Sunny in Barcelona

We drug ourselves out of bed this morning in Paris and easily made our way to CDG and eventually landed in Barcelona without too much excitement. It was incredibly windy as we landed and the pilot had to abort the landing and go around, I barely roused from reading Hunger Games but some of the folks around us were quite tense about the whole thing. We were in the exit row and the woman next to us really should have refused the responsibility, after the first landing attempt she went white knuckles and kept bracing herself, I figured if we actually had to use the exit I'd have to knock her out before I could get to the door to open it... it really was uneventful though.

We were both ecstatic to find blue skies and sun in Barcelona, we spent the taxi ride to our B&B with our sunglasses on and windows open.

Our B&aB is called Chez Papa and is run by a French man named Herve (RV) and is quite the character but we've already declared him a kindred spirit. He greeted us with wine and conversation and for about 45 minutes we discussed organic living, the evils of Walmart, vegetarian cuisine and Family Constellations. He spent some time asking us about our ancestry and then analyzed us based on our backgrounds, he had me pegged right away which Meg loved and I hated ^_^. The place is so ecclectic and wonky and wonderful - full of character. I'll try to get some pics tomorrow. We found this and our last place on cross-pollinate.com and are so pleased with the results! Our room is great, we share a bathroom but it's huge and there are several and only 4 groups of people to three bathrooms so not bad odds.

Today we just wandered a bit, practiced our Spanish (it's hard switching languages!) and napped. There were two restaurants I was really looking forward to and we basically got those out of the way.

The first is a Vegetarian place in the Gothic Quarter which appeared closed online but it was still there and still yummy. Meg had tomato and raspberry gazpacho and paella and I had a mexican salad and a veggie burger and we both had local beer and then vegan apple pie for dessert. All of this, a three course meal each and it was only 12 Euros each. So yummy.

Then after our nap we went out for dinner and went to La Fonda which is a place I had discovered during my last visit with Chris. It's local cuisine at really affordable prices. Here we both ordered the same thing, a goat cheese and honey salad followed by a Salmon steak with an avocado and tomato salad and a 'crispy mustard' which was like a sweet pancake filled with a mustard seed mix and then fried. It was all amazing and perfect with the Sangria we ordered.
Happy and full we realized the metro was closed so we walked back to our place. It was a bit of a long walk but we felt safe, the weather was nice and it was a good opportunity to get the lay of the land. Now we're ready for bed and curious to see what breakfast is like tomorrow. Herve starts playing music at 8:30am and serves breakfast at 9am, there will be 9 of us at the table and we're excited to meet our temporary flatmates.