Beautiful Barcelona! Gaudí + Martini Dry + Paco Meralgo!

Visiting Barcelona without  knowing the genius or madness of Gaudi is like going to Disneyland without trying out the rides!  Gaudi’s influence in the world of art and architecture is undeniable.  It was a beautiful day in Barcelona to visit 2 of Gaudi’s masterpieces in one day.  First up was the Sagrada Familia Antoni Gaudi’s life long project!  He started this momentous project when he was only 31 years old and worked on the cathedral till his very last breath. It was fascinating to see the Sagrada Familia once more but this time a bit more complete.

Each time you visit you see something that boggles your imagination.  I love how nature was the main point of Gaudi’s inspiration.  There is so much to see in the Cathedral, I particularly loved the museum which showed where all the inspiration came from making a bit of sense from all the mind bending details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next on our stop was the Park Guel.  First planned to be a residential complex in 1900 but failed to gather interest.  Only 2 of the planned 60 homes were made.  This “failure” proved to be quite one of the most beautiful and valuable World Heritage sights in Spain.  My friends and I had the best time walking around the public park and admiring how one man imagined it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being a tourist is “hard” work so we all developed quite an appetite.  However eating dinner is Spain usually starts at 9pm onwards and most restaurants only start service at that time so where does one kill time?  A bar of course!  Good thing that I had an essential “must” guide part of that list is this bar called the “Dry Martini” I know it sounds like a boring name but once you get in there I assure you all that it is anything but BORING!  It was as if we were all transported back in time as this bar was really beautiful! It had a proper bartender and not some “mixologist”!  LOL!   He came to our table immaculately dressed in a white lab coat got our orders and prepared my favourite Hendrick’s gin & tonic at our table!  I was in cocktail heaven!  This I thought is how one does cocktail hour!  http://www.javierdelasmuelas.com/eng/dry/s-home/home  I am not surprised why it was voted on e of the best bars in the world!  BRAVO!

 

 

 

After a few drinks we all went for a quick walk to dinner at Paco Meralgo  http://www.pacomeralgo.com/ing/home.html   This restaurant was highly recommended by my food guru Malu Gamboa and It was one of the few restaurants open on a Sunday.  Spain is notoriously dead on Sundays so I was really happy that this great place was open.

We sat at the bar directly in front of the kitchen and once settled I was so pleased to find out that all the chefs were Filipinos!  Imagine that?!!!  We asked the chef what to order and ordered up a storm!  Top hits for me was the octopus as it was done with some really deliciously caramelised onions.  Then we also had the most delicate calamari with the consistency of savoury marshmallows.  We also tried the deep fried peppers which is always a good choice in Barcelona.  The tuna carpaccio was also quite good specially if you have it with the divinely simple pan con tomate!  We called it a night right after dinner and I considered this one of the best days of my trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUGS,

RAJO!