Barf-a-lona.....

Wow....loving the Spanish computer that deletes all my text when I upload a photo.

What did I say 16 hours ago?

Oh, yeah.....

The title of the post is not a Hapsburgian lithp.....Catalunya is barely part of Spain, and up here folks pronounce "c´s" as "sssss".....

The title is also not a bad thing.....just a reflection of Amanda´s habitual viceral reaction to the town. Think "Roman Banquet".


Her visit brought her wildly severe food poisoning from a cafe on the carretera.....and led to violent projectile vomiting in Comerc24. Which turned out to be a not inaccurate statement about the food and service, as it turned out.

We are trying hard to love Barce....but it is a rough row to hoe.

As we landed last night we were so stunned by over-work, stress, and guilt that we could not begin to wrap our minds around having a few days off with good food.

Then, it was an hour waiting for bags.....and another hour waiting for the rental car.

Then the de rigeur two hours of terror trying to drive to the hotel in the dark in the pouring rain.

I am a competitive driver....I love driving in cities. I learned to drive in New York City and I even love driving in Italian cities.....In fact, when in Florence I always rent a car and drive around....and avoid looking at churches and art. I have not seen the Uffizi, nor the Davide.....but I have gotten a Mercedes A class through an airborn landing on the Ponte Vecchio while being chased by punk thug Tuscans at 2 am.

A favorite memory of Roma is of driving flat out towards six lanes of oncoming traffic to go around a tie-up....accompanied by a horde of mopeds and scooters.

But Barcelona is off the charts. Barce traffic is a roving, high-speed, murderous metal pogrom.

Driving in Barce is exactly like being in the bombadier´s cockpit of a B-29 with Yossarian and Arfy: flak bursting all around, terrified screams as we jerk the wheel to avoid one onrushing obstacle after another and frantically sort through maps....which float through the air and block all vision.

We finally arrived at the Hotel utterly shattered.

And we were late for dinner.

Time is up on my library computer.....sorry. I am just going to re-edit posts on the fly where I can so as to not lose anymore text.

Oh....the photos that wiped out my post:

We are silly enough to hand carry smoked salmon all the way to the greatest seafood port in the world. I got a wild Port Moller coho salman from Donny Enea and smoked it in Cachagua on Monday before we left.

We carried it to Bar Inopia as a gift for Chema the chef. We were greeted by a line of angry, wealthy Asians standing in the rain by a velvet rope, trying to outwait the doorman.

Believe it or not.....in Barce...at Inopia.....you say "Cachagua" and hold up a fish, and you get whisked right through like Paris Hilton.

Chema took our salmon and whipped up a new tapa.....Voila.

More anon.