And what did you do today?

Loving the hostel we’re in, we have keys to the front door and keys to the building, it feels like we’re in an apartment. We share a bathroom and have 2 beds below and we’re in the loft. It’s the most relaxing place we’ve stayed.  And we’re here for three nights, in one place,  imagine that!

Got up before the alarm,  relaxed, made some breakfast, took our rain gear and headed out to our walking tour, just a the sun came out,  perfect.

We were meeting at The Travel Bar,  along with bunch of other people. The guy who arranged it all was very nice and our tour guide Jana was fabulous! Need to do a review on Trip Advisor.

It was a free two hour tour and she was great!  We walked the Gothic Quarter, saw some churches, cathedrals, Picasso, Miro, Gaudí, wonderful.

We found out the places to eat and the places to avoid, very informative and entertaining. I’ve often said I would love up move somewhere and become a tour guide and that’s what she did. So there’s still hope for me!

If you’re ever in Barcelona,  the free walking tour is worth it and Jana is a great guide. Yes, free, completely. They also do it for free,  so if you’re happy with the tour,  you let it show with your wallet, sounds fair.

She was also able to set us up with our evening activity, a cooking class! Tell you about that in a bit.

After the tour we had lunch at the Travel Bar, tapas, their mixed plate.  It was ok, a lot of fried foods, but an experience.

After lunch we went on the famous street, Las Rambles, which we were told to avoid since it’s crazy with tourists and price gauging, but it was fun to see all the people.  We headed to the end to see the tribute to Christopher Columbus and that led us down to the waterfront,  what a beautiful area.

Next,  it was on the metro to Museo Picasso, which, we have recently discovered,  Barcelona is an incredibly walkable city and we don’t really need a Metro pass, we keep ending up around the corner from where we were!

We get to the museum and…it’s sold out! What?  Oh well…we now have tickets for tomorrow.

We walked back towards where we needed to be and went to the Cathedral de Barcelona and had a look inside. 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Cathedral

This was something! There was a choir performing when we got there, a nice thing to see and hear. We toured the cathedral and then found the lift to the roof,  that was so worth the entry fee! Wouldn’t you agree?

By now,  it was time to get to our evening activity…our first cooking class!  We’ve been talking about taking one,  what better place than Barcelona!

We met back at The Travel Bar abs meet our chef, Fernando, now you know I started hearing ABBA!

When the group,  all 15 of us were there,  we headed out to Mercat de St. Josep, Bouqueria, for the fresh ingredients for what we were going to cook,  awesome!  

We got a small lesson there about what we needed…fresh fruit for sangria, fresh seafood for paella! Then it was off to cooking school!

We got to know each other over our experience and the meal.  There were some Australians, Canadiens,  Germans and a few Americans,  besides us. A good group, ready for an experience.

When we got there,  we were served sangria and got a lesson on how to eat tapas, building from the toast up. It turns out that the meat and cheese plates were made by the group from the night before and what we made tonight would be for tomorrow,  pretty cool.

Then we were divided into groups, prep and cook. PSM joined the prep where we had a demonstration of cutting vegetables, then preparing the seafood, then cooking!

The sous chefs only had SEVEN minutes to prep,  then it was our turn to cook! It took about 20 minutes cooking the veggies and then seafood [muscles, clams, calamari,  squid and prawns]. Then the spices, the different cold liquids to cool the recipe down,  then the rice.

The paellera, the special pan for cooking the paella was ginormous! This is not something I currently have in my collection, so….wink wink.

We stirred and separated and stirred and circled and repeated the process for about twenty minutes, then there was the sitting on the burners and waiting,  but not for us to sit,  we learned how to make proper sangria, and how to count…the amount of alcohol going in!

Then it was time to eat. I know you’ve been sitting there wondering…yes, I tried the cheese with bread and tomatoes, I enjoyed it.  Yes,  I tried the sangria, no,  I did not care for it,  thanks to my fabuloso boyfriend for picking up my slack. Yes, I cooked and ate the seafood paella,  including all the seafood and yes,  I liked it.  No,  I am not going back to eating seafood, it was an experience and I would never say never,  but for now, I’m good.

This was such a great experience,  I’m so glad we did it and I can’t wait to try again.

We walked a bit, found a placa that PSM had book marked. He had a cerveza, I had a te menta  and we shared something sweet.

Back to the hotel to crash, dream about the day and wonder what tomorrow holds.

Dulces senos!