Barcelona - 19 September 2011 (2)

It was getting warmer now, so we called into the hotel to leave our jackets.  We realised that the narrow corridor leading to the hotel reception was a watch shop.  It seemed to be doing a steady trade, despite some of the watches having huge faces.

Fountains in Placa de Catalunya

Then we set off down Las Ramblas again.  I could hear parrots overhead but couldn’t see any.  There were several painted people acting as moving statues.  The first one was Salvador Dali, with an upturned moustache.  A young girl had her picture taken with him.  He held up a frame so that it looked as if she were his painting.  Another “statue” was in black wearing wings and very long fingernails.  He had a photo taken while holding someone trapped in his wings.  Then there were two people dressed as Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god.  They were sitting suspended in mid-air.  I didn’t stop long enough to work out how they did it, but it did look good.

Fountain in Square & Our Hotel

There were lots of stalls down the central paved section of the street.  They were not all for the tourists by any means as the most eye-catching were the florists and there were also pet shops.  The first pet stall had budgies, lovebirds and canaries, plus chinchillas and some hamsters which were all asleep, crowded into a drinking bowl in the middle of the cage floor.  Another pet shop had the most tiny hamsters and some very small terrapins.

Eventually we reached the bit where there were pavement restaurants.  Before I got to Barcelona, I imagined that Las Ramblas would have many pavement cafés where we could sit with a cup of coffee or a glass of something and watch the world go by.  That would have saved my mum from too much walking.  Unfortunately, things were not as described in the books and there were no cafés, only restaurants where you were expected to eat.

It being lunchtime, we decided to stop at one which had a special offer on paella and tapas combined.  It was too good to be true.  When we got to ordering and it was too late to just walk off because we had been given our drink, he said that there was a choice of paella, but no choice of tapas.  I gritted my teeth and stressed that I was a vegetarian, which also meant no fish.  So they brought out sausage and moules!  When I pointed out that these were not vegetarian, he said that my mum wasn’t a veggie as she had ordered a seafood paella.  After a bit of complaining, he eventually changed them for olives and artichokes, so that wasn’t too bad, although patatas bravas would have been a lot better.  Then came the paellas, which were a huge disappointment.  By the time I had fished out the peppers, I was left with greasy, overcooked rice, a few peas and a single Brussel sprout.  I didn’t eat it all and felt distinctly queasy afterwards.  My mother’s paella was not much better with very little in the way of seafood.  With one ½ litre glass of orange juice, it all came to a massive €34.  BE VERY CAREFUL.  Although I believed European law require prices to be quoted including VAT, this is frequently not the case with restaurants in Barcelona.  We left in disgust, but not before we had loudly warned other diners not to order the paella.