Barcelona 2022 – segon dia

A good night of sleep is everything you need. Barcelona was calling, so we had to heed her call. It seems rather not worth to consider getting up early in a city where breakfast cafés open around 10:30. We jumped into the metro L9 to Marina and took a short walk to our breakfast location “Can Dende”. The culinary expectation was high, since it was a recommendation from our guide and it was not disappointed. Chai latte, excellent omlettes with green onions and fluffly pancakes delivered us the basis for our first 15.000 steps in Barcelona. On my next trip here I might focus on capturing all the magnificent street art that BCN offers. This time I’ve only caught a glimpse with my camera. And on our way from breakfast to the beach, we passed by an uncommon and interesting cemetary, worth seeing as well.

We were observing the steep sandy coastline and strolling it from Can Dende, with a quickstop at an ice-cream place, all the way to Las Golondrinas. That’s quite a few steps for a walk, even though we could enjoy the sand and ocean very much before we took an hour worth out on the ocean touring the wonderful port-scape of Barcelona.

We luckily were ensuring to be fit enough for the evening to come with my dear catalan colleague Alvaro and his wife Martha. Both would offer us a glimpse on the city from their own perspective and – it was soo worth it. Before we got dressed for the night, a quick stop at the MOOD rooftop bar “the one” left us happy with my first Mochito of Barcelona and Juli enjoying a special treat with special filled avocado rolls, the service was good when we arrived and I won’t complain too much about it, the view was reserved for hotel guests, so a bit overrated and -priced in my opinion.

 

A good hour later, after we got a bit refreshed and took a 30min break from the roughly 20.000 steps so far, we got ready to meet at Placa de Catalunya, a very easily accessible, central place, also the official start of “la rambla” the probably most famous street of all Catalania. A walk south on it showed a multitude of architectures, including also the well known market “Mercat de la Borqueria”, which on the street side is very touristy and also very pricy. The newly introduced fruit called Nispero was about thrice higher than her normal market price. Anyways the presentation along the market was worth the stay and I can only recommend visiting it. The beautiful artisan’s building with umbrellas and a dragon in the facade was just the beginning, as we went a bit further into, what I would consider hidden gems as normal tourist of Barcelona. Several musicians were playing the streets, some better some worse but the overall impression was a positive one. The streets are not too dirty, but it stings to see rather large amount of homeless people and the everpresent threat of a purse getting stolen is something you’re not used to as an Austrian, so keeping a close watch on valuables was several times in our heads.

Another highlight was our first real tapas, like – ever. Cal Pep convinced us that we have to try more of this. Their “seven course” tapas gives an excellent selection throughout local specialities (tomato-bread, octopus on potatoes, freshly fried squid, fish and gambas, tasty fried artichockes, savory green pepers, hearthy white beans and sausage with a sweet brown sauce, crunchy-crispy crocettes and omlette,…) besides the very attentive service it was simply a great place to be, enjoy the food and company. With another stroll back to Placa de Catalunya our evening ended and with almost 30.000 steps we might have started very strong into our vacation, worth every single one, as tomorrow we will leave Catalonia and enter the heart of spain, Madrid for a short stay, getting a glimpse of the capital.

Thank you so much for this evening!

Cold Turkey

There were only two titles coming to my mind this morning. First one was Vacation upcoming, the second one was Cold Turkey…

If you enjoyed reading my blog so far, you might still understand that I am not someone with too much spare time and I hardly manage to get my postings done in time – so I was not able to prepare 10 postings for everyday when I’m gone. Besides with the new rpgbloggers.com online I guess you all will find enough material to read everyday. On the other hand, I have a few recommendations of great blogs that I think are not as famous as E’s, Chatty’s or Dave’s and are more than worth reading.

A few blog recommendations (or my list of recent must-reads):

Vacation is always two sides of a story. Currently most parts of my regular group is on vacation – taking a sailing-turn on the Mondsee (Moon lake) in Salzburg, Austria. So last and this weekend I’m already having the shakes when I think about role-playing games – it has to be very similiar to cold-turkey indeed. Next possible date is the 17th, when I will have the pleasure to guide my group as dungeon master further into the secrets of a mysteriously crashed metroid and the direct consequences of this onto the world of Ptolus. 

We’ll hopefully enjoy a motorbike tour from here (Northwest of Vienna, Austria) to Lago di Garda (Garda Lake) in Italy. We’ll have a few stops inbetween, the first one on the famous southern wine-street in Styria (Austria) – we will continue to the eastern region of the Weissensee on Monday and will hopefully arrive in Riva del Gardo on the northern-most part of the Garda Lake on Tuesday. We’ll stay there for 2 nights and will travel back to Austria on Thursday morning – expected arrival Saturday… Have a good time dear readers.