Torben joined us for breakfast; he arrived late enough that we could take him over to the supermarket and let him choose his own food. He was not interested in going to the market, preferring to pick up some bananas and apples there, as well as some sandwich bread (the dense, dark German bread he favoured was not available). His hotel was over to the north of Sagrada Familia; he had booked relatively late and had had some difficulty (N's father, who did not book at all on his last visit, had to patch together stays at several places and chose to plan at least one overnight excursion to cover a resulting gap). Since he was spending more time with us, we fit research in whenever we could -- on Metro rides, while walking down the street, while waiting for food to arrive at a restaurant, or while relaxing in our hotel room during siesta hours.
We went to the Catedral and through it to the cloisters, looking somewhat less than austere with palm trees and swans in an ornamental pond, and then out and around past buskers and the occasional beggar to the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat (City History Museum). The main attraction here were the Roman ruins in the basement. I had expected a few old building blocks and some pot shards, but the ruins were quite extensive, accessed on several levels by metal and glass catwalks. There were remnants of a garum (fish sauce) factory, a laundry and dye works, and a large winemaking operation, as well as in-place mosaics from dwellings, sections of defensive wall, tombstones and inscriptions, and bases of columns from later Christian churches and an episcopal palace. It took quite some time to wander through.
At the end we came up to find a temporary exhibition titled Goddesses (consisting mostly of fertility figures, rather limited in scope) housed in the Salo del Tinell and, after some confusion over what exactly was included in our ticket and where we could go, we reentered the Palau Reial to find the chapel of Santa Agata and climbed up through side staircases leading to successive terraces overlooking the Placa dei Rei (occupied by a stage for the Festival Grec which was in progress) to the top of the Mirador del Rei Marti watchtower, with a great view of the top of the Catedral and nearby streets, as well as much of the rest of Barcelona.
We walked back to the hotel, emptied the daypack of its sightseeing contents, and walked with Torben to the Liceu metro stop, which was more pleasant than Placa Catalunya. This was our first Metro trip; we bought T-1 tickets, good for ten rides, for 795 ptas; we could use one ticket for four people by passing it through the turnstile machine repeatedly and handing it back.
The walk from the Mercat Nou stop down to Dimitrios and Maria's apartment in the Sants neighbourhood was familiar to me from my November visit, but N and the kids enjoyed the pragmatic residential atmosphere and their first view of the apartment with its small balcony, on which a table was set for lunch under an awning. Dimitrios had stayed up late the night before reading Mike's monograph, and was excited about the applications to our work; he and I discussed them in the living room while the kids read and coloured, and N kept Maria company in the kitchen.
Maria had prepared gazpacho with an assortment of raw chopped vegetables to add, pan con tomate, and a dish called patatas a la pobre, basically potatoes cooked with milk and cheese. We drank a Navarre rose I had given Dimitrios the day before to chill, after an aperitif of lighter, slightly petillant vin del agua. Though it was sunny, the brisk breeze made it almost cold on the terrace. Other terraces, and the playground set above the car park below, were empty and silent. "You will see them start to emerge from siesta at about five," Dimitrios said.
But we didn't stay that long; we headed back and let the kids loose in the hotel with their toys and books. Dimitrios's sister was arriving from Greece, and it was unclear when we would see him again. I was going to shop at La Boqueria for dinner, but the kids didn't want to eat in. "You have to stay up really late to eat dinner in restaurants here," I warned them; they were willing. As a result, I was to do no further cooking in Barcelona. Our original plan had been to stay for two weeks and cook elaborate dishes from market ingredients, but to be honest I was less than impressed with the collection of pots and utensils at the hotel (which were clean and in good shape, but very limited) and calculating in US dollars made restaurant prices seen quite reasonable. What was preferable, to have me wrestle with a piece of monkfish and possibly overcook it, or to order it in a restaurant where the chef knew what they were doing?
But it was Saturday night, and we had no reservations. Leafing through the Time Out guidebook, I located a nearby place called La Dolce Herminia, one of a small chain of restaurants offering cut-price Catalan food in modestly elegant and spacious surroundings. Their main advantage, besides being a short walk from the hotel, was that they did not take reservations. We were there at 8:25 for the 8:30 opening, and there were already several parties waiting in line, with several more joining it before the doors opened. The restaurant did not quite fill on opening, but by 8:45 I could see the maitre'd looking at her watch and new arrivals shaking their heads and leaving.
The food was a bit formulaic but well-presented and tasty. We ordered four mains: albondigas con sepia (meatballs with squid chunks in squid ink sauce), chipiritos (tiny deep-fried squid), a salt cod dish cooked in a casserole with tomato and garlic, and the noodle dish fideua, which came with all i oli (garlic mayonnaise). "Can we eat the eyes?" Z asked of the squid set before her, and having been reassured, tucked into them with relish. Dishes were passed all over the table so that everyone could sample.
Desserts were lemon sorbet for Z, and profiteroles for A. N and I experimented; I ordered something with a name like "laminada de bizcocho", which turned out to be thin slices of sponge cake layered with berries and creme anglaise; N ordered "tocinillos de la casa", which was really daring, because "tocino" is pork fat, but what she got was like a Portuguese egg-yolk dessert (though less rich and sweet) in a coulis.
Our evening restaurant foray was successful; we had turned a corner. I was already anticipating our next trip to Paris, when we could have two four-course meals a day...