Barcelona Day 4: Delicious Food

On day 4, I was rudely awakened by Drew who had already gone to the gym and wanted to hurry up and get our free breakfast at the hotel before all of the "good stuff" was gone. Mind you, there was nothing bad about breakfast at the hotel but it was a regular continental breakfast - nothing to write home about. I would have much preferred to get breakfast elsewhere but he wanted to take advantage of his SPG Platinum status to get free breakfast. Lovely.

I definitely went back to sleep immediately after we finished eating. By the time I woke up, I was craving a sandwich. I really wanted to try Foc i Oli, a hamburger joint that's currently rated #14 out of 8,303 restaurants in Barcelona on Trip Advisor. It was only slightly out of our way to Park Güell, which is where we had planned on spending the beautiful day.

After walking to the restaurant from Universtat Station, we had to wait outside to be seated because the place was tiny and only had room for roughly 10-12 people to sit down at once. Luckily, there were only two people ahead of us in line. We were seated at the bar-stools in the front window where we got to watch other couples making out on the street in front of us. I've never seen so much PDA in my life!

Drew and I both ordered "el Chivito" which is described on the menu as a sandwich with thin slices of steak, ham, bacon, mayo, salad dressing, gouda cheese, red pepper, fresh tomatoes and caramelized onions on brioche bread. We also ordered the homemade fries. They were both amazing!

After lunch, we hopped back on the metro and headed to Park Güell. I've never seen so many steep hills and stairs in my life! A half hour later, we finally got to the ticket counter only to find out that the next entry time wasn't until 4 hours later. Talk about poor planning on our part! However, instead of sulking, we decided to purchase tickets in advance for Saturday morning before we had to switch hotels. At least we got some extra exercise in!

these were about 1/10 of the steps in all!

By the time we woke up, it was almost 9 PM. Drew claimed he wasn't hungry but I still wanted to go out. I convinced him to go to El Nacional which was on the list of places I wanted to visit. It's a very touristy complex with four restaurants and four bars, kind of similar to Mario Batali's Eataly, minus the markets. We opted for La Taperia and I thoroughly enjoyed every last moment of it. At first, I was a little worried because instead of ordering off the menu for tapas, you had to raise your hand when you heard a waiter calling out the item they were circling the restaurant with...and what if they didn't call out enough items that we wanted!? Gladly, we ended up getting everything I had my eye on except for any of the paella dishes...which was fine because I would have been too full anyway. We ordered the pan con tomate, the acorn-fed iberian shoulder ham, the iberian ham croquettes, patatas bravas, and the thin chorizo simmered in cider. I finished my meal off with Crema Catalana but of course Drew was being no fun and only had a few bites of my dessert. Everything was delicious and I was surprised that the bill came to only roughly €59 including a few glasses of beer and wine.

 

Once we figured out how to obtain our check and pay (which I still don't get how this works in Spain...does someone want to explain this to me? At every single place we went to, we waited and waited for the check though the service was good otherwise. Eventually, if we couldn't get someone's attention we would just go up to the counter to pay), we headed to the cocktail bar where I ordered the L'Aperitiu and Drew ordered El Nacional, which they lit a stick of cinnamon on fire over. I loved my drink but then I ordered El Sorbeto which was a little too strong and cold for my liking. I should have known not to order a frozen drink with a sore tooth.

By the time we were good and liquored up, the Metro had stopped running for the night. I have something against paying for cabs so I convinced Drew to walk back to our hotel which was probably about a 50 minute walk. Little did he know I duped him into taking the more scenic route so we could see the Arc de Triomf on our way back. It only made our trip 0.18 miles longer but I'm sure he still would have complained if he had known. Also, we just so happened to stumble on the Casino he wanted to check out. It took us 10 minutes to get in with paper copies of our IDs and only 5 minutes to put €10 into a slot machine and "win" €6. I was happy because we then had euro change for tips...whoop whoop!