Dani Freakin' Barcelona

So we just watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona," Woody Allen's tale of the complicated feelings and needs of two American tourists in the Spanish city. Their love affairs played out over a summer spent walking and touring and painting and loving in cafes and homes and fields in and around the city.

Barcelona and I? We had a speed date. I was there for a work trip and had four precious hours after the convention was over and our booth packed up to explore the city of Gaudi. If you have to choose what to do in four little hours starting after 5 p.m., food and walking, I thought, should be the main goals. Not knowing any Spanish would make this even more adventurous.

So I took a subway ride, navigating the city's large and very clean subway system with an ease that made me walk with a little more lift in my step (this after I thought my card wasn't working and a kind Spanish couple with many hand gestures showed me that I was trying to enter the wrong gate!). From there, I walked across a wide square to the Rambla, the heart of Barcelona's downtown. 

After ordering a hazelnut gelato to make the time pass even more sweetly, I set off down the Rambla, which is basically a long series of piazzas lined with the most magical vendors and artists. First there was the soccer player, I'm sure a former minor star, who kept a soccer ball bouncing on his head and neck while he put on and took off a shirt, while he was jumping rope. Then the pet shop vendors. There were parrots and other birds for sale, brown chipmunks with black stripes, little rabbits, giant chickens--what a strange place for such a menagerie! Next came the masses of flowers at every vendor. Then one little cart that had the funniest pet chew toys, for example, rubber pigs with legs outstretched. There I had my feeling that Italians are the friendliest people of all because I met an Italian tourist who smiled at my interest in the toys and pointed at a long length of sausages and kept trying to explain to me in multiple languages what they were. 

Next were the performers, all painted in gold and decorated to imitate famous portraits or grand ladies or one memorable woman who was covered in fruit and vegetables who was imitating a market stand. There were frightening ones too...circus midgets in face paint and dressed in black and other ghouls with masks and bleeding necks. 

I got lost trying to find Gaudi's famous church (actually I never did find it) but happened upon a fruit and vegetable market under a covered pavilion that smelled so sweetly of peaches and other fruits that I decided to find food.

And in Spain, that for me meant tapas. And where else could I go in Barcelona but Quimet & Quimet, a tiny "jewel box" of a tapas restaurant, as described by Amanda Hesser, my favorite NYT food writer. Back onto the subway, then more walking, looking for the Pizza Hut on the corner that was Amanda's recommended landmark. A lovely Spanish man walking a little white dog, after staring hard at me while I was slowly walking by with my map, vigorously pointed me in the right direction after I smiled and queried, "Quimet & Quimet?" 

I think, and the food at Quimet & Quimet, makes me believe it even more, that tapas in Spain truly is meant to be an appetizer, a refresher before your main meal at 9 or 10 in the evening. Because the little tapas there were so rich, so salty, and so heavy, that after just a couple, I felt thoroughly done. Not speaking Spanish was a challenge, but I ordered a seafood tapas on crusty bread and drizzled with flavored oil. Next was rich pate, again on a toast, with even more fancy olive oil and sweet vinegar. Finally a plate of preserved artichokes, beans, garlic and onions, with more oil and vinegar dressing the salad. Washed down with a glass of cava, the food finished me, and I went heavily back to my hotel, where I ordered a plate of fruit to refresh me, then bed.

So our date ended with just a chaste peck. I didn't fall in love with the city, but we left as friends. Maybe one day we'll meet again.