Spain: Day 3 Part 2

Playing: There is a Light That Never Goes Out-The Smiths
Reading: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

After the Casa Mila, we returned to the area by our hotel and explored the gardens and buildings around the MNAC. I highly suggest walking around in all the gardens surrounding it. You get a great view of the ocean and get to see tons of spectacular buildings. A soccer camp for elementary school age boys was just getting out, so there was a whole rush of boys in bright soccer jerseys running around with parents chasing after them. How cute!

We probably spent a good two to three hours just walking around and people watching, but then we got hungry, so we headed down to Arenas de Barcelona for dinner. It used to be a bull fighting rink, but they transformed it into a modern mall with stores like MANGO, Claire's, Desigual, etc. It was amazing how big it was inside and on the bottom most floor, they had all these places for food. We went to the very top, where the restaurants were for dinner.

This was the amazing view that you got from the top most floor and you got to see this, while eating dinner. Pretty much all of the restaurants would offer you a different, beautiful view. Surprisingly, the food here wasn't as over priced as it was in other parts of town.

We chose La Lola, since it was one of the few restaurants offering Spanish food. It was mostly a tapas restaurants, but you could get sandwiches there too. Up above, you can see the salt cod fritters, breaded baby goat chops from Segovia, Iberian ham shavings, cold tomato soup, and the bread with tomato sauce. The soup was absolutely delicious and my family was fighting over who would get the last bit of it. I won. The Iberian ham shavings was basically prosciutto, but when put on top of the bread with tomato sauce, it was so good.

We also tried the paella, which was only ok. It tasted too much of seafood and the rice was kind of burnt. However, the fried eggplants with honey was amazing. It was cut so thin, it was like a crisp. The honey sauce had a molasses under taste to it, which was surprising. It was so good that we ordered a second batch.

I developed quite the liking for the Spanish tapa called potatas bravas, but at La Lola, they were called the unforgettable bravas. I am a lover of fried potatoes, so topping it with spicy mayo just makes it that much better, so I took delight in chowing down on this.

After dinner, we headed back to the MNAC area to watch the water show that's held nightly from 9:00PM-10:00PM during the summer. We caught a showing towards 10:00PM that was synched with American music from the 1980's, so pretty much, all my favorites. There were a lot of people in their 20's there dancing, drinking, and just pretty much having fun. A lot of gay couples were there dancing and I guess, if you want to find other young people to befriend, this is the area. I became friends with two Americans, while I was there and we talked about which sites we were going to go to next. Then the clock ticked by and somehow it was 11:00PM already and we decided it was time to go back to the hotel, even though none of us were tired.