Day 4: Fat Cat, Barcelona

Our agenda is now open for the next two days. We have been digging through our tour books for shopping recommendations, and spent the early hours of the morning googling locations to mark on our map. Then we hit a café nearby for some coffee, and poke our heads into a few of the nearby shops we haven’t visited yet. And Happy Books (which I say aloud every time we pass) to pick up a notebook I’d seen earlier, and some "ornaments."

The View from our table.

We may also have stopped in a meat palace of some sort.

 

I also found this at Happy Books, but I've already read it.

 Stop one is a cat statue in el Raval, with shopping along the way. I found the prettiest ugly handbag in a vintage shop. The open space with the statue also has artist stalls and plenty of restaurants for lunch. Bill found a nice print for himself. After worshipping the giant cat, we grab a light lunch.

No one tell Riblet about this.

We got lost trying to get back to the vintage shop, and stumbled through a market we’d both read about. Cool to have seen, but a little crowded to really spend much time in. I got my hideous, cowboy themed bag! Shockingly, nobody had bought it in the last hour.

Next up, Cacao Sampaka, a high end chocolate shop owned by Albert Adria. There is a café in the back with amazing, thick hot chocolate. We added a couple of bombones to our order – bergamot for me, gin and tonic for Bill.

So many bars to choose from.

Someone helps me select the appropriate chocolates for our snack.

Looked how restrained a selection I have made.

This hot chocolate is luxuriously thick and wonderful.

I may have purchased chocolates. Enough to almost fill my new bag.

See what a completely reasonable amount of chocolate I purchased? This could have been much worse.

Then, we headed back down to the Born district to visit a sweets shop called Papabubble, where you can watch the candies being made.

Bill is disappointed by this sign because these are not the kind of caramels he was thinking of.

There be dragons inside!

These last three are all candy making steps.

 Finally, using Bill's locator app, we found a charchuterrie place that was near the restaurant we wanted hit for dinner. It looked amazing, but very closed in spite of the hours printed on the door. Here’s the kitschy display window.

Intrepid explorer needs no sense of direction.

Look at that meat grinding goddess!

Fortunately, the restaurant was open. Origin 99.9%. Of all the places we’ve eaten so far, this has been, hands down, the best experience. Even more so than the fancy molecular place. If you’re in Barcelona, this is the place to eat. They have a second location closer to our hotel that we may try to hit tomorrow night – we could not possibly have eaten everything on the menu that we wanted to taste.

Bill again in his natural habitat.

On the way back to the hotel, we found a much shorter route, and caught the end of a set by some impressive street performers. The plaza closer to our hotel is also having live music this evening.

This turned out to be a shortcut.

I lost Bill for a while in this plaza. I'm not too concerned, though. If he doesn't find me, his app will surely get him back to the hotel.

Live music, beer, and good weather. Also, like a block from our hotel.