The Passeig de Gràcia (Paseo de Gracia in Castilian) is one of the major avenues in Barcelona and one of the most important business and shopping areas - with several of the city's most interesting architectural attractions. The H10 Casa Mimosa is located one block from the Passeig de Gràcia on the Carrer de Pau Claris - also just one block from the Diagonal Metro station. It is in the Eixample neighborhood.
The location and the hotel were perfect for the first half of our stay in Barcelona. Here's the view from our balcony. It overlooked the hotel courtyard and also Casa Milà (also known as La Pedrera) - one of the Gaudí attractions on the Passeig de Gràcia.
The H10 Casa Mimosa has a rooftop pool with a great view of the Casa Batlló. It also has a pool in the courtyard. That made it perfect for both evening and daytime as the temperature changed.
As this was our first evening in Barcelona, we wanted to have a fairly early dinner. Many restaurants in Spain don't open for dinner until 9pm or later. BUT ... it's easy to have an earlier meal by going out for tapas.
Cerveceria Catalana has some of the best tapas in Barcelona. It was just about a 4-5 block walk from our hotel, so that's where we went. We were very pleased! The restaurant is very popular and very busy. It serves traditional tapas and drinks. We ordered a variety of tapas (vegetarian + fish for me) and a pitcher of sangria.
I still remember the first time that I had escalivada. It was at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona in 1995. It quickly became one of my favorite Catalan foods. Escalivada is a traditional Catalan dish made from roasted eggplant (albergínia) and red bell peppers with olive oil and sometimes onion, tomato, and/or minced garlic. The version I like best adds cabra (chevre in French, goat cheese in English) on top. Here's the one we had at Cerveceria Catalana. (There's a brie montadito in the background.)
Another favorite tapa for me has always been pescaditos. I don't usually like fried fish, but these are different - especially when mixed with pimientos de Padrón. You can also see Martha's yummy steak tapa in this photo.
For dessert, we enjoyed crema catalana. I have heard French and Spanish people argue at length about whether crème brûlée or crema catalana came first. Both are about the only desserts that I will eat. This one was very good.
One thing that I learned during all of my international travel is that jet lag is minimized by staying up until normal bedtime in your new location. So we stopped at a neighborhood tapas bar on our way back to our hotel. Dora seems to be a favorite among locals, and it became our favorite place to stop for a drink. Their sangria was the best we found anywhere. The recipe isn't precise, but it appears to include wine (red was best), gin, cognac, Cointreau, vermouth, Martini Rosso, lemon and fruit. One thing we learned is that the fruit absorbs a lot of the alcohol - a good reason to be careful of the fruit.
When we got back to our hotel, we enjoyed the view before bedtime.
All in all, it was a great start to our vacation.
No comments:
Post a Comment