Full and Tired and Happy

Milo stayed home on Thursday, and I stayed home with him.  We were both borderline cases, and our friends were coming in.  So I missed yet another day of intensive Spanish.  I did all of the cooking I had intended to do the night before—a tortilla, a salad of cauliflower, garbanzos, wine-soaked raisins, pickled red onions, endive… all in a curry vinaigrette.  Yes, that’s a Keller recipe, from Ad Hoc at Home.  As usual, more work than you bargained for, but ultimately worth the trouble. Keller, of course, expects one to make all of these little yummies like wine-soaked raisins regularly and have them on hand.   And, I continued my homemade brownie trials by making the Sweet and Salty Brownies from Baked Explorations.  Baked is a terrific, small bakery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and the brownies are amazing—if you go for the sweet/salty combo.  I’m kind of pooped right now, but will include the recipe soon.  I promise.

Our friends Michael and Don got out of snowy NYC just fine and actually arrived early.  We had a good time catching up and eating, and Milo and I both made it to school on Friday.  I can’t say that I mastered Intermediate 3.  Given that I came in during the second week of the level, and then missed two of the five classes, I will be repeating it.   After taking two weeks off.  It turns out that the levels each take 2 weeks to get through, and it makes more sense to do two weeks on and two weeks off than one week on and one week off, as I had planned.

After class, I met up with Alec, Michael and Don (who had done the market shopping) at La Pubilla, a great lunch spot just next to the market—delicious carrot soup with a dollop of mascarpone and a drizzle of olive oil, steak with roasted potatoes and a cabrales sauce, and a thin cheesecake with berries.  Alec went to pick up the kids, and the rest of us walked down Passeig de Gracia all the way down to Placa Catalunya, then back up Rambla Catalunya until the Provenca FGC stop, where we got on to come home. 

Milo had his second soccer game on Saturday morning. He wore his lucky pink socks, but alas, they kind of got creamed.  He played well, though, and is still at an age where playing is so much more important than winning, so it really didn’t matter to him.  After coming back for a quick rest, we all went to the Sagrada Familia—Alec and I had not been since we first came to Barcelona several years ago, and much more of it has been opened up since then.  We had tickets for 3 pm—you can get them online and print them out at home, thereby skipping the whole line.  This is the way to see the Sagrada Familia.  There is also a brand new audioguide for kids, which made it possible for us to all go.  Well, sort of.  Alec listened to the kids’ version so that he could help them along. 

Before I had time to realize what was happening, Alec had purchased tickets for all of us to go up one of the spires in the elevator.  You know by now that I don’t love being in high places, especially small high places where the wind blows.  But the walls of the TINY space at the top of the spire were high and solid, so as long as I stood very still in the middle of the space, I was okay.  The views from up there are incredible, but I’ve never placed a whole lof of value in views.  The part I appreciated most was being able to see the high up architectural details up close.  But I hightailed it back down the elevator pretty quickly, while everyone else took the stairs down.  There’s no two ways about it—the Sagrada Familia is an amazing building. I hesitate to write too much, because it would feel reductive.  Suffice it to say that, although the building itself has become a symbol of Barcelona—which means that you see representations of it everywhere, which can often result in an anticlimactic experience when you encouter the object that became the symbol—walking into the interior stopped me in my tracks.  It’s all that.

We had dinner at 7 Portes, an iconic Barcelona restaurant on the edge of the Born and famous for its paella.   It was very good—one of those restaurants you are glad to have eaten in—but not one I will rush back to.  There is a lot more food to eat in this city.  We took a long walk around the Born and the Barri Gotic after dinner—we have not gone out much in this city that is known for its night life.  We wandered and peeked into places rather than going in, and it was interesting to see what goes on while we generally sleep.

Today we slept late, cooked more good food, went out to Parc Guell, and came back to eat, play scrabble, and rest.  It’s good to have friends from home here—friends who appreciate good food, like digging into a good city, and enjoy taking things slow.