as when we hit a little row of restaurants, we knew it was an ok neighborhood. El Nou’s location is definitely in an area into which most tourists would not venture.

We were greeted by the host, who recognized us since our concierge had called in a reservation ahead of time. We were seated in a rather modern dining area with an almost Western feel. The server spoke English but somehow I couldn’t understand what he was saying about one of the appetizers. Consequently, we ended up getting two types of carpaccio appetizers. They weren’t really that bad. Jean ordered a steak, which she found too tough, and I had the grilled sea bass, which was pretty good.

After dinner, we strolled back to the hotel, and noted the abundance of activity along the harbor at night. There were plenty of people hanging out everywhere along the way. We stopped by a little food stand that sold waffles and crepes, most of them chocolate covered! We found out that the vendors were Filipino (the first ones we saw in Barcelona). We felt a little bad for them since one of them was probably TNT, and it was obvious that they held other jobs during the daytime. When we mentioned that we were on vacation, the lady responded by saying that we were lucky to be able to go on vacation. She said she probably send any extra money back home.