Barcelona – Around the World in 99 Days

Barcelona

I am in dire straits when we get home. Other than the fact that this will mark the return to reality and I’ll have to go back to 9 to 5 and all that carry on, the thing that’s most worrying is what on earth I’m going to cook for dinner.

It was all going ok until Barcelona. Until Barcelona we’d tried many different delicious new dishes. The tuscan sausage and bean dish in Florence, cioppino in San Francisco, the lamb soup in Iceland, eggplant parmiagana and seafood chowder. All of these dishes have made me think about looking up recipes, experimenting with flavours and adding to my repertoire of possible dishes.

And then tapas happened.

We love tapas. We’ve had tapas before. We’ve been out for tapas at home. But we haven’t had tapas at least once a day every day for five days in a row.

Tapas is like opening up the menu and saying I’ll have one of everything, thanks. And if we’re not full after that we’ll have another one of everything. Yesterday at lunch when we asked for the menu our man told us he was the menu, and then proceeded to list and point.

“Baby calamari and white beans, tuna with oil and onions, grilled prawns, croquettes, peppers, asparagus, octopus with potato and jamon…”

We said ‘Sí’ to every single dish. Well come on, did you read that list?

I need to somehow transfer this to home. I guess all I have to do is cook seven dishes each night, after I get home from work, after stopping at the supermarket, after battling public transport, after changing out of work clothes, after pouring a glass of wine.

Or we could just get takeaway, times seven.

Barcelona

If there is one language that I’d love to learn, it’s Spanish.

I’m virtually fluent in it already. I mentioned this to Don.

“I think you mean fluid,” was his response. Ignore him, he’s just jealous of my uncanny ability to pick up words and phrases in a short space of time.

I already had a solid grounding in the language thanks to Sesame Street. I also have Feliz Navidad, despacito and macarena, as well as tapas and sangría.

I learnt queso (cheese) and jamón (ham) the first time we were in Spain in 2004, back in the days when I was a vegetarian. Worried that I would be served ham in the ham restaurant, I made Don walk the streets with me until we found cheese labelled cheese. Only then could we go to the ham restaurant for a ham sandwich and a cheese sandwich – queso, no jamón!

Now three days into our Barcelona visit, I’ve added potato, street, house, fountain and grilled. I’ve just forgotten fountain and grilled, but I’m sure if I see them written down I’ll be right.

My favourite word is hola (hello). I’ve hola-ed everybody – every staff member at our hotel, all shop assistants, the people working at the museums, Don, our room, the shower, dinner, wine, the elevator, sangria, the bed.

Obviously I look like I speak Spanish. I’ve been stopped in the street several times and asked in Spanish for directions somewhere. Ok once, I was stopped once, but it just proves I look like a local.

Yesterday we sat for lunch at a little tapas bar.

“Hola!” I said to the woman serving.

“Hola!” she replied, before bursting into a string of rapid Spanish. The thing is, the whole time she was speaking I felt like I knew what she was saying. I didn’t. But I nodded and smiled, said hola and sí and queso a few times, pointed to random items on the menu and sounded them out in near-perfect Spanish. Wine and beer and food soon appeared, so all good, sí?

Perhaps when I get home I’ll enrol in Spanish lessons. Anybody is welcome to join me, however you’ll need to get the basics under your belt first.

Far be it for me to upstage you.