Barcelona : Day 1

I had long to be visit Barcelona since I saw it in a TV when I was a child. It was depicted as this romantic, serendipitous place.

We had nothing on the agenda for our first day in Barcelona. After a hectic week in Madrid I figured Wzrd could use some down time. Pasquale wanted to do hit the beach, but I didn’t really care for it. I was also wanting some alone time with Wzrd. After a week of consistently hanging out with a dozen people I was craving some quality time with my love.

We decided to take a nice stroll down to the Gothic Quarter. It was like walking through a time machine and being transported back in time, a true European feel.

We wandered up and down the small alleyways for awhile. Eventually ending up at this place I had bookmarked for lunch. The restaurant was full but luckily there were a few other places to eat in the same square. After a quick Google search, we decided on checking out Bar Mono. I’m so glad we did, because it was one of the best meals we had in Barcelona.

We ordered some duck baos, pan con tomato, calamari, and cod fritters. O.M.G everything was sooooo good. The calamari was the best I’ve had, light flavorful batter, perfected fried. The calamari was fresh and tender. 🤤 Then came the cod fritters. Never had cod fritters before, now I’m sad I don’t know where I can find it. I might just have to learn how to make it. It was so so sooo delicious. Oh, last but definitely not least, the pan con tomato, I’m not a bread preson – I don’t general like carbs all that much. But this bread was out of this world. It was thin, crispy on the crust but nice and fluffy on the inners with the perfect amount of chewiness. And the tiny bit of fresh tomato they smear on it , drizzled with the most flavorful olive oil I’ve ever tasted, finished off with just the right amount of salt sprinkled on top. It was perfection. We had such a great meal there.

After lunch, we walked down towards the beach to meet up with Pasquale. He had apparently been there all morning, just sitting on the beach, drinking. It was a short walk from the Gothic Quarters to the beach, about 15-20 minutes. I had not known Barcelona for a beach town beforehand. It was nice but honestly I didn’t think it was that special. We had a few beers and people-watched for a while, then we decided to call it for the day. It was quite hot and we needed an afternoon nap. (LOL)

After returning to the hotel, we relaxed for a few hours. We were pretty pooped from walking 500 miles during the day, so we decided to try this place around the corner from our hotel. Its Google reviews were great, but for us it was by far the worst meal we had in Barcelona.

We ordered their signature meat dish (not pictured) and it wasn’t really flavorful, it was definitely over cooked. After having the best pan con tomato earlier in the day, what we got at dinner just pale in comparison. The bread was like a cracker, hard and dry.

Overall we were just pooped from walking around all day. We ate dinner, then headed back to the hotel and called it a night.