Barcelona in May...

Friday, May 25, 2012

...is simply seductive. There are so many, many places to discover, you can easily forget that you have to return to wherever that was you came from! Your first visit is nothing other than a chance to make a new appointment for your next. 

I stayed only two and a half days. Way too short to say that I have understood what it is all about. I walked and walked and walked; went to all the museums and gardens and plazas but the closest I felt to the city and its people was when, on my first night I lost myself in the narrow labyrinth that is the Barri Gotic. 
Columbus points the way to the New World, but I chose to go the other way and through a narrow alley I entered the oldest part of the city. It is medieval, Gothic, dark and dirty and I was hungry to see everything. It seems I was not the only one! So many tourists with cameras hanging down their necks, travel guides in their hands, pointing and shooting pictures. I kept walking, no time to look at the map. I had to catch the images of the city in the last of the afternoon light, the golden light! So I got lost. The noises of la Rampla fading with every step. My belly started to protest. My nose on high alert, I smelled the small restaurant before I even saw it. 

For some reason it was full of young women! Maybe because of the charming chef who sings while he prepares my tagliatelle carbonara con bacon. I wolf it down with a glass of fresh aromatic house Chardonnay. It is a tiny little place with paintings for sale on the wall and one central table where everyone sits. A group of German boys is buying beer to a group of French girls and they exchange names in a melange of English, German and Spanish. The girls eat their pasta with knife and fork, the boys have lost all interest in their food and order more beers and I finish my simple meal left in owe of this small hall in the wall bursting with young energy and Catalan music!