After breakfast with Torben at our hotel, we took the subway out to the Sagrada Familia stop to see Gaudi's celebrated cathedral. (The children knew it as "the ice-cream cone church" -- a reference to a dessert called Sagrada Familia concocted by a Catalan chef at Thirsty Bear in San Francisco -- the dessert being two upside-down cones over scoops of chocolate mousse.) I had wanted to get there just as they opened to avoid the crowds, but we were a bit later than that, and in any event the lineup was not excessive. N was struck, as I had been the fall previous, at how much progress there had been in the past decade, and how much energetic construction was going on. At times the noise was overwhelming.
For the sake of the children we opted to take the elevator up, again after a relatively short wait. What I didn't realize is that the front and back spires do not connect - at least, we were unable to find the connection - and the back area, accessible only by stairs, provides more views (both interior and exterior) on several levels. Nonetheless, the children enjoyed the closeups of the ornamentation on the spires, and the views over the city. We tried to make up for the relatively limited itinerary by walking all the way down, but this only succeeded in terrifying the children, as they passed open stone windows with low sills looking down into the hollow interior of the spire, and then narrow spiral staircases with an open drop in the centre. We reached the ground without incident, but they weren't about to go up the stairs in the older part after that, even if we could have persuaded them to climb sixty metres.
So we spent a bit of time in the museum, and then I let the kids snap away with their cameras on the terrace outside the old facade (the one designed by Gaudi, not the newer one with its Darth Vader Roman soldiers). Typically on this trip I would have to remind them that the cameras existed, and then they would want to take pictures of absolutely everything until I put them away again. Once they ran out of photo ideas, we regained the Metro and rode down to the Parallel stop.
Our destination was the Museu Maritim, in the old Drassanes shipyard buildings, once on the waterfront but now a few hundred metres from it. The buildings were stunning, huge brick barrel vaults. The size meant that whole boats could easily be accommodated inside (instead of just models), and there was a good mix of paraphernalia and displays intended to convey what shipboard life was like in different eras. We had intended this to be just a way to kill time before lunch, but both children and adults found it fascinating. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was spoiled somewhat by the latter part of the museum, in which we donned infrared headsets and moved through a series of light-and-sound tableaux (and motion, in the case of one room intended to recreate a stormy sea): the Battle of Lepanto described while we stood on a lifesize replica of the flagship, an ocean liner at the turn of the century, and so on. The children were more puzzled than amused.
We had lunch at La Llotja, the cafe in the museum, which was little more than a cafeteria at lunch, with a set menu offering two choices at each course. Vichyssoise or salad; botifarra amb mongetes or sepia a la plancha; flan or frozen lemon mousse (both out of little containers as one buys in the supermarket). The food was decent and the price extremely inexpensive, but it wasn't up to the grandeur of the setting -- we were sitting before one of the huge entrances, glassed in.
After that, we walked up the Ramblas to the hotel. It was overcast, and may even have drizzled a bit: our run of lovely weather continued. The kids drew, read, or played with some of the few toys we had brought; N, Torben, and I discussed work. I had bought a bottle of Rias Baixas Albarino wine (I would later see the exact same bottle in an upscale Catalan restaurant in San Francisco) and, realizing that there would be no meal opportunities unless I wanted to drink it at breakfast, opened it and sipped a glass. The kids wanted a snack, so I dashed off to El Corte Ingles, where I had been meaning to pick up some cooking supplies. Their "gourmet shop" didn't hold my interest, but in their regular supermarket I found canned piquillos, Calasperra "bomba" rice, and other items to take back, plus lumpfish caviar and marinated anchovies for the kids.
After that snack, I was out again, looking for saffron (which I could only find in half-gram blister packs at El Corte Ingles). This time, I walked up the very pleasant Rambla Catalunya to Colmado Quilez. This small and narrow shop had shelves up to the ceiling piled with various food bits, and a great selection of alcohol at the back -- I found a full bottle of Lustau Almacenista sherry, something I'd only read about. But no saffron. Finally, I screwed up my courage and asked, "Azafran?", and they brought some out from a drawer. I ended up buying 20 grams of La Mancha saffron for about 2700 ptas, almost half of what I would have paid at the touristy front of La Boqueria.
Monday night is a problematic one for many restaurants, and to find one open early was even worse. But the Time Out guidebook came to the rescue. We walked across the Raval, just south of MACBA, to the Mercat Sant Antoni and down Ronda Sant Pau to Can Lluis. We arrived shortly after it opened at eight; it was empty, and remained so until we were nearly done, when a couple more parties arrived. We ordered a mixture of appetizers to share -- torrada (basically pa amb tomaquet with some anchovies on it), escalivada, romescada (crudite with a small container of romesco into which we could dip the vegetables), and then separate mains for everyone: fideua for the kids, and three salt cod dishes for the adults: Catalan bacalla a la llauna, Basque bacalao con pilpil, and the ubiquitous bacalao a brasa. With it we had a nice bottle of Torres Vina Sol. The kids were quite tired, and we managed to convince them to skip dessert. Rather than cross the Raval again at that time of night, we walked around on larger streets: Ronda Sant Antoni and Carrer Pelai.