It's all about the tapas

They are delicious and basically the best idea ever. It's a Barcelona thing (perhaps all of Spain as well??) where "tapas" actually describes a kind of food. This kind of food is delicious small portions of bite size food or sometimes a little larger, kind of like snacks. The last two nights we had tapas for dinner. It's so cool because you get to try all kinds of different things and they're fairly inexpensive.

Yesterday was kind of a bust day at first. We had to go to the train station to buy our tickets for tomorrow's overnight train to Paris. Buying tickets has never been a problem anywhere else, but for some reason there was a 2.5 hour line to buy tickets here in Barcelona. They had a system where you take a number and wait for your number to be called. We got #415 when they were currently servicing #183. It sucked.

After this we were able to go check out the Picasso museum here. It wasn't any of his super famous stuff, rather it was mostly the stuff he created growing up. You got to see a bunch of his influences and how he developed as an artist and progressed towards cubism. Neat stuff. After that, it was these open-faced sandwich things (sourdough roll type bread). I really don't remember what they were called, but I think it's something different than tapas. It was cool because of the way it worked. They give you a plate and you choose from all different types that are out. At the end, you pay by the number of toothpicks on your plate. Really really good food. After dinner, we went to a few little cafes and ended up having even more tapas as a late night snack.

Today we went to the beach! Even though it's artificial and had nothing on any California beaches, it was still the Mediterranean. We read for a bit and then I swam for a while while Jen laid out. The water was for sure warmer than the Pacific. It was a little cold at first, but very easy to get used to and perfect thereafter. When I got out, my feet weren't even numb! :P

The plan for tonight is to go get some traditional Spanish or Catalan food that isn't tapas. We want to try some actual plates of food rather than small bits of random things (even if they are quite delicious). After that, we may just take it easy tonight. Tomorrow we don't leave until about 9pm on the overnight train to Paris. Not quite sure what we'll be doing, perhaps shopping around. This is one of the first places where even the souveniry stuff is pretty cool, due to a lot of them being based around sweet artists like Picasso, Dali, and Miro. I have to resist buying lots of things!

Adéu!