Donde Este Barcelona?

So me and my friends went to Barcelona for a long weekend and I thought I'd write a review for any budding minibreak weekenders. I'd actually been before with Hen a couple of years ago. It was my birthday and we went for 2 nights. It was a really fun trip and eventful. The morning we left, we realised that our Ryan air flight was NOT flying to Barcelona, but to some shitmuncher town a 2 hour coach ride away. Probably as disappointing as a foreigner booking a flight to “London southend”. Anyways, it meant that with all the travel time, we got to Barcelona at about 9pm Friday and left 9am Sunday. But we managed to wonder about drunk for enough time and had a hurried pit stop to the massive cathedral thing that's been built for the last 150 years. Took a photo and scrammed. We were really into drawing on our faces in those days too. The photos are pretty hilair.

Anyways that was then and this is now. This time it was my good friend Chris’s birthday, the first of the group to turn 30 really. Wow. And on this trip, we had 4 full days and nights to absorb the city and do cultural things. And there were NINE of us. And we stayed in a fancy apartment instead of a grotty hostel. FANCY! and the sign of getting older. I might have to go to Reykjavik soon and just rock up in a minidress, a fur coat and a smile and see what happens. To prove I'm not old yet.  But I digress. 2 of the group could speak Spanish and decipher the menus and pint us in the general direction of good food and wine. Cos that's really I wasn’t on holiday. With maybe 3 cultural events so that I deserve to be drunk 100% of the time.

So here are my 5 top observations about Barcelona

1.       Don’t order tapas in large quantities. They will think you’re an idiot.

On the first night we got this really amazing type of tapas called “pinxos”. I knew what it was cos they have it in Brixton. It’s basically bits of food with sticks through them. And you just order it as you go, like at Yo Sushi. We kind of didn’t realise this and tried to order enough for 9 people  to have a full meal in one go and the results were disastrous. No one knew what anything was and I accidentally ate some cheesy fish thinking it was a sausage. But wow oh wow we ate some amazing stuff in there. And the wine came in tumblers which is basically my most favourite thing ever. So European! The highlight was a piece of very rare beef on a piece of toast with some melted roquefort on top. And don’t forget the stick through the middle. SALTY!

2.       Croquetas are NOT potato croquettes

I fell in love with croquetas. I probably said the word at least every 5 minutes. They’re basically these gooey breaded things with ham in them. I was on a strict diet on Barcelona of as much ham and cheese and bread I could eat and at least 4 portions of croquetas every day. And 2 bottles of red wine. Me and Laura split off from the group one day and I was seriously hanging and feeling all the excessive drinking in my soul. So we headed for a quiet square and ordered 2 beers. “no food?” asked the waitress? “non grazziass” I said. Then we decided to order croquetas. And shouted “dos croquetas” across the square in English accents. Then we ate them and looked at the empty plate for about 5 seconds before Laura caught the eye of the waitress and pointed to the empty plate and held up one finger.  No. We weren’t very confident linguists on this trip. In one shop I said “merci” in a perfect French accent by accident before running away in shame.

But...the whole time we were stuffing our faces with these delicious treats, we thought they were potato and we thought they were cheesy. Of which they were really neither. No cheese nor potato features in a croqueta. I guess we just assumed and our tastebuds trusted us wholeheartedly.

3.       You NEVER have to go without beer, even for short walks

Our theory is that they banned 24 hour drinking licences or booze licenses or something. So some clever people decided to just hide picnic coolers all over the city and sell cold cans of people to ANYONE walking past. We NEVER had to go without beer. It was really cool. Leave the apartment to walk one block. Buy a beer for the journey! Brills. On one occasion we paid upfront for 12 beers and then the man ran away and EVEYONE thought he was doing us over. We all started panicking and then he popped up from behind a bin with our drinks. On one night we had been told about a clubnight called “bitch” and we really wanted to go. We were walking from one bar to another discussing that we weren’t really sure what the name of the club was or the address and it wasn’t looking very hopeful, when Laura stopped one of the beer sellers and said clearly and loudly, in a perfect English accent “donday esta BITCH”. He wasn’t very helpful. But that was the highlight of the whole trip. I'm laughing quite hard now even typing.

4.       Spanish people must have amazing metabolisms

We were living opposite a supermarket and the whole place was basically bread, cheese and ham. So much ham. Ham everywhere. And cheese. So much cheese. In chunks as big as me. And ham legs hanging all over the place. it was like that everywhere. And every restaurant had delicious tapas and stuff on the menu. All cheesy and hammy. And fried. And ice cream shops on EVERY street. And weird fast food joints. Lining every street were loads of fast food places selling. Fast food chain specialising in pitta bread. Fast food joint specialising in pasta. Any kind of pasta you like. Fast food joint specialising in eggs. And with ALL this fattening food everywhere you turned, I didn’t spot one fat person. Well obvs there were some fat people but every time they were British, not Spanish. How do they stay so thin? Is it a massive ruse? What would they gain from such a ruse?

5.       Whatever you do..DO NOT ORDER PATATAS BRAVAS

Before this trip, I was trying to recall all the tapas dishes I knew from trips to La Tasca and my previously blurry trip to Spain. All I could come up with was patatas bravas. Which I vaguely recall being potatoes of some kind in a spicy tomato sauce. Or something. But when you order it, it's SO disappointing. It's just chips with spicy ketchup on top. And everywhere we went we kept ordering it. Probably I the hope that we’d just been unluckiy in the last place and maybe THIS eatery would get it right. But no. DON’T ORDER IT.

So there you have it. Barcelona for dummies. Go forth and be merry. By that I obvs mean drunk and incoherent. In an English accent.

Vamenos!